Category Archives: Manly Wade Wellman

Kardios Slaughters the Gods

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Today, May 21, is the birthday of Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). Although best known for his tales of Jon the Balladeer, Wellman also wrote a number of stories in a variety of subgenres, including sword and sorcery. These stories aren’t as well-known as his Appalachian tales. They are still worth reading.

One of the sword and sorcery characters he wrote about was a chap named Kardios, the sole survivor of Atlantis. The reason Atlantis sunk is that Kardios did something he shouldn’t have. By kissing the queen, he institutes the curse that causes the island to sink. Now he wanders the world having adventures. Continue reading →

Three by Wellman

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Today, May 21, marks the birth of Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). Much Wellman’s work incorporated the folklore of the Southern Mountains. Wellman is best remembered for his stories of John the Balladeer, but he wrote a number of stories in mountain settings that weren’t part of that series.

Worse Things Waiting was Wellman’s first non-John the Balladeer collection. It was published by the legendary Carcosa. It’s the only Carcosa title I don’t have in the original edition. Fortunately it has been reprinted in trade paper at a reasonable price, as has Lonely Vigils. The new publisher is Shadowridge Press. For today’s post, I’m going to look at three stories from Worse Things Waiting. Continue reading →

Three by Wellman

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Manly Wade Wellman

Today, May 21, marks the birth of Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). Wellman is best remembered for his stories of the John the Balladeer, set in the Appalachian mountains. But he wrote a lot of other things, as well.

I first discovered Wellman’s short stories in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  He had a number of  stories published there in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Someone who had had a subscription had sold an almost complete run to the local second hand bookstore when I was in high school. Wellman’s stories were among the first I read when I picked up an issue with his name on the cover.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Wellman is a favorite around these here parts, so in honor of his birth, in addition to raising a glass in his honor later this evening, I’m going to look at three of his stories that feature the same  character, Sergeant Jaeger. Continue reading →

Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Finger of Halugra”

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It’s been a while since I posted anything, and so I was going to do an update.  The I realized it was Manly Wade Wellman’s birthday (b. May 21, 1903) and instead could write about something that would be of interest to people.

“The Finger of Halugra” is vintage Wellman, but it may not be familiar to many of you.  It was originally written in the early 70s for a small press publication that folded before the story could see print.  The story languished in Wellman’s files and wasn’t rediscovered until some years after the author’s death, when Karl Edward Wagner came across it.  The story first saw print in another small press publication, Deathrealm, in the spring 1995 issue.  It was reprinted in The Best New Horror Volume 7 (AKA The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 7).  Sin’s Doorway is the only collection of Wellman’s in which “The Finger of Halugra” has appeared.  And that collection is out of print and never had an electronic edition, although copies can be had on the secondary market. Continue reading →

Haffner Press Announces Unpublished Manly Wade Wellman Story

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If you’re on the mailing list for Haffner Press, you got this in your inbox a little while ago.  If you aren’t and are a Manly Wade Wellman fan, you’ll want to see this.

Haffner Press Cat Chair logo
 In This Issue: March 7, 2019
 
•  •  •  PRESS RELEASE  •  •  •
 
“Not All a Dream”
 
An unpublished Manly Wade Wellman story
to be shipped with preorders of
THE COMPLETE JOHN THE BALLADEER

Haffner Press is pleased to announce the upcoming release of an unpublished story by Manly Wade Wellman. Originally commissioned for the never released anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, “Not All a Dream” opens with poet/politician Lord Byron (1788-1824) musing over the status of his literary canon in years to come. Admiring the lasting legacy of John Milton, Byron accepts an offer to learn the truce place of his works in centuries hence—a nightmare vision gained by traveling into a dangerous future . . .

How can you get a copy of this story? Well, if you’ve placed a preorder for Manly Wade Wellman’s two-volume omnibus  THE COMPLETE JOHN THE BALLADEER, then you’re already set to receive it! (Congratulations, you wise, prescient reader!)

Otherwise, you have between now and the release of THE COMPLETE JOHN THE BALLADEER on October 31, 2019 at the World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles to place a preorder and receive “Not All a Dream” as an exclusive 32-page chapbook at no additional charge.


Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman’s
 
“Not All a Dream”


A 32-page chapbook shipping
exclusively with preordered copies of:


THE COMPLETE
JOHN THE BALLADEER
Two 600+ page Smythe-sewn Hardcovers
Cover art by Raymond Swanland
Release Date: October 31, 2019


 Pre-Order price: $90

Stories:
“O Ugly Bird!”
“The Desrick on Yandro”
“Vandy, Vandy”
“One Other”
“Call Me from the Valley”
“The Little Black Train”
“Shiver in the Pines”
“Walk Like a Mountain”
“On the Hills and Everywhere”
“Old Devlins Was A-Waiting”
“Nine Yards of Other Cloth”
“Then I Wasn’t Alone”
“You Know the Tale of Hoph”
“Blue Monkey”
“The Stars Down There”
“Find the Place Yourself”
“I Can’t Claim That”
“Who Else Could I Count On”
“John’s My Name”
“Why They’re Named That”
“None Wiser for the Trip”
“Nary Spell”
“Trill Coster’s Burden”
“The Spring”
“Owls Hoot in the Daytime”
“Can These Bones Live?”
“Nobody Ever Goes There”
“Where Did She Wander?”

