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Steppling, John. John Steppling was created by Frank Owen (Shen Fu) and appeared in “The Open Window” (Weird Tales, Dec. 1923-Jan. 1924) and “The Wind That Tramps the World” (Weird Tales, Apr. 1925).

John Steppling is an American adventurer who “during an exploring expedition in northern India discovers the little “City of the Big Winds,” which is on the top of “the bleak, storm-blown peaks of the Himalayas, as if flung there by some monstrous, frenzied hand, or snapped from the tip of a whip in the hand of a giant.” The inhabitants of the City of the Big Winds either ignore Steppling or treat him with hostility, but Steppling meets Hi Ling, who listens to the voices of the world on the wind. He is listening in particular for The Wind That Tramps the World, who took away Hi Ling’s precious Dawn-Girl, an incomparable flower. After forty years of waiting the Wind comes again to Hi Ling, and Hi Ling steals Dawn-Girl back and dies.

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