Under the Fang, edited by Robert McCammon (1991): The World is a Vampire

Vampires, vampires, vampires! Loathsome creatures of the night stalking and snacking on humans across the globe! There's no escape! Whatever can we do?!

Nothing, it seems, or very little, to save ourselves. Thus is the setup for the stories in Under the Fang (Pocket Books, Aug 1991, cover by Mitzura), under the auspices of the Horror Writers of America coalition, with editing duties by iconic bestselling paperback author Robert R. McCammon. Akin to the zombie apocalypse anthos based on George Romero's movies, Book of the Dead (1989) and Still Dead (1992), (which of course hearken back to 1957's I Am Legend) all the stories exist in this new world, with each author bringing their own special methods of madness to the proceedings.

McCammon in 1991

Virtually all the vampire anthologies published prior to the early Nineties were collections of classic stories, moldy golden oldies by the likes of Bram Stoker, Polidori, EF Benson, Crawford, Derleth, et al. Esteemed editor Ellen Datlow gave us Blood is Not Enough in 1989 and A Whisper of Blood in 1991, which featured all-new vampiric works by the cream of the genre's crop. I'll confess: I've read neither, even though I've owned them since Kurt Cobain was still alive. But those two volumes seem to be the first that showed that the old symbols and themes of vampire fictions could be given fresh new life at the end of the century. 

The vampires within Under the Fang exist on a spectrum of generic types: the typical night creeper; the almost-zombified monster driven mad by thirst; the brilliant military leader; the scientific sort looking for a way to walk in daylight; the Anne Rice decadent aesthete. Vampires have been dubbed cutesy nicknames, like "suckheads" and "fangers" and whatnot. That out of the way, let's get to the contents: McCammon gets a twofer, first with a metafictional introduction, in the guise of a doomed note from an unnamed narrator:

They've won. They come in the night, to the towns and cities. Like a slow, insidious virus they spread from house to house, building to building, from graveyard to bedroom and cellar to boardroom. They won, while the world struggled with governments and terrorists and the siren song of business. They won, while we weren't looking...

He handily sketches out the scope of the situation in a couple pages, setting us up for the tales to come. Second is his story "The Miracle Mile," of a family's drive to an abandoned season vacation spot and amusement park. Vampires have of course overrun it, and Dad is pissed. With his signature mix of corny sap and derivative horror, McCammon delivers perfectly cromulent reading material. It's just that I always find him square and dull and earnest, and not my jam whatsoever.

McCammon and Sarrantonio, 1990

The recently-late Al Sarrantonio's "Red Eve" is an effective slice of dark, poetic fantasy in full Bradbury mode, which was common for him. I have no idea who Clint Collins is, but his brief "Stoker's Mistress" is a high-toned yet effective bit of metafiction about vampires "allowing" Bram Stoker to write his "ludicrous" novel Dracula... Shades of soon-to-be-unleashed Anno Dracula. Nancy A. Collins had already had her way with the vampires; "Dancing Nitely" is a perfect encapsulation of the modern image of the unholy creature: they all want to live in an MTV video scripted by Bret Easton Ellis. Contains scenes of NYC yuppies dancing under blood spray at an ultra-hip underground vamp bar, called Club Vlad, with a neon Lugosi lighting up its exterior. We may cringe looking back at it today, but back then this style was au courant du jour.

Late crime novelist Ed Gorman delivers an emotional wallop in "Duty," powerfully effective even though I was half-expecting how the turnaround was going to happen. I gotta try one of his full horror novels! Richard Laymon does his his usual schtick of adolescent ogling and rape fantasy scenarios rife with toxic masculinity in "Special," this story ends on an unexpected note of enlightenment. Better than other things I've read by him, but not enough to make me a fan. 

One of those writers whose byline makes me groan inwardly, J.N. Williamson (above), contributes a lengthy, pulp-prose-level Interview with the Vampire-esque work called "Herrenrasse" ("master race" in German, yuck) in which a hoity-toity vampire traps a potential Van Helsing in his apartment. They then engage in a lengthy dialogue of philosophical conceits of bloodsucking. Kinda cool, but Williamson's style can be pompous, overwritten in that pulpy, self-taught style that screams "show-off." Thomas F. Monteleone, he of the wonderful cutting edge Borderlands anthologies, contributes "Prodigal Sun," a brilliant vampire who had been an immunologist who now tries to cure their curse of bloodthirst. Well-written but so-so.

Together, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Suzy McKee Charnas pit their own fictional vamps—Count St. Germain and Dr. Edward Weyland, respectively—against one another in "Advocates," the most philosophically ambitious work here; no surprise, as both women approached the vampire as a concept in their other writings. Could've been better I felt, less than the sum of its parts.

Brian Hodge, 1991

On to the finest stories within: my favorite was Brian Hodge's "Midnight Sun," which is so well-conceived in scope and execution I daresay he could've written an entire novel using his scenario. Muscular and convincing, its setting of a military outpost in frozen wastes makes it a standout; the conflict, not only between humans and vampires but also between vampires themselves give the story a real moral heft. A close second was "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage," by Chet Williamson, in which a loving husband and wife experience tragedy and woe after escaping into a cabin in the woods. Tough, moving, unsettling stuff. 

