My my, but is this a tasteful, refined anthology of vampire stories! It simply drips pedigree like so much blood from a fanged maw.
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (Penguin, Oct 1988), for the most part, stars classy creatures of the night, so refined
and polite you could practically invite them to the publisher's cocktail
party (after all this
is Penguin Books we're talking about; it simply
wouldn't do to have the hosts drained before the
petits fours are served - leave those kinds of
déclassé shenanigans for the folks at Zebra). I really appreciated that late editor/author
Alan Ryan (
Cast a Cold Eye,
Dead White) chose such stories, which convey weirdness, unholy hunger, and chills with understatement
and insinuation. Although he notes in his short introduction that the writers included "explore the vampire myth in new ways... the variety of twentieth-century vampires is dazzling," there is very little re- or de-mythologizing of the monster here: reading these stories in the 21st century, I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the traditional tropes are present and accounted for - in fact, this is where they were
created. Sometimes you just want old-school.
What's most satisfying is the sheer quality of the writing itself. Some writers go for subtle intimation; others for pulpy thrills; still others prefer thoughtful, genteel bloodletting. Ryan did a stupendous job of gathering all kinds of vampire fiction, dating back nearly 200 years, into one volume, and it's all very good to great. I've dipped in and out of this book since I was in high school, but only these past couple weeks did I really make an effort to read (almost) all of it; I'm happy to report this antho is a must-have, an absolute must-have, for horror and/or vampire fiction fans - as well as plenty other folks who like great short fiction. Plus you can't deny the pure black-winged awesomeness that is the
Edward Gorey (below) cover.
Arranged chronologically, we begin with the usual suspects undead: Varney the Vampyre, Carmilla, Dracula. No surprises there. It's easy to see why "Dracula's Guest" was a deleted chapter from
Stoker's original
Dracula (1897); not bad in and of itself, it adds little to Harker's journey to Dracula. I didn't reread
J. Sheridan Le Fanu's pre-Drac "Carmilla" (1872) but lordy how I love its first movie adaptation, Hammer's
The Vampire Lovers (1970)! That counts, right? Sure it do.
M.R. James presents a tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale - I think - for "An Episode of Cathedral History." Other supernatural classicists like
Algernon Blackwood,
E.F. Benson, and
F. Marion Crawford come around too, in good form all. Solid foundations for the horrors to come...
On, then, to the classic pulp writers, who knew a thing or two about vampires - and what they didn't know, of course, they'd make up. "The Drifting Snow" is one of the few non-HPL tales I've read from
August Derleth; it's marvelous, a tale of delicate understated terror. Again, horror mingles well with a frozen landscape. What lurks out in that winter wonderland you see out the window of your cozy country home? Nobody you'd wanna meet after dark, that's for sure.
Stephen King had to have been thinking of Derleth's story when he revisited 'Salem's Lot in "One for the Road."
Gerard de l'Automne was meditating the rimes of a new ballade in honor of Fleurette, as he followed the leaf-arrased pathway toward Vyones through the woodland, begins "A Rendezvous in Averoigne." Brimming with purply, pulpy poetic prose as only
Clark Ashton Smith (above) can write, the story's exoticism and decadence herald late 20th century modern vampires
à la Rice (who is absent from this antho as she never wrote a short story).
The foods were rich and of strange savor; and the wines were fabulously old, and seemed to retain in their topaz or violet depths the unextinguished fire of buried centuries. But Gerard and Fleurette could barely touch them; and they saw that the Sieur du Malinbois and his lady did not eat or drink at all... the stifling air was laden with unformulable menace, was constrained by the spell of a black and lethal necromancy.
