The Witching Well (1995) is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
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WAGNER, KARL EDWARD (1945–1994). U.S. writer best known for horror fiction (refer to HDHL). His early works were sword and
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sorcery novels of an exceptionally dark stripe, including the series comprising Darkness Weaves with Many Shades (1970; rev. 1978 as Darkness Weaves), Death Angel’s Shadow (1973), Bloodstone (1975), Dark Crusade (1976), and various short stories in Night Winds (1978) and The Book of Kane (1985). The influence of Robert E. Howard is more directly displayed in novels extending Howard’s Conan and
Bran Mak Morn series. Killer (1985 with David A. Drake) is a historical fantasy set in the Roman Empire. Wagner’s short fiction is collected in Exorcisms and Ecstasies (1997).
WAGNER, RICHARD (1813–1883). German composer whose operas
setting epic poems to music recycled and reinvigorated many legendary motifs, exerting a strong influence over their subsequent redeployment.
The Fairies (1833) is minor, but The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), the Ring cycle—comprising The Rhinegold (1853), The Valkyrie (1856), Siegfried (1856–71), and The Twilight of the Gods (1869–74)— Tristan and Isolde (1859), and Parsifal (1882) made important contributions to such subgenres as neo-chivalric romance, Nordic fantasy, and Arthurian fantasy.
WAITE, A. E. (1857–1942). British occultist, a leading figure in the late 19th-century occult revival, especially in connection with the Order of the Golden Dawn and various Rosicrucian organizations, for which he wrote a good deal of ritual material. His scholarly fantasies—the most notable of which are The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887), The Occult Science (1891), Devil-Worship in France (1896), and The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal: Its Legends and Symbolism (1909)—
were strongly influenced by those of Éliphas Lévi, whose translator he was; in his turn, he exerted a powerful influence on the work of his friend Arthur Machen, whom he published—along with Edgar Jepson—in the unlikely venue of Horlick’s Malted Milk Magazine while he was its editor in 1904.
Waite published several volumes of poetry, beginning with Israfel: Letters, Visions and Poems (1886). His anthology Elfin Music: An Anthology of English Fairy Poetry (1888) has a useful introduction; his own attempt at an art fairy tale was Prince Sunbeam (1889). The Quest of the Golden Stairs: A Mystery of Kinghood in Faerie (1893) fuses similar materials with a portentous allegory. The calculated impenetrability of The House of the Hidden Light (1904 with Machen; reprinted 2003) was emphasized by restricting its first edition to three copies.
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Waite’s longtime associate Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) wrote nu-
merous books on mysticism and religion as well as two novels featuring ritual magic: The Lost Word (1907) and The Column of Dust (1909).
Charles Williams was also temporarily numbered among his disciples.
WALL, MERVYN (1908–1997). Irish writer. The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) is a polished humorous fantasy with elements of literary satanism; its sequel, The Return of Fursey (1948), is an ironic Faustian fantasy; The Complete Fursey (1985) is an omnibus. The Garden of Echoes: A Fable for Children and Grown-Ups (1982; book 1988) is a children’s Christmas fantasy. His short fiction is sampled in A Flutter of Wings (1974).
WALTON, EVANGELINE (1907–1996). U.S. writer. Her elaborate
Celtic fantasy The Virgin and the Swine (1936) was reprinted by Lin Carter as The Island of the Mighty (1970), inspiring her to recycle the other branches of the Mabinogion in The Children of Llyr (1971), The Song of Rhiannon (1972), and The Prince of Annwn (1974). Two stories written even earlier—“Above Ker-Is” and “The Mistress of Kaer-Mor”—were also reprinted in showcase anthologies edited by Kenneth Zahorski and Robert Boyer in 1978–80, and she resumed work on a long-abandoned novel about the classical hero Theseus, The Sword is Forged (1983). Witch House (1945) is an occult detective story. The historical novel The Cross and the Sword (1956, aka Son of Darkness) has marginal fantasy elements.
WALTON, JO (1964– ). Welsh writer resident in Canada. The Tir Tana-giri trilogy, comprising The King’s Peace (2000), The King’s Name (2001), and The Prize in the Game (2002), employs a quasi-Celtic setting. In Tooth and Claw (2003), a Victorian mindset borrowed from Anthony Trollope is built into the biological imperatives of dragon existence. Her play Tam Lin by William Shakespeare is displayed on her website at bluejo.demon.co.uk.