Novels
The Old Gods Waken (1979)
After Dark (1980)
The Lost and the Lurking (1981)
The Hanging Stones (1982)
The Voice of the Mountain (19
That’s it for now. To ensure that you continue to receive this newsletter, be sure to add haffnerpress@sbcglobal.net and info@haffnerpress.com to your email reader’s “safe list.” And, remember, shipping is FREE in the continental United States. Alaska, Hawaii and International orders should email us at info@haffnerpress.com for shipping rate quotes. You have been warned!

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Haffner Press Announces the Complete John the Balladeer

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Haffner Press announced earlier today via email newsletter that The Complete John the Balladeer will be released next year at the 2019 World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles.  The cover on the left may not be the final cover.  This will be a two volume set containing all the short stories as well as the five novels.  The novels have been out of print since the middle of the 1980s and are hard to come by.

The current preorder price is $90 for the two volume set.

The newsletter also said all but one or two of the outstanding projects will be published this year.  I hope that turns out to be the case.

Regardless, I thought some of you would be interested.  I don’t normally do two posts in one day, but this was announced today.  I have something else planned for tomorrow.

Birthday Reading: Manly Wade Wellman

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Manly Wade Wellman was born, this day, May 21, in 1903 in Portuguese West Africa.  He was one of the greatest writers of horror and dark fantasy of the 20th Century, although he’s not as well known today as he should be.  His best known literary creation was John the Balladeer, and wandering minstrel of the Appalachian mountains.  Wellman began writing in the 1920s, and sold a number of stories to Weird Tales.  He was still writing in the 1970s and 1980s, and a number of his short stories were published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

In honor of his birthday, I’m going to look at two short stories.  Both were published in the pulps in the late 1930s.  I read both of them in Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances, published by Night Shade Books in 2003.  It’s volume 4 of the 5 volume The Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman. Continue reading →

Manly Wade Wellman Turns 113

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manlywadewellmanFantasy author Manly Wade Wellman was born on this date (May 21) in 1903.  Wellman isn’t as well known today as he used to be, and should be, but he has a devoted group of fans.  (I include myself in that number.)  I’ve looked at some of it here, here, and here.

Wellman is best known for stories that incorporate the lore and legends of the Appalachian states.  Of these, the John the Balladeer stories are the best known.  They concern a wandering minstrel in the mountains.

Wellman was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction work Rebel Boast.  He also beat out William Faulkner in 1946 for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award.  Faulkner didn’t take it well.

Night Shade Books publshed a five volume set of Wellman’s short fiction.  The volumes are long out of print and highly sought after today.  Haffner Press publsihed a complete collection of the John Thunstone occult detective stories in 2012.  They quickly went out of print.  Wellman’s works are somewhat available.  Prices can vary widely.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read some of his work.

Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios of Atlantis

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swords against darkness“Straggler From Atlantis”
Swords Against Darkness
Andrew J. Offutt, ed.
mmpb, Zebra Books, 1977, $1.95

In the late 1970s, Manly Wade Wellman began a series of novelettes about the last survivor of Atlantis, a warrior bard named Kardios. Or at least he began publishing them in the late 1970s. In his introduction to “Straggler from Atlantis”, Adrew Offutt says that Wellman tried to publish them in the 1930s, but some other chap was writing about an Atlantean named Kull at the time and no editor was buying.

Be that at it may, the Kardios stories were published, although to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never been collected in book form. The ISFDB shows a total of five, with the first four appearing in the first four volumes of Swords Against Darkness and the final one in an anthology from DAW books with the generic title of Heroic Fantasy. Continue reading →

“Arimetta” by Manley Wade Wellman

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kadath_1981071_v1_n4“Arimetta” was originally published in Kadath #4 in July of 1981, something that isn’t listed in the ISFDB.  It was reprinted once in Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances, The Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman, Volume 4 (Night Shade, 2003).  The latter is where I read it.  It’s the type of story set in the mountains that Wellman became known for.

This is a fairly short tale, one that’s loosely connected to the John the Balladeer stories.  Earl Wood is wandering the mountains and ends up literally singing for his supper in the cabin Big Don Imbry shares with his wife and daughter.  John taught Earl how to play the guitar, which makes him immediately welcome.

One of the songs Earl plays is “Wildwood Flower”, which he learned in Arkansas.  The song is an actual folksong, not a fictional one.   (Here’s Johnny Cash singing it.)  Welllman changes the name of one of the flowers mentioned from “aronauts” to “arimetta”.  That line has been changed in all the recordings I can find of it online to “the pale and the leader and eyes look like blue”.

“Arimetta”, from what I’ve been able to determine from my Google-Fu, is a woman’s name from that region of the country that’s no longer common and doesn’t appear to ever have been. Continue reading →