One of the more unusual items in my Sword & Planet collection is Sojarr of Titan, written by Manly Wade Wellman (1903 – 1986) and published by Crestwood Publishing Company. This is a first edition, I believe, printed in 1949. The story originally appeared in the March 1941 issue of Startling Stories, published by Better Publishing, Inc.

The inside cover of the paperback edition bears a gold tag reading “Ackerman Agency,” with an address. This would be Forest J. Ackerman, of course, though whether Forry actually handled this copy I couldn’t know. There’s also the handwritten list of France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, with a red X across them. Don’t know what that means.

Who Fears the Devil?, the first John the Balladeer collection by
Manly Wade Wellman (Dell, February 1980). Cover by Rowena Morrill

Since I consider ERB, OAK, and REH to be the first generation of S&P authors, I’ll put Wellman as a very early member of the second generation. Wellman wrote a lot of pulp fiction but I’ve known him mainly for his “John the Balladeer” stories, which are essentially folk tales set in the Appalachian Mountains and featuring the folklore of the region. They are likely to be his most enduring stories.

Sojarr, though, is Interplanetary adventure. Sojarr’s real name is Stuart Rapidan. When he was only three years old, his father’s ship crashed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The boy survived and lived a kind of Tarzan-like existence until he met the nomadic natives. After that, the tale becomes very S&P, complete with sword fights and a “princess” substitute of a local woman.

Startling Stories, March 1941, with the first appearance of Sojarr of Titan. Cover by E. K. Bergey

Stuart names himself “Sojarr,” which is a corruption of “soldier.” His father had told him to be a brave little soldier before dying.

The dialogue in Sojarr is a little ham fisted, and I didn’t think the story was as well written as some of Wellman’s later works, such as the John the Balladeer stories, but the book was imaginative and fun and I enjoyed it. No cover artist is indicated inside but I found a reference that suggested it was Herman Vestal.

Planet Stories #30: Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by
Manly Wade Wellman (Paizo Publishing, March 2011). Cover by Kieran Yanner

A very short, two pages, autobiography of Manly Wade Wellman is included in his collection called Battle in the Dawn, published by Planet Stories in 2011.

It gives very little detail but we learn that he was born and spent some of his earliest years in Angola in Africa, which at the time was a Portuguese colony. He seems to have loved it and grew up speaking the local language, Umbundu, better than English. (His father was a medical officer stationed there.)

Planet Stories #24: Who Fears the Devil? (Paizo Publishing, March 2010). Cover by Kieran Yanner

While he was still in childhood, Wellman’s family immigrated to the United States. They moved around quite a bit and Manly did the same as an adult until he eventually settled in North Carolina, where he lived for many years before his death in Chapel Hill. The executor of his estate was the excellent author Karl Edward Wagner, with whom Wellman was good friends.

By his own estimate, Wellman wrote some 500 stories and novels, less than a fifth of which were SF/Fantasy. By the late 1920s, he was working as a reporter and movie reviewer and was already selling some stories. By the late 1930s he’d began working in comics as well.

Who Fears the Devil? (Ballantine Books first edition, November 1964). Cover uncredited

The first thing I read by him was Who Fears the Devil, published by Ballantine 1964, which I probably bought because it said “Science Fiction” on the cover. It’s not SF but what I’d call a weird tales mashup of folklore and fiction. His character here, John the Balladeer, travels the Appalachian Mountains using his music to lay to rest various haunts and supernatural entities.

These are entertaining stories with a lot of setting and atmosphere and not a lot of action. They are invented folklore based upon the real legends of Appalachia. Wellman learned a lot of this from his travels and friendship with Vance Randolph, an expert on mountain myths. I categorize these as literary tales rather than pulp or SF/Fantasy, and it seems likely that they’ll be his longest remembered works.

My copy, shown above, doesn’t list the artist and it wasn’t shown on ISFDB. Much later, in 2010, Planet Stories brought out a “complete” collection of John the Balladeer stories under the same name, with a cool cover by Kieran Yanner. I haven’t read that but I’m sure it’s easier to find than the Ballantine 1964. The next thing I read from Wellman was Sojarr of Titan.

Most recently, I picked up Battle in the Dawn, which claims to be the complete “Hok the Mighty” stories. I’ll tell you more about it in my next post on Wellman.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was The Sword and Planet of Del DowDell.