THE WANDERING JEW. A legendary figure, usually called Ahasuerus, whose story was first written down in the 13th century; he was reputedly a shoemaker who rebuked Jesus for stumbling outside his shop on the way to Golgotha and was cursed to wander the world until Christ’s return. Known in English via a ballad printed in Thomas Percy’s Reliques, the legend was frequently recycled in various literary forms throughout Europe, becoming a key motif of cautionary accounts of immortality.
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Ahasuerus’s literary history, comprehensively detailed in George K.
Anderson’s The Legend of the Wandering Jew (1965), is summarized, exemplified, and further extended in Tales of the Wandering Jew (1991), ed. Brian Stableford. Literary fantasies employing him as a symbol include William Godwin’s St. Leon (1799), Edgar Quinet’s epic drama Ahasvérus (1833), Hans Christian Andersen’s epic poem Ashasverus (1844), Eugène Sue’s vast novel The Wandering Jew (1844–45), Paul Féval’s The Wandering Jew’s Daughter, E. Temple Thurston’s play The Wandering Jew (1920), George S. Viereck and Paul Eldridge’s My First Two Thousand Years, Par Lagerkvist’s The Death of Ahasuerus (1960; tr. 1962), and Stefan Heym’s The Wandering Jew (1981). He is rarely encountered in genre fantasy; Susan Shwartz’s Grail of Hearts is a notable exception.
WANGERIN, WALTER, JR. (1944– ). U.S. writer of religious texts, mostly for children, including the allegorical animal fantasy The Book of the Dun Cow (1978) and its sequel The Book of Sorrows (1985). Elizabeth and the Water Troll (1991) and Branta and the Golden Stone (1993) are more orthodox moralistic fantasies; the latter is reprinted with Probity Jones and the Fear-Not Angel (1996) and others in The Fear-Not Angel and Other Stories (1998). The Crying for a Vision (1995) is a contemporary fantasy with a Native American protagonist.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel (1996) is the quintessential biblical fantasy; Paul: A Novel (2000) is its Christian fantasy sequel.
WARNER, MARINA (1946– ). British writer and mythographer specializing in analyses of the manner in which ancient myths and their literary descendants continue to influence perceptions and attitudes, especially with regard to gender issues. They include Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985); the essay collection Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time (1994); the couplet From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1995) and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock (1998); Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds (2002); and Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture (2003). Her anthology Wonder Tales: Six Stories of Enchantment (1994) features new versions of 17th- and 18th-century French fairy tales. Some of her own recycled fairy tales and legends are included in The Mermaids in the Basement (1993). Her earlier novels avoided supernatural materials, but Indigo (1992) and The Leto Bundle (2001) are time-spanning fantasies drawing on myth and folklore.
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WARNER, SYLVIA TOWNSEND (1893–1978). British writer. Lolly Willowes; or, The Loving Huntsman (1926) is a wryly sentimental/
Faustian fantasy. The Cat’s Cradle-Book (1940) embeds transfigured fairy tales in an animal fantasy frame. The Kingdoms of Elfin (1977) is a remarkably ornate and effective collection of moralistic fantasies set in a uniquely elaborate and sophisticated version of Faerie. A few other fantasies are included in Selected Stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1988).
WARRINGTON, FREDA (1956– ). British writer. The series comprising A Blackbird in Silver (1986), A Blackbird in
Darkness (1986), A Blackbird in Amber (1987), and A Blackbird in Twilight (1986) accomplished a seamless fusion of genre romance and action-packed immersive fantasy some time before such hybrids became fashionable in the United States; Darker than the Storm (1991) is set partly in the same milieu, which it relocates in an alternative world. The Rainbow Gate (1989) is a contemporary fantasy.
The trilogy comprising A Taste of Blood Wine (1992), A Dance in Blood Velvet (1994), and The Dark Blood of Poppies (1995) is a flamboyant exercise in revisionist vampire fiction, one that makes much of the erotic potential of the motif. Sorrow’s Light (1993) is a dark fantasy, as is the couplet comprising Dark Cathedral (1996) and Pagan Moon (1997), which features a continuing conflict between pagan witchcraft and the Christian church. Dracula: The Undead (1997) is a centenary sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic. The Jewelfire trilogy, comprising The Amber Citadel (1999), The Sapphire Throne (2000), and The Obsidian Tower (2001), has elements of theriomorphic fantasy. The Court of the Midnight King (2003) is an alternative history fantasy in which the War of the Roses mirrors the battle between a Mother Goddess and a patriarchal God.
WATT-EVANS, LAWRENCE (1954– ). U.S. writer in various genres.
