RavenCon 2026

This past weekend, my husband and I attended RavenCon, held in Richmond, Virginia. The hotel comprises a complex of three buildings in a lovely setting, which is slightly inconvenient when the weather is atypically chilly for April, as it was this time. Also, it rained off and on, but I brought an umbrella. They had nice buffets for all breakfasts and two dinners. On Friday, though, the only food venue for dinner was the bar, same as last year. Fortunately, at least this time we didn't have to sit for almost an hour waiting to get fed.

My husband appeared on four panels, I on three. First I had horror and the supernatural in ancient literature, in practice meaning Greek, Roman, and Norse with a bit of Celtic. The moderator and both panelists had more in-depth knowledge of the field than I do, but I managed to find enough to say, seldom a problem for me anyhow :). My Saturday panels were on cozy fantasy, very well attended and lively, and vampires, my specialty. The former discussion focused largely on trying to decide precisely how to define the emergent subgenre -- what do we mean by "cozy"? The vampire session ranged widely over folklore and fiction, past and recent, print and film media.

Of my husband's panels, the ones that interested me most were "The Ethics of Colonizing Other Worlds" and "Intergalactic Villainy" (should probably be "interstellar," sigh), about science-fiction villains and antagonists, specifically in stories set in space. The latter spent much more time on film media than novels. It considered, among other questions, what makes a character a villain and why villains fascinate us.

I didn't get to watch the costume contest because it occurred opposite my vampire panel. However, I did get a look at the participants as they were lining up.

Some sessions I particularly enjoyed: Two panels on research, "Down the Rabbit Hole" and "But I've Never Ridden a Horse." Monstrous insects in SF and horror films. Writing in other authors' worlds. The role of history in fantasy and science fiction. A slide show on dangerous plants and fungi with some discussion of that theme in fiction and film.

It was dismaying to learn they're shifting the date of future RavenCons from late April (which I like because of the weather, which is normally much nicer than this year) to late October, with a greater chance of chilly days. Of course, we'll still attend.

You can read all about the convention here:

RavenCon

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Vampire review: Love Bites

Among the many novels with the same or similar title, LOVE BITES (1995), by Margaret St. George, stands out by belonging to the Harlequin American Romance line. Not where you’d expect to find a vampire novel! At that time, vampires were hardly ever featured in category romances. Harlequin hadn't started its sadly now-defunct Nocturne line yet. This book stuck in my mind because of its quirky, humorous tone (until matters get serious and suspenseful toward the end, at least).

Kay Erickson takes a job as personal assistant to Trevor d’Laine, host of a late-night radio talk show. Long before Kitty the radio-hostess werewolf in Carrie Vaughn’s series, Trevor reaches out to the demographic of creatures of the night. Kay, of course, initially thinks his claim of vampirism is a publicity stunt. She humors his persona, accepting the title of “Renfield” playfully bestowed on all mortal sidekicks of vampires. Later she suspects him of being delusional, although of course she still finds him fun and sexy. When she suggests he should seek treatment for his delusions, he says he doesn’t want to get analyzed and “turned into one of those brooding apologetic-type vampires.” This dialogue illustrates the tone of much of the book, even though we get glimpses of darkness in the conflict between Trevor’s type of vampires, who want to coexist with humanity rather than harming people, and the type who regard us as merely prey. The night-to-night routine of a vampire and his Renfield makes fun reading, spiced by the mounting attraction between Trevor and Kay. Eventually he tells her about his early life, revealing that he hasn’t always been the carefree, well-adjusted denizen of the night he currently claims to be. When the inevitable clash with the “evil” vampire lurking in the background of the story builds to a crisis, Kay has to call in help from other Renfields.

