TWICE IN TIME
by MANLY WADE WELLMAN
To Richard McKenna
"Let every man be master of his time…"
"… whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past."
WHEN THE FUTURE MEETS THE PAST
During a writing career that spanned six decades, Manly Wade Wellman published over eighty books and more than three hundred short stories. He was an author as versatile as prolific, whose output included science fiction and Civil War biographies, fantasy and novels for young adults, mysteries and regional histories, mainstream novels and nonfiction studies. A Civil War history, Rebel Boast, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Wellman didn't win, but he did win a number of other awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Award.
Most readers will best remember Wellman as a writer of haunting fantasies rich with Southern folklore—particularly those stories concerning John, a wandering minstrel whose guitar was strung with silver strings, and who battled strange evils in the mountains of North Carolina. These stories were collected in John the Balladeer (Baen Books: 1988). Before concentrating on regional fantasy stories, Wellman was one of the most popular writers for the science fiction pulps. He wrote for most of these magazines, beginning with "When Planets Clashed" in the Spring 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, until he left the field in the late 1940s, as science fiction became more sophisticated and the pulps began to die out.
Born May 21, 1903, in the village of Kamundongo in Portuguese West Africa, Manly Wade Wellman moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Kansas. Working in Wichita as a newspaper reporter, he quit his job just as the Depression was getting started. Struggling as a freelance writer, in 1934 Wellman moved to New York City in order to be closer to the pulp markets. By mutual good luck, top science fiction agent Julius Schwartz took Wellman on as a client, and from the late 1930s until the close of World War II Wellman was a star in this genre. Wellman's flair for headlong action and rousing melodrama was pure space opera and well suited to the pulp-formula science fiction of the day, whose readers were mostly adolescents whose understanding of science was frequently even less than that of those writing it. While most of Wellman's science fiction has aged not at all well, he did leave a certain core of superior work which can hold its own with the best science fiction of the pulp era.
Unquestionably Wellman's finest work of science fiction is Twice in Time. Wellman was an omnivorous reader and a dilettante scholar with many areas of interest. One of his chief studies was Renaissance history and culture, and this formed the basis for Twice in Time and for "The Timeless Tomorrow"—presented here together for the first time.
(Those of you who insist on surprise endings, please stop reading this introduction now and proceed directly to Twice in Time.
Actually it isn't much of a surprise, and I'm reasonably certain most readers will have stumbled onto it after a chapter or two. Stilclass="underline" Fair warning.)
Picking up where I left off, then. As I said, Wellman was a keen history buff, and one of his special interests was the Renaissance. Once Wellman became interested in some particular fixation, he researched it tirelessly, ruminated upon it, and eventually would incorporate it into his writing. Leonardo da Vinci was one such obsession.
Among the many science fiction pulps for which Wellman wrote was Astounding Stories (later Astounding Science Fiction), where his cover novelette, "Outlaws on Callisto," in the April 1936 issue secured his career as a professional writer. When editor F. Orlin Tremaine was replaced in an office coup d'etat by John W. Campbell, Wellman continued to sell to Astounding, although he and Campbell never really got along—to put it mildly. The final break came over Twice in Time. The novel was a labor of love, carefully researched and painstakingly written—as opposed to Wellman's usual slap-dash space opera—and reflected Wellman's fascination with Leonardo da Vinci. Campbell turned down the novel on the grounds that Leonardo's character was all wrong. Campbell, an engineer, could view Leonardo only as a fellow engineer, rejecting any artistic or romantic sides to his personality. Campbell suggested that Wellman revise the novel according to Campbell's theories on Leonardo, Wellman suggested that Campbell seek much warmer climes, and that was that for Wellman at Astounding.
Fortunately the novel was snapped up by Startling Stories, where it led off the May 1940 issue and was showcased with striking Virgil Finlay illustrations. It drew considerable acclaim at the moment and was reprinted in Wonder Stories Annual for 1951. In 1957 a new edition of Twice in Time was published in hardcover by Avalon Books, and this version appeared in paperback the following year from Galaxy Novels. Unfortunately this later edition was revised and massively abridged by Wellman, all to the considerable detriment to the novel. This abridgment was necessary to bring it down to Avalon's wordage requirements, and Wellman later disgruntledly protested that there had been no abridgment at all. Considering a comparison of the two texts, this was rather like the captain of the Titanic insisting that the iceberg was never there.
Now, for the first time, the complete version of Twice in Time appears in book form. This text is that of its original appearance in Startling Stories for May 1940.
Included in this edition is a previously unpublished poem by Leah Bodine Drake (whose volume of poetry, A Hornbook for Witches, is the rarest Arkham House book). Wellman sent Drake a copy of the Avalon Twice in Time in 1957, and Drake responded with a poem, "Leonardo Before His Canvas," which she dedicated to Wellman. The typewritten poem was recently discovered tucked into Wellman's personal copy of Twice in Time.
Also reprinted here for the first time is a companion Renaissance novelette, "The Timeless Tomorrow," originally published in the December 1947 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. This time Wellman's story centers upon the enigmatic French astrologer and prophet, Nostradamus. Again Wellman's knowledge of the period and concern for historical detail make this story stand out. "The Timeless Tomorrow" was also one of the last stories he wrote for the science fiction pulps. Wellman could always spin a good adventure yarn, and when he was able to write about a subject he knew something about, he was hard to beat.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) spent his last years in the French court of Francis I. Nostradamus (1503-1566) would have been about 16 years old when Leonardo died. One wonders whether they might ever have met and talked. Perhaps therein might lie the source of Nostradamus' prophecies? Only Manly Wade Wellman, who died at his home in Chapel Hill on April 5, 1986, could have told us the story.
—Karl Edward Wagner Chapel Hill, North Carolina
LEONARDO BEFORE HIS CANVAS