The series comprising The Lure of the Basilisk (1980), The Seven Altars of Dûsara (1981), The Sword of Bheleu (1982), and The Book of Silence (1984) is lighthearted heroic fantasy, as is the Eshkar series, comprising The Misenchanted Sword (1985), With a Single Spell (1987), The Unwilling Warlord (1989), Blood of a Dragon (1991), Taking Flight (1993), The Spell of the Black Dagger (1993), Night of Madness (2000), and Ithanalin’s Restoration (2002). The couplet comprising The Cyborg and the Sorcerers (1982) and The Wizard and the War Machines (1987)
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is chimerical/science fantasy. The Rebirth of Wonder (1992) features a magical theater troupe. Split Heirs (1993 with Esther Friesner) is a humorous fantasy. The trilogy comprising Out of this World (1994), In the Empire of Shadow (1995), and The Reign of the Brown Magician hybridizes portal fantasy with sf. The protagonist of Touched by the Gods (1997) is reluctant to fulfill his heroic destiny. The Obsidian Chronicles series, comprising Dragon Weather (1999), The Dragon Society (2001), and Dragon Venom (2003), is a revenge fantasy employing dragons as adversaries.
WEBB, CATHERINE (1987– ). British writer. At the age of 14 she wrote Mirror Dreams (2002), in which the Lords of Nightkeep plot to ensnare dreaming souls left temporarily defenseless; Mirror Wakes (2003) is a sequel. In Waywalkers (2003), the Son of Time (the Devil) is living in-cognito in London, working at a university, when the gods go to war over ownership of the Earth; the sequel, Timekeepers (2004), moves in the direction of apocalyptic fantasy, but the author had to take a break thereafter to complete her “A levels” (examinations for the Advanced Certficate of Higher Education).
WEIRD TALES. U.S. pulp magazine founded in 1923; it folded a year later but was resuscitated under the editorship of Farnsworth Wright and the pervasive influence of H. P. Lovecraft, whose circle adopted the magazine as the principal vehicle for its literary experiments. Although he foregrounded horror fiction, Wright was exceptionally generous in his editorial policy, accommodating sf until the specialist sf magazines had demonstrated their durability, as well as Dunsanian fantasies and lost-race stories. Its most vital contribution to the history of fantasy was the hospitality it extended to the sword and sorcery fiction originated in 1929–37 by Robert E. Howard—and quickly taken up by C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, and Clifford Ball—and its provision of a market for Clark Ashton Smith’s decadent, prehistoric, and far-futuristic fantasies. Its horizons became much narrower when Wright was sacked in 1939; his successor, Dorothy McIlwraith, was instructed to banish sword-and-sorcery and decadent fantasy from its pages.
Weird Tales folded again in 1954 but was resurrected several times over in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by editors keen to recover the boldly eclectic spirit of the early 1930s; the publishers of its sixth incarnation, George Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer, resuscitated it yet
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again in 1998. The Weird Tales Story (1977), ed. Robert Weinberg, proved to be an interim report.
WEIS, MARGARET (1948– ). U.S. writer who became a best seller when she was recruited by the retailers of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons to work with game designer Tracy Hickman (1955– ) on a groundbreaking series of tie-ins, the DragonLance Chronicles. The series was launched with the trilogy comprising Dragons of Autumn Twilight (1984), Dragons of Winter Night (1985), and Dragons of Spring Dawning (1985); it was subsequently extended by the anthologies DragonLance: The Second Generation (1994) and DragonLance: The Dragons of Krynn (1994) and also by the novels Dragons of Summer Flame (1995) and The Dragons at War (1996). The spin-off trilogy of DragonLance Legends, comprising Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, and Test of the Twins (all 1986), was similarly supplemented by anthologies and other associational items released between 1987 and 1994, alongside tie-in works by many other authors.
Weis and Hickman then began to produce non-tie-in novels of a sim-
ilar stripe, including the trilogy comprising Forging the Darksword, Doom of the Darksword, and Triumph of the Darksword (all 1988), which was further augmented by Legacy of the Darksword (1997), and the Arabian fantasy trilogy comprising The Will of the Wanderer, The Paladin of the Night, and The Prophet of Akhran (all 1989). The more extensive Death Gate Cycle comprises Dragon Wing (1990), Elven Star (1990), Fire Sea (1991), Serpent Mage (1992), The Hand of Chaos (1993), Into the Labyrinth (1994), and The Seventh Gate (1994).