Surprisingly, Lisa Cantrell (above), she of The Manse "fame," pulls out a little winner in "Juice." It ain't moonshine this good ol' boy is making a living from. "Does the Blood Line Run on Time?" by Sidney Williams and Robert Pettit, is one of the real bangers here, an action-adventure-horror offering that is oh-so Eighties in just the right way. Williams wrote a few horror paperbacks around then, and now I'm considering adding them to my want-lists.

Other stories here, by authors both known and unknown, run up and down the scale from ok sure fine to oh well whatever nevermind. This might not be the best antho of the era I've ever read, but the quality of prose is very high—this was the HWA, after all—even if the story itself doesn't quite succeed. Me, I could've done with some more graphic bloodshed/drinking, or classic Lugosi/Lee-style vamp action in the good old Les Daniels' tradition. No matter; your mileage may vary as well (PorPor Books enjoyed it maybe a smidgen more than I did). Overall, I'd say Under the Fang is an easy recommendation for your horror anthology and/or vampire fiction shelves.

The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas (1980): Vampire Walks into a Psychiatrist's Office...

Today it's almost tiresome to ponder the mythic fluidity of the vampire throughout history and how it reflects (heh) the fantasies and fears of the culture from which it's sprung. Vampires have been twisted this way and that, rendered fangless and impotent, but when Suzy McKee Charnas wrote The Vampire Tapestry in the late 1970s the field had not yet been taken over by the de- and re-mythologizing character of Anne Rice's work. Less a horror novel than a psychological deconstruction of an outsider, Tapestry has a smart and original tale to tell, thankfully unblighted by the shallow vagaries of popular culture. Indeed, this vampire haunts the halls of academe.

Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland is an anthropology professor of a gentlemanly, iron-haired age as well as a non-supernatural vampire. Drawn as a ruthless and precise predator, he has no kith or kin, walks about in daylight, and needs no earth from his homeland in which to sleep. Beneath his tongue is an unobtrusive stinger with anti-clotting saliva that can penetrate human flesh and draw out fresh blood. His haughty and surly brilliance allows him to pass through the mortal world with few noticing his true self.

Through five long chapters, we see how Weyland subtly alters his behavior to either escape danger, establish his identity, or to embrace a victim. Actually Tapestry is more like five interrelated stories than one entire novel. Weyland sometimes missteps and ends up in danger, as in "The Island of Lost Content." He meets a near-worthy foe in "The Last of Dr. Weyland" and reappraises his thoughts of humanity (Not cattle, these; they deserved more from him than disdain). "A Musical Interlude" finds Weyland shaken after he is introduced to Puccini's opera Tosca, the high drama of which causes him to flash back to his own life centuries earlier.

 Charnas in 1980

The best section I think is “Unicorn Tapestry,” in which Weyland is forced to see a psychiatrist in order to keep his job as a professor and thus hide his vampirism. This psychiatrist tries to get Weyland to empathize with his victims, which he refuses to do. Charnas spends a great deal of time detailing the work of this doctor, a middle-aged woman who, in spite of herself, develops serious feelings for Weyland even as she delves deeper into his pathology.

Endurance: huge rich cloak of time flows back from his shoulders like wings of a dark angel. All springs from, elaborates, the single dark primary condition: he is a predator who subsists on human blood. Harmony, strength, clarity, magnificence - all from that basic animal integrity. Of course I long for all that...

We can see the changes in vampire mythology just by tracing the imagery in the paperback covers. The original paperback edition at the very top, from Pocket Books in 1981, hearkens back to Lugosi's dinner-party attire, along with a strong, masculine jaw to suggest the eroticism that was so prevalent in the myth at the time. In 1986, with the Tor Books reprint (labeled oddly as SF/Fantasy), we see now a brooding, more European-looking fellow whose hand seems tensed and rigid; after Rice, the deluge of sensitive vampires mooning over their horrible undeath and blood thirst. The French paperback from 1988 highlights the near-banality of a modern vampire. A '90s edition from The Women's Press, above, with a woman—the psychiatrist, of course—casting a penetrating gaze upon Weyland, is my favorite.

The 1992 trade paperback cover has a figure clad in a cape, apparently about to perform some bit of magic like Barbara Eden in "I Dream of Jeannie," and also is somehow deformed. The most recent edition, from Orb Books in 2008, with its bare tree limbs and shadowy figure, seems more like a Halloween decoration than a real book cover. Besides the edition from The Women's Press, none of these covers captures the tone or style of Charnas's book, which is rooted in the psychological realism of a fantastical nonhuman.

Horror fiction has always suffered under a surfeit of bloodsuckers stalking across paperback book covers where they were depicted as aristocrats or lusty dandies, as well as Stoker-approved monsters from the Freudian id. Today, we see them as teenagers, as Fabio-style paranormal lovers, as lonely housewife-friendly boyfriends. It's a cliche to ponder this creature, as I noted, even trite, because isn't it obvious? We have met the vampire over and over and he is us. But Charnas suggests at the end of The Vampire Tapestry that this predator who tries so hard to gain psychological distance from his prey may come to see some of himself there after all.