Today’s post is by Will Oliver.

“Bran eyed her somberly; he reached forth and gripped her arm in his iron fingers.  An involuntary shudder shook him at the feel of her sleek skin. He nodded slowly and drawing her close to him, forced his head down to meet her lifted lips.”

– Robert E. Howard
“Worms of the Earth”

As a fan of pulp magazines, I generally have in my reading pile or to-read bookshelf either reprints of pulp magazines or paperbacks of stories from the pulp era. A couple of years ago, I discovered the magazine dedicated to the old pulps, Blood ‘N’ Thunder, and wouldn’t you know it, just as I discovered it, it was no longer publishing on a regular basis. Ed Hulse, both editor and publisher, decided to step away from the quarterly publication to dedicate himself to other pulp magazine projects. No more deadline pressures for him—something we can all understand. Still, he has since published some additional issues and I was able to get several articles into the latest one.

One issue of Blood ‘N’ Thunder I recently read was the summer 2015 issue, featuring an article by Rick Lai titled, “The Secret Son of Bran Mak Morn” (pp. 36-41). The article explained that Jack Mann was a fan of Robert E. Howard and was so taken with his character Bran Mak Morn that he wrote a veiled sequel titled Maker of Shadows, published in 1938. Curious, I ordered a copy from Amazon that was published by Ramble House publishers in 2011 and, after reading it, I thought I would write a review for this blog.

Jack Mann, the author of Maker of Shadows, was born Charles Henry Cannell on October 19, 1882, and he died on Mary 21, 1947. He wrote under so many pseudonyms that his real name is sometimes hard to find. Most people refer to him as E. C. Vivian or some variation of that, such as E. Charles Vivian. Yet, he also wrote as Galbraith Nicholson, A.K. Walton, Sydney Barrie Lynd, the variant Barrie Lynd, Henry G. Theaker, and Jack Mann. He was a prolific writer, penning approximately 100 novels, and writing across many genres, hence the need for so many pseudonyms.

Cannell was born on Forster’s Farm, near the village of Bedingham in Norfolk, England, located northeast of London. He served as a soldier in the Boer War (1899-1902) and then became a journalist for The Daily Telegraph, a London-based newspaper. It was during this time he began writing novels for the pulp magazines. He later became the editor of several British pulp magazines, at different times serving as the editor of The Novel Magazine, Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story, and Hutchinson’s Mystery-Story Magazine. During his writing career, Cannell wrote four non-fiction books, of which he received some attention for his publication of A History of Aeronautics (1921). The overwhelming majority of his publications, however, were fiction.

His life and the tracking of all of his many pseudonyms is best explained in the recent biography by Peter Berresford Ellis, which is titled The Shadow of Mr. Vivian: The Life of E. Charles Vivian (1882 – 1947) (PS Publishing 2014).  

As his favorite authors were Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Machen, he wrote “Lost World” stories, science fiction, supernatural, and horror fantasies. He later wrote detective stories, as well as some westerns.

  Some of his most popular publications, were his two books on that heroic outlaw, Robin Hood. He published Adventures of Robin Hood in 1906 and Robin Hood and His Merry Men in 1927. I recall when I was very young, I went on a Robin Hood kick and read everything I could get my hands on, from Howard Pyles’ Merry Adventures (1883) and Henry Gilbert’s Robin Hood (1912), to Roger Lancelyn Green’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1956). That Robin Hood reading binge also included “Harry G. Theaker’s” two Robin Hood books which, unbeknownst to me, had been written by Cannell.

Out of all of his fiction, the most beloved—besides the two Robin Hood novels—were his stories of private detective Gregory George Gordon Green who, for the excessively long name and all the Gs, preferred to be called “Gees.” Gees was a private detective, but one who was often involved in mysterious crimes of a supernatural nature, including shape-shifters, a Druid cult, a reincarnated princess of Egypt, and Atlantean witchcraft. In all, Cannell wrote eight Gees novels which included: Gees First Case (1936), Grey Shapes (1937), Nightmare Farm (1937), The Kleinart Case (1938), Maker of Shadows (1938), The Ninth Life (1939), The Glass Too Many (1940), and Her Ways are Death (1940). Argosy serialized both The Ninth Life (starting August 5, 1939) and Maker of Shadows (starting December 9, 1939), while A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine reprinted The Ninth Life in April of 1950 and Famous Fantastic Mysteries reprinted Her Ways are Death in June of 1952. All of these were published as Jack Mann, but it was not revealed until after his death that the beloved Jack Mann was really Charles Henry Cannell (who actually at the time everyone knew as E. Charles Vivian – confusing for sure).