Much of Weis’s solo work is sf, but Mistress of Dragons (2003) and The Dragon’s Son (2004) began the Dragonvarld series, featuring amazon priestesses, continued in The Dragon’s Son (2004). Anthologies she edited include Fantastic Alice (1995), featuring further adventures of Lewis Carroll’s heroine, A Magic-Lover’s Treasury of the Fantastic (1997, with Martin H. Greenberg), and Treasures of Fantasy (1997, with Hickman and Greenberg).
WELCH, JANE (1964– ). British writer. The Runespell trilogy, comprising The Runes of War (1995), The Lost Runes (1996), and The Runes of Sorcery (1997), served as a prelude to the more adventurous Book of Önd trilogy, comprising The Lament of Athlone (1998), The Bard of Castaguard (1999), and The Lord of Necrönd (2000), in which a talisman called the Druid’s Egg contains the souls of creatures banished to
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an Otherworld. In the Book of Man trilogy, comprising Dawn of a Dark Age (2001), The Broken Chalice (2002), and The Allegiance of Man (2003), dragons conspire with other creatures to oust humankind from its dominant status.
WELLMAN, MANLY WADE (1903–1986). Angolan-born U.S. writer in various genres, including sf (refer to HDSFL) and horror fiction. He was a regular contributor to Weird Tales, sometimes using the byline “Gans T. Field,” under which name he wrote a series featuring occult investigator Judge Pursuivant, reprinted along with the similar John Thunstone series in Lonely Vigils (1981). The novels What Dreams May Come (1983) and The School of Darkness (1985) also feature Thunstone. Other pulp fiction, including some fantasy, is sampled in Worse Things Waiting (1973), which includes several items developing Wellman’s enthusiasm for synthesizing an American folklore; a collection stressing this aspect of his work is The Valley So Low: Southern Mountain Tales (1987).
“Frogfather” (1945) introduced the character who was to be the mainstay of Wellman’s subsequent career: “Silver John,” a wandering minstrel who encounters all manner of arcane phenomena in the hills of North Carolina. A sampler issued as Who Fears the Devil? (1963) was further expanded as John the Balladeer (1988); the novels in the series— The Old Gods Waken (1979), After Dark (1980), The Lost and the Lurking (1981), The Hanging Stones (1982), and The Voice of the Mountain (1985)—elaborated a syncretic mythology based in an imaginary prehistory of the United States.
WELLS, H. G. (1886–1946). British writer, the pioneer of the British tradition of scientific romance that ran parallel to Ame
rican sf until 1950
and the leading 20th-century writer of utopian fiction (refer to HDSFL).
Wells used fantasy materials in the cause of moralistic fabulation, his work in the genre becoming progressively darker as his utopian ambitions were frustrated. His liveliest fantasies are short contes
philosophiques, including the classic wish-fulfillment fantasy “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” (1898), the wry humorous fantasies
“The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost” (1902) and “The Truth about Pyecraft” (1903), and the allegories “The Magic Shop” (1903) and “The Door in the Wall” (1906).
The Wonderful Visit (1895), a satirical allegory featuring an angel, has the same ebullient spirit, but the mermaid story The Sea Lady (1902) is considerably darker in tone. The Undying Fire (1919) recycles and
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updates the biblical story of Job. Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928) is a delusional satire. All Aboard for Ararat (1940) is a bitter biblical fantasy exemplifying the terminus of Wells’s disenchantment.
WELLS, MARTHA (1964– ). U.S. writer. The chimerical Ile-rien trilogy, comprising The Element of Fire (1993), City of Bones (1995), and The Death of the Necromancer (1998), is unusually various in the settings used as an alternative historical backcloth for a conflict between
“scientific magic” and fairy magic. The Fall of Ile-Rien series, launched by The Wizard Hunters (2003) and The Ships of Air (2004), takes the conflict to another level, featuring an assault from another dimension. City of Bones (1995) is an Arabian fantasy. Wheel of the Infinite (2000) employs a quasi-Oriental backcloth in a tale of an exile’s return to deal with a crisis of magical renewal.
WEREWOLF. A human who turns into a wolf, usually involuntarily, and usually during the nights of the full moon. Werewolf stories form the core of theriomorphic fantasy. Werewolves are often used as monsters in horror stories but are also widely employed as symbols of the regrettable tendency of humans occasionally to be overwhelmed by the force of their darker emotions, in which light they are portrayed as victims rather than callous predators. Their long literary history extends back to Gaius Petronius’s Satyricon (A.D. c65) via Marie de France’s Bisclavret, but they were repopularized by Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-wolves (1865).
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 65
