Line #5 Creator/ManlyWadeWellman


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/manlywwellman2.jpg]]
2	->''"The road a writer follows is paved with the words he writes."''
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4	Manly Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903 – April 5, 1986) was a prolific American writer who worked in practically every genre, but best known for his DarkFantasy stories about a traveling musician named John who frequently finds himself battling supernatural menaces in the deep backwoods of Appalachia. Wellman had already written other OccultDetective stories, demonstrating a talent for weirdness and a quirky sense of humour, but the "Literature/SilverJohn" stories (so-called for disambiguation, although their protagonist is always just plain John) are additionally enlivened by Wellman's enduring interest in the folklore and folk music of backwoods America.
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6	Although he grew up in America, Wellman was born in the village of Kamundongo, then part of Portuguese West Africa and now in the Republic of Angola. Wellman was steeped in the local African culture and folklore, which influenced a good deal of his writing. After the family returned to the United States, he developed a similar fascination with American back country folklore, and themes of CultureClash, DeliberateValuesDissonance, [[NatureIsNotNice the harshness of nature in remote communities]], and the power of folk belief are major motifs in his work.
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8	Wellman's short stories were adapted as episodes of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' ("The Valley Was Still"; the adaptation is retitled "Still Valley"), ''Series/NightGallery'' ("The Devil Is Not Mocked") and ''Series/{{Monsters}}'' ("Rouse Him Not"). Far less successfully, a movie was made based on some of the John stories, ''The Legend of Hillbilly John''.
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10	On a completely different note, his other works include ''Franchise/SherlockHolmes's [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds War of the Worlds]]''. He even wrote a Literature/CaptainFuture novel.
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12	!!Works by Manly Wade Wellman with their own trope page include:
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14	* "Literature/SilverJohn" series
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16	!!His other works provide examples of:
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18	* ActionGirl: The protagonist of ''Venus Enslaved'' teams up with a band of gun-slinging women whose ancestors secretly traveled to that planet centuries previously.
19	* AsTheGoodBookSays: In his lesser-known [[BadassPreacher Parson Jaeger]] stories, the titular character quotes the Bible quite often, though not always accurately, something lampshaded by other characters.
20	* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Or rather, Byron was a [[spoiler:a man cursed in childhood to serve dark powers for 150 years]].
21	* BiggerOnTheInside: In "The Golden Goblins", the spirit bundle contains at least fifteen figurines, and yet it's only large enough for one.
22	* CatFight: Some of the Action Girls listed above briefly get into one over the protagonist; he notes that it's lot more serious and ''quiet'' than ones he'd witnessed back on Earth.
23	* DarknessEqualsDeath: In "The Golgotha Dancers," the titular figures can come out of the painting if it's left in darkness.
24	* DevolutionDevice: One of these is hidden inside ''The Devil's Asteroid''. The short story "Back to the Beast" is about a scientist who [[ProfessorGuineaPig invents one and tests it on himself]], with disastrous results.
25	* ExternalRetcon: ''Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds'' reveals that the aliens in ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' weren't actually from Mars, and also uncovers a few details about Franchise/SherlockHolmes's private life that Watson never mentioned.
26	* EvilVersusEvil: The darkly comedic short story "The Devil Is Not Mocked" has a group of Nazi soldiers on the eastern front deciding to turn a local castle into their base of operations. Unfortunately for them, the castle is already occupied by [[spoiler: {{Dracula}}]].
27	* FrazettaMan: The Neanderthals, or "Gnorrls", of the ''Hok the Mighty'' stories. In the above-mentioned "Back to the Beast", the inventor's DevolutionDevice turns him into one of these, and then finally into a simple ape (though not an ape any of the other scientists can identify).
28	* {{Ghostapo}}: "The Devil Is Not Mocked" has an early reference to UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler holding "some sort of garbled druidic ritual". In the main story, we see that the supernatural is not as much under Nazi command as Himmler would like to think, when a Wehrmacht unit on the Eastern Front pick [[HauntedCastle the wrong castle]] to use as their field base.
29	* HairRaisingHare: The titular rabbits of the Judge Pursuivant story "The Dreadful Rabbits" which are unkillable phantom bunnies that have a habit of ripping apart anyone who tries to hunt them or [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking doesn't say hello to them]] and stuffing the remains into a hole in Hungry Hill. Despite the {{narm}}ish premise, it still manages to be strangely disturbing.
30	* HandsomeHeroicCaveman: Hok the Mighty, who debuted in "Battle in the Dawn" and appeared in a number of follow-up stories, is a square-jawed, good-looking young Cro-Magnon living in a reasonably well-researched Stone Age setting - although his stories drift more an more into the realm of SwordAndSorcery as they progress. However, the Hok stories feature tons of DeliberateValuesDissonance, making him an antihero at best.
31	* HauntedTechnology: ''The Theater Upstairs'' is an early form of the "haunted nostalgic pop cultural artifact" that would eventually become [[AnalogHorror one of the dominant tropes]] of {{creepypasta}}. It's a story about [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday a mysterious movie theater]] playing a film version of ''[[Creator/GuyDeMaupassant The Horla]]'' which, by rights, shouldn't exist - and neither should the theater.
32	* LogicalWeakness: "The Golgotha Dancers" features a [[SpookyPainting living painting]], which causes the narrator a fair amount of trouble--until he reasons that if it's living, it ''can'' be killed.
33	* MeaningfulName: The Belstones in "Ever the Faith Endures." The stone in question still stands outside of their ancestral home in England--and [[spoiler:it's "Bel" in the sense of [[Literature/BookOfDaniel "Bel and the Dragon."]]]]
34	* OccultDetective: Judge Pursuivant, John Thunstone, Hal Stryker, Lee Cobbett, and to some extent, [[BadassPreacher Parson "Bible" Jaeger]].
35	* SaltSolution: John Thunstone [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punches a demon god in the face with a fistfull of salt]], foiling its manifestation in our dimension (and possibly killing it).
36	* SecretLegacy: A variation, in "Ever the Faith Endures." The American protagonist travels to England to research his family history, and ends up learning far more of it than he was prepared for. At the end, though, [[spoiler:his distant cousin remains the guardian of the Bel Stone, and the hungry god that lives in it]].
37	* SwordCane: Judge Pursuivant has a [[SilverHasMysticPowers silver]] version of one of these, with the words "Sic pereant omnes inimici tui" (thus perish all your enemies) engraved on it. When he becomes too old to wield it, the Judge passes it on to his colleague John Thunstone.
38	* TripodTerror: In ''Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds''
39	* WalkingTheEarth: Lee Cobbett and Hal Stryker have elements of this.
40	* YouWillBeBeethoven: In ''Twice In Time'', a man named Leonard travels back in time to meet Creator/LeonardoDaVinci -- you can see where this is going.

Context Creator / ManlyWadeWellman