While all of the Gees stories were popular, the one that has received the most attention was Maker of Shadows. Much of this has to do with the legendary Karl Edward Wagner’s list of the best supernatural novels, for which Maker of Shadows made that popular list. Many other people, having commented on the series, have selected Maker of Shadows as one of their favorites as well. Much of this may very well have to do with the fact it was a story derived from Robert E. Howard’s popular Bran Mak Morn story “Worms of the Earth,” first published in Weird Tales Magazine in November of 1932.

As Rick Lai explains in his article, “Cannell was fascinated by legends surrounding the Sidhe, the mythological fairy folk of Britain” (p. 37), often called “the little people.” This folklore was featured in some of Cannell’s favorite writings, those by Arthur Machen. Machen included the “little people” in such stories of his as “Novel of the Black Seal” (1895), “Out of the Earth” (1915), and “The Turanians” (1924). Cannell incorporated these concepts into many of his own novels, including the second Gee’s novel, Grey Shapes (1937).

Lai believes that Howard first came to the attention of Cannell in 1933. After the publication of his “Worms of the Earth” in the November 1932 issue of Weird Tales, Christine Campbell Thomson included the story in her collection Keep on the Light (Selwyn and Blount, 1933). The book was the ninth in a series of collected tales of horror and the supernatural titled Not at Night. Howard had previously appeared in the eighth volume of the series with “The Black Stone,” and that anthology was titled Grim Death (Selwyn and Blount, 1932); that was also REH’s first ever appearance in a hardcover book. So taken with Howard’s Bran Mak Morn story, Cannell incorporated “Worms of the Earth” into his Gees series, the fifth book, making it a sort of sequel. The version I read came from Ramble House and, despite the poor cover, the story appeared to me to be a good reprinting of the story.

In Maker of Shadows, private investigator Gees makes his way to The Rowans, an estate in Brachmornalachan, at the request of Margaret Aylener. Upon his arrival, he is escorted to take a room for what is apparently to be an overnight visit. Almost immediately, Mann (as I will refer to Cannell for the rest of the review) gives a literary nod to Howard’s “Worms of the Earth.”  When Gees is left alone in his room, he looks out the window and writes “the reek” is “as if it carried shadows” (p. 13). He then explains, “Yes, that was it. Shadows, passing with the mist that made the trees appear unreal.  Shadows, following each other from the west” (13). Compare that with “Worms” in which Howard writes of a “shadowed room” (Bran Mak Morn, Del Rey, p. 95), “into a shadowy street” (95), “the border of floating shadows” (95), “almost under the shadow” (96), and “into the shadows of the fortress” (96). Mann uses the heavy emphasis on shadows to emulate Howard’s setting of mood in “Worms of the Earth.”

Gees meets later with Margaret Aylener and they begin discussing local legends, including “the Azillian-Tardenois race, the ancestors of the dark little Picts” (18). Drawing upon the Picts truly shows that Mann is drawing upon Howard, yet still, shadows and Picts are not all. It is when they begin talking of Margaret’s neighbor Gamel MacMorn. As Lai explains, “since the name MacMorn has no significance in the history of the Picts, Cannell (Mann) could have only derived it from Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn” (p. 40).  Despite the spelling differences, which Lai attributes to Mann being careful not to violate copyright, there is a close association with Bran Mak Morn.  As it comes out, Gamel is the “spawn of the devil” (19), one who comes from the MacMorns who were “chiefs—priests and kings” (20), and that it was they who “came near to establishing a Pictish kingdom” (20). More specifically, Mann explains, “there was a woman” who “was half of earth and half of middle earth” and that when “he wanted aid in some one of his attempts at power,” she gave it “but only on condition that a son of theirs should succeed him in his place” (24).

In “Worms,” Bran Mak Morn pays a visit to “the witch-woman of Dagon-moor” (102), “Atla, the were-woman of the moors” who is only “half-human” (105). In striking a bargain for her help, Morn agrees to bed the witch, which is the point in the story in which the opening quote of this book review takes place. What Mann imagines in his story is the resulting child form that temporary union. What he envisions is Gamel MacMorn. What is not known is whether Margaret’s neighbor is that “Gamel, or an ancestor of Gamel’s” (24), but as the story develops it appears Gamel is near-on immortal based on the later description that “through all the lives he had lived, he had never grown old” (p. 158).