Not only did I enjoy the humor in this novel, I liked the way Trevor relishes his vampire existence rather than wallowing in the angst-ridden lifestyle of so many of his fictional contemporaries. He has no desire to become mortal again. Nor does Kay want to become a vampire. Unlike the typical paranormal romance heroine (including most of my characters, I confess), who quickly grows to appreciate the ravishing eroticism of vampirism as such, Kay is thoroughly turned off by her first glimpse of fangs. So how can they hope to get together permanently? Trevor and his undead friends fairly evaluate the pros and cons of reverting to mortality (if that were possible), with remaining a vampire viewed as mostly preferable. I won’t give away the ending, but for any hardcore reader of the subgenre, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Both Trevor and Kay are refreshingly different from the usual vampire hero and human heroine of the time, and the plot device of a clash between organized groups of “good” vampires who don’t harm human donors and their opponents who have no such scruples hadn’t yet become as overly familiar as it is now. The atmosphere of LOVE BITES anticipates the blended humor and suspense of Lynsay Sands’ Argeneau series. Too bad St. George didn’t write any additional vampire novels, as far as I can tell.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

ICFA Report

On Sunday I returned from the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando. The theme was Metacognition, "thinking about thinking." For the first couple of days, the weather was cooler than usual in March, but still an improvement over Maryland. It warmed up later, with plenty of sunshine all week. Two glitches with the hotel on Wednesday: They didn't have a room available when I arrived; I had to wait until they got it ready -- some other people did, too -- which has never happened before. A fire evacuation interrupted the 4:30 paper session; luckily, it was a false alarm.

Fears of airport delays proved unfounded. Boarding in Baltimore went as quickly as ever, and two nice staff people intervened to help me with two different procedures. It sometimes pays to look old and confused! The return experience in Orlando was almost anticlimactic, in a good way. Security processing took no longer than normal, so I ended up spending several hours sitting around the airport -- much better than being rushed and late.

The Friday night meeting of the Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and Gothic studies organization, couldn't transact any business such as voting for officers because we didn't have a quorum. Nevertheless, we shared some productive discussion about future activities. Then on to the real fun, watching a clip from the early German vampire movie VAMPYR, with an introduction by our film expert, followed by a viewing of the romantic Dracula comedy LOVE AT FIRST BITE.

Thought-provoking talks at the Thursday and Friday luncheons, with buffets upholding the typical high standards of this hotel (well, aside from the distressing lack of chocolate desserts on Thursday). As usual, at each meal we all received free books. Ted Chiang, one of the author guests of honor, spoke in his talk "On Being a Cyborg" about the relationship between technology and cognition, proposing that this connection began with the invention of writing. He mentioned the astonishing fact that preliterate societies don't have a word for "word." For the concept of words as isolated units to develop, we had to see them as such in a text. We're all cyborgs because the alphabet is a technology connected to our brains. He speculated on whether, just as writing emerged as a successor to oral speech, an analogous successor to writing will appear in the future.

The other author guest of honor, Ann Leckie, is the writer of a science-fiction series beginning with ANCILLARY JUSTICE (which I bought a copy of), among other works. The scholar guest, Sheryl Vint, gave a talk about how dependence on AI affects our brains, titled, "Cognition -- Augmentation -- Offloading -- Atrophy." She pointed out that data and knowledge aren't the same, and an overload of data can actually hinder cognition. Does ChatGPT have true cognitive ability? When asked, the program itself paradoxically declares it has no sense of self.

Our Lord Ruthven Assembly panel, "Thinking About Undeath," focusing on vampires, ghosts, and zombies with glances at liches, animated skeletons, and uploading minds into computers (would that be immortality or simply another form of life-in-death?), had good attendance and lively discussion.

Topics of some other sessions I enjoyed included comics, the Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, vampires in film and TV, fairy-tale logic, Disney theme parks as an attempt to create "hyper-reality," and a provocative discussion on how or whether Neil Gaiman's personal offenses should affect our reading of his work.

