Manly Wade Wellman (1903–1986) was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Unknown, and Strange Stories, Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary Weird Tales, and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as “the dean of fantasy writers.”
A long-time resident of North Carolina, he received many awards over his lifetime, including the World Fantasy Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award. In 2013, the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation inaugurated an award named after him to honor other North Carolina authors of science fiction and fantasy.
Three of Wellman’s most famous recurring protagonists are John the Balladeer (a.k.a. “Silver John”), a wandering backwoods minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar; the elderly “occult detective” Judge Pursuivant; and John Thunstone, also an occult investigator.
In addition to fantasy fiction, Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction. Much of his best short general fantasy work over the years was collected by Karl Edward Wagner in Worse Things Waiting (1973), which won a World Fantasy Award and revived interest in Wellman’s work. His 1975 novel Sherlock Holmes’ War of the Worlds was collected from a series of Holmes pastiches (co-written with his son Wade Wellman) originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
At age 82, Wellman suffered a serious fall and sustained severe fractures of his left elbow and shoulder which made him an invalid. Due to the onset of gangrene in his legs following double amputation, Wellman’s health failed further and he died at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on April 5, 1986. Before passing on he had been able to finish his historical novel Cahena, about an African warrior princess. Cahena was published in 1986, as was the final John the Balladeer short story “Where Did She Wander.”
—Karl Wurf
Rockville, Maryland