Moore wrote many SF stories featuring her proto Han Solo; here, with Shambleau herself
"Shambleau," the first and most famous story by early female speculative fiction writer
Catherine L. Moore,
is an overheated tale of horror-fantasy-science fiction straight from Freudian depths. It's pretty awesome: a space pirate named Northwest Smith
rescues a feral young woman from a Martian mob and discovers those ancient Earth myths just might be based in reality after all. It's rife with
perverse sexual imagery, all writhing wetness and delicious revulsion:
In nightmares until he died he remembered that moment... a nauseous, smothering odor as the wetness shut around him - thick, pulsing worms clasping every inch of his body, sliding, writhing, their wetness and warmth striking through his garments as if he stood naked to heir embrace.
No surprise it became a big hit with the
Weird Tales crowd. An erotic horror classic!
The foggy, moonlit courtyard of an abandoned dwelling, perfect setting for a vampire tale, features in
Carl Jacobi's "Revelations in Black" (see a cool comic book adaptation of it
here). Stuff I love also featured: a bookish guy obsessed with a mysterious tome and a lovely lady of the night. Not
that kind of lady, however:
That face - it was divinely beautiful, the hair black as sable, the cheeks a classic white. But the lips - ! I grew suddenly sick as I looked upon them. They were scarlet...
My god how I hate this cover
Moving into modern day with
Fritz Leiber's essential, oft-anthologized "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes," about an urban photog and a model fit for the new world of advertising and consumerism. Familiar names
Robert Bloch,
Charles Beaumont,
Ramsey Campbell, and
Charles L. Grant all have good solid work included, stories in their own inimitable voices and styles. Two excellent stories I've reviewed elsewhere on this blog:
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's
"Cabin 33" and
Suzy McKee Charnas's
"Unicorn Tapestry." Expectedly, "Pages from a Young Girl's Diary" is
Robert Aickman's stately, measured, interiorized account of said young English girl's introduction to a mysterious gentleman at a turn-of-the-century ball while her well-to-do family vacations in Italy.
In some ways the most romantic thing of all is that I do not even know his name. As people were beginning to the leave the party, he took my hand and this time held it, nor did I even affect to resist. "We shall meet again," he said, "many times;" looking so deeply and steadily into my eyes that I felt he had penetrated my inmost heart and soul... I could only murmur "Yes," in a voice so weak that he could hardly have heard me...
Aickman tiptoes in his own manner up to a finish of fate accepted, something I rather enjoy in my vampire tales. "Pages" won the 1975 World Fantasy Award for best short fiction, and is a shining example of that classiness I was talking about.
Horror and humor mix delightfully well in
R. Chetwynd Hayes's
"The Werewolf and the Vampire," the kind of story Gahan Wilson would
probably love to illustrate. Written in a breezy, British vernacular,
these travails of a young man who discovers he's a werewolf and can
confide only in a Cockney family of vampires are witty and even charming.
Loverly!
And editor Ryan's own story, "Following the Way," has to be one of the most
sensitively written stories I've read for this blog. His easy way of
relating the intellectual pursuits of a young student at a Jesuit school
and the relationship he builds with an older, inquisitive priest who gently tries to convince him
to join the order over quite a few years, is utterly authentic; the story carries you
along with conviction and its payoff feels just right, even if
expected. Especially when expected! I only wish there had been a paperback collection of Ryan's short horror fiction back in the late '80s or so; today it'd be a stone-cold classic.
Tanith Lee's "Bite-Me-Not" wraps up the 600-page anthology; Ryan
has saved one of the best of the lot for last. Lee entrances the reader
with this truly dark fantasy, rich with strange and medieval imagery -
usually something I cannot tolerate (I mean I can't even do
Game of Thrones, books or show) - although leavened by sympathetic characters and prose that recalls a half-forgotten fable from the mists of history:
For Feroluce and his people are winged beings. They are more like a nest of dark eagles than anything, mounted high among the rocky pilasters and pinnacles of the mountain. Cruel and magnificent, like eagles, the somber sentries motionless as statuary on the ledge-edges, their sable wings folded about them.
1952 If magazine illustration of "Drink My Blood" - more here
And of course no vampire anthology would be complete without the legend himself,
Richard Matheson - someone who definitely knew a thing or two about vampires, and made up what he didn't. Here we have "Drink My Blood," which ends on a chilling note of horror
and hope; it's a classic Matheson twist and a story that has stuck with me for a gajillion years since I read it as a young teenager, but under the title "Blood Son." Shy, odd little Jules reads an essay in class. Doesn't go over well.