In future years, it's been decided that the conference will continue to meet in Orlando, which has many advantages thanks to the organization's long association with that locale, for two years straight. Then, before returning to Orlando, it will rotate for one year each to other cities for the sake of people unwilling or unable to come to Florida. I was thrilled to learn that next year, still in Orlando, Ursula Vernon (aka T. Kingfisher) will be the guest of honor. The conference in 2028, the first "off" year, will occur in Warsaw. So I'll miss that one. Simply too hard for me. Sigh.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

This week I'm in Orlando for the annual ICFA (conducted by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts), gratefully taking a break from the abrupt drop in temperature at home after our more appropriate mid-March weather of a few days ago.

I'm chairing a panel titled "Thinking About Undeath," in keeping with this year's conference theme of "Metacognition." Lots of fun discussion about vampires, ghosts, and zombies expected.

Detailed report forthcoming next Thursday.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Vampire as Alien: Tanith Lee's Vampires

Renowned fantasy author Tanith Lee has written numerous vampire stories, taking different approaches to the myth in each work. To mention only a few: Her short work "Red as Blood," one of the best fairy tale retellings I've ever read, presents Snow White as a hereditary vampire and her stepmother, the queen, as a white witch trying to save the kingdom from the young princess's unnatural appetite. Lee's twisted Gothic romance DARK DANCE (1992), first novel in the Scarabae trilogy, centers on a woman victimized by a family from a blood-drinking species. The hyper-sexual hero, a parody of the dark, Byronic vampire aristocrat, wants her only as a breeding vessel. "Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Feu" portrays a very different kind of love story set in a world where a tribe of winged vampires besieges a castle, and every facet of the inhabitants' lives is shaped by fear of the monsters. The captured and imprisoned vampire, although apparently intelligent, can't speak, and he looks and acts so inhuman as to be more like an exotic animal than a person. Yet a serving maid in the castle becomes fascinated by him, helps him escape, and runs away with him She sees him through the lens of the courtly love romances she has heard, while he thinks of her as a sort of pet.

Lee creates another kind of alien vampire in the science fiction novel SABELLA OR THE BLOOD STONE (1980). (Warning: Major spoilers.) The narrator grows up thinking herself human but aberrant. As a Terran child living on an Earth-colonized world, Nova Mars, she stumbles onto ruins left by the original inhabitants. Her vampiric behavior dates from her discovery of a red jewel in the ruins. After years of drinking blood and sometimes killing, she meets a man she cannot and does not need to kill. Jace, brother of one of her victims, reveals to Sabella that she is actually an alien who, years in the past, took over the dying child Sabella's body and memories. Yet, because all the girl's thoughts and feelings live in this new form, the vampire, in a sense, is also truly Sabella. Jace reassures her that, while neither alien nor human, she is in some way both. Thanks to him, she learns to live without killing and to accept her past without self-destructive guilt. Jace reveals that he, too, found the ruins in childhood and became absorbed into an alien being. He alone can safely nourish her, for they evolved that relationship in their former life as members of the extinct species. Sabella speculates on how this relationship might have worked in the ancient past, when Nova Mars was an inhabited but dying planet: "Of the little water and little food there was, one would eat and drink, and when he was strong, the other would take from him the vital element which food and drink had made -- his blood....A system that requires a careful pairing, a creation of partners, who could permit in love what could never be permitted in hate or greed." Learning this symbiotic relationship, learning to share in love rather than seize in greed, Sabella avoids succumbing to despair.

Her solution to the quandary of being a bloodsucking monster depends on her union with Jace, the one living person who can serve as her symbiont. Also, their relationship requires her to let Jace dominate her, at least temporarily, until with his help she will learn "a discipline beyond myself." This male dominance isn't meant to be permanent, though. By way of balance, Sabella foresees a future in which she will decide when and where to procreate the children who will revive their species. She also conceives an ecological vision of a new era when her offspring may revitalize, even resurrect the desert planet. She grows into one of many fictional vampires who discover the value of symbiosis rather than destruction of their prey.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Blood Hunt