The son of that union is pure evil, practicing horrible rituals and making sacrifices, all while serving a horrific goddess called the Unnamed. Gamel MacMorn’s house was once surrounded by ancient stones (picture Stonehenge), but only three stones still stood. In the center, the house and altar are believed to be where Gamel acts as a “maker of shadows” (28). Gees visits the MacMorn house the next day, particularly exploring the stones. Seeing the stone itself, he writes, “High up, within two or three feet of the top, were faint lines which centuries of weathering had not quite erased.  Enough was left to convince Gees that they were not runic characters, which he could read with a fair amount of ease.  Nor did they correspond to lettering of any alphabet he knew or had ever seen” (38-39).  Compare that with Howard’s “The Black Stone,” which Mann possibly read in Grim Death, “Up to ten feet from the base these characters were almost completely blotted out, so that it was very difficult to trace their direction.  Higher up they were plainer . . . all were more or less defaced, but I was positive that they symbolized no language now remembered on the face of the earth” (The Horror Stories of REH, Del Rey, p. 164).  The descriptions of the black stones are very similar.

Gees meets MacMorn when he suddenly appears next to him as he looks over the stone. MacMorn is described as “a man about six inches shorter of his [Gees] own height, with black hair and – yes, fully black eyes, those abnormalities in which the iris is so dark as to be indistinguishable from the pupil, and with bloodless, almost chalky white skin” (p. 41). Compared to Bran’s description in “Worms of the Earth,” in which “his height was only medium but there was something about him which transcended mere physical bulk,” and that “even his black eyes were savagely cold, like black fires burning through fathoms of ice” (p. 86), these descriptions of Bran Mak Morn with Gamel MacMorn show strong similarities.

The similarities continue with Gees making a statement about the circle and altar that “this place to me reeks of—dark people.”  Of course, the Picts are the dark people in “Worms.” Also, Gamel MacMorn’s servant, whose description is that of a Pict, is named Partha. The fact that Howard starts the story with Bran Mak Morn posing as Partha Mac Othna, suggests, once again, that Mann is giving a nod to the story from which he based his own novel. Later in the novel, when Gees experiences the presence of the Picts, he writes:

“For, abruptly, he had become conscious that they were not along in the thick, clogging darkness. Cold, inhuman presences crowded on them on every side, incorporeal shadows that thickened the mist and moved it in with a life that was not life, but rather death-given sentience.” (p. 64)

Compare that to a very similar presence that Bran Mak Morn experiences when:

“Bran was aware of movement in the gloom. The darkness was filled with stealthy noises not like those mad by any human foot . . .  closer they came until they girdled him in a wide half-moon . . . And Bran knew they were the slanted eyes of the beings who had come upon him in such numbers that his brain reeled at the contemplation – and at the vastness of the cavern.” (p. 113)

Later in the book, it is mentioned that Gamel MacMorn came from a line of well-known MacMorns, for it was noted, “MacMorns had been kings” and that “one of them—this one, perhaps—had very nearly raised himself to rule over all Britain” (p. 172).

What has to clinch it is near the end of the story when the female Gail awakens and explains to Gees (I don’t want to give away too much, so I decided not to explain Gail with any detail):

“The people who live under the hills, and still Gamel MacMorn is kin to them, because in the very first days the dark people called on them for aid and they gave it, but only when a Morn allied with a woman from under the hills. So he is kin to that very first people, a race of shadows and dreams” (p. 189).

Clearly Gamel is the son of Bran Mak Morn, the name being changed to avoid any issues, most likely, with copyright.

The book overall, is not bad, but not necessarily a great read. While it starts off great, the book begins to bog down about a quarter of the way through and the end doesn’t necessarily provide any great pay off for sticking with the novel through to the end. I have not read any of the other Gees’ novels, so I cannot attest to how this book rates when compared with the others. What I can say is, from the standpoint of knowing this was a paean to Robert E. Howard’s “Worms of the Earth” and reading the similarities to that short story, I would say for Howard fans it proves a fascinating read. My suggestion is to reread “Worms of the Earth,” because it is hands down one of Howard’s best and a great story in its own right and then read Jack Mann’s Maker of Shadows so that the references to “Worms” are always present, more so than I gave away in this review. Enjoy!

Will Oliver, in the words of Robert E. Howard, is just “some line-faced scrivener,” who has been a fan of the greatest pulp author since discovering him in 1979. He is a member of REHupa, has published on Howard in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard, and is currently at work on a biography of his life and times.