"When I grow up I want to be a vampire."
The teacher's smiling lips jerked down and out. Her eyes popped wide.
"I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires."
Boy, I hear ya buddy. I hear ya.
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Two good novels from classic fantasy writer Fritz Leiber: Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness. The former is a tale of witchcraft set at a New England college university, while the latter explores the occult theory of Thibaud de Castries known as "megapolisomancy" (invented solely by Leiber himself in a Lovecraft-inspired bit of mythmaking) and posits the city of San Francisco itself as a haunted - and haunting - entity. It also weaves authors like Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith into its storyline, as well as the pulp fiction background of Leiber himself, and won the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Both novels feature modern men, thoughtful and literate, modern men of skepticism and rationality, who find that the dark superstitions of the past have a horrifying way of wending their way into the light of the contemporary world. Count me in!
I don't think either of these covers captures the feel of the books themselves: Conjure Wife is another example of an older book republished during the height of the Gothic romance fad (this edition is from '68, art by the great Jeffrey Catherine Jones). Its current edition has a pretty foxy Goth chick on its cover, reminiscent of the loverly Eva Green. Berkley's Our Lady of Darkness has an odd psychedelic tinge to it, dated even by 1977 standards; fortunately Amazon has it listed as being back in print this fall.
Unless you are diehard fan of horror or dark fantasy stories of the early 20th century, the name Clark Ashton Smith probably means little to you. But for those of us who are such fans, his name conjures up worlds of exotic darkness, of the purplest prose describing the strangest entities of eons past. Along with Lovecraft and Conan creator Robert E. Howard, Smith ruled those long-ago days of the 1930s and Weird Tales magazine. But unlike the other two, whose works have long been readily available, Smith sank, along with most of their Weird Tales brethren, into obscurity. Despite vocal champions like Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and Lovecraft himself, Smith is a household name only to those folks, like myself, whose homes suffer under a surfeit of paperback horror fiction. And not even always then.
Fortunately in recent years much of his work has come back into print thanks to, you guessed it, the rise of the internet. A Google search turns up plenty on him. But, as always here at Too Much Horror Fiction, what is the fun of simply ordering a $20 book off Amazon? The real collecting fun is had scouring bookstores and library sales and even eBay to find these gloriously-covered and colored paperbacks which smell of dust and bear the worn creases of hours of much-loved reading. I've luckily found all of these paperback editions over the years; they're treasured parts of my collection, you can be sure. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy editions from the early 1970s are particularly awesome; Timescape/Pocket published their editions in the early 1980s.
For me, Smith conjures up memories of hours lost in musty crooked bookstores, trying to find any of his elusive paperbacks published throughout the 1970s by Ballantine. In the 1930s and '40s much of his output was published in small hardcover editions by Arkham House and these are now collectors' items. For those not so inclined at collecting there is The Eldritch Dark site, devoted to everything Klarkash-Ton (as Lovecraft dubbed him). You'll miss out on some distinctive cover art, replete with demonic sorcerers, underground caverns, and bizarre nightlife, however.
A poet and a sculptor in addition to being an author, Smith published dozens of stories throughout the 1930s with delightfully odd and evocative titles like "The Charnel God," "The Dark Eidolon," "The Beast of Averoigne," "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan," "The Desolation of Soom" and "The Isle of the Torturers." I mean, awesome! Smith invented prehistoric, arctic lands like Hyperborea, or Averoigne, or Zothique, peopled with primitives and shamans and wizards and priests and all manner of horrific creatures. With a prose style charmingly antiquated, a vocabulary that would put any logophile to shame, and an imagination that knew the darkness of a hundred ancient worlds, Smith's stories embrace myth, magic, and horror with equal fervor. Any true horror fan should avail themselves of his malevolent and decadent visions at once.