Before the TV shows FOREVER KNIGHT, ANGEL, BLOOD TIES, and MOONLIGHT, before Tanya Huff's detective series on which BLOOD TIES was based, even a bit before P. N. Elrod's "Vampire Files" depression-era mystery novels, there was BLOOD HUNT (1987), by Lee Killough. It presents a fictional vampire who is a truly nice person, a type of characterization rare at the time. (There were already plenty of "good guy vampires," but few you'd consider exactly "nice.") Killough postulates that vampirism is an infectious disease caused by a virus, although in BLOOD HUNT that hypothesis is merely assumed by the vampires without being elaborated in any way. At least two factors don't seem to harmonize with the disease theory: The hero requires soil (not necessarily "native earth") to sleep on and can't enter a dwelling uninvited. In fact, he can't even fire his gun into a space where he hasn't been invited. As in most recent vampire fiction, conversion happens when the victim tastes the vampire's blood. Killough presents the gradual process of transformation from the vampire's point of view, another now familiar fictional device that was relatively uncommon at the time of this novel's publication. Garreth Mikaelian, a San Francisco police officer, investigates murders committed by a vampire, Lane Barber, who drains him to death. When he accidentally drinks some of her blood, she refrains from destroying him, because she longs for a companion. He rises as one of the undead and (like Elrod's protagonist in the later novel BLOODLIST) proceeds to investigate his own murder.

The core of BLOOD HUNT focuses on Garreth's gradual realization of and adjustment to the fact of his vampirism. He casts a reflection, in keeping with his supposedly non-supernatural nature. Sunlight causes him discomfort but does not kill him. He lives on animal blood, though it proves less than satisfying; highly ethical, he refuses to prey on people. Determined to bring Lane to justice, he traces her to her home town, where he makes a place for himself in the community -- working the night shift on the local police force (like Nick on FOREVER KNIGHT) -- while waiting for her to return. Vampire or not, Garreth remains a good cop, who adamantly resists the temptation to play vigilante. Even someone like Lane deserves due process of law. Circumstances finally free Garreth from the dilemma this philosophy imposes on him, and at the novel's end we see him as a small-town policeman who has come to terms with his new existence.

The strongest appeal of this novel, for me, is that Garreth's personality remains intact through his transformation. Again, that was still a refreshingly unusual approach in 1987. Instead of becoming a bloodthirsty demon, he stands in the far more interesting position of an ordinary man required to adjust to a new set of limits and temptations. In the sequel, BLOODLINKS (1988), Garreth is accustomed to his undead life but far from happy with it. Drawn back to San Francisco by a new string of mysterious murders, he meets the female vampire responsible for Lane's transformation and learns his friends and family can accept him even after they discover what he is. After a long hiatus, Killough published a third novel, BLOOD GAMES (2001), in which Garreth, fifteen years later, begins to face the aging of his mortal loved ones.

In the 1997 preface to BLOODWALK, an omnibus reprint of the first two books, Killough states that BLOOD HUNT was originally rejected over and over because, as a vampire novel that wasn't horror, it was therefore considered impossible to market. (Those editors must not have read Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA.) How the field of vampire fiction has changed in recent decades, for the better!

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the vampires at Carter's Crypt.

The Lady of the Shroud

Everybody knows about Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (1897). Few vampire fans, however, much less general readers, are familiar with what might be called Stoker’s “other vampire novel,” THE LADY OF THE SHROUD (1909). Actually (no big spoiler), it’s not a genuine vampire story, but a plot based on a hoax. The hero doesn’t discover the truth until well into the book, though. This novel is an adventure tale with more similarities to THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1894) than DRACULA. A wealthy Englishman unexpectedly leaves his fortune to his world-traveling nephew, Rupert Sent Leger. As a condition of the inheritance, Rupert has to live in a castle in a tiny Balkan country called the Land of the Blue Mountains. The novel follows the typical plot of a Ruritanian romance, in which a dashing foreign hero (English or sometimes American) saves the realm and falls in love with the princess. It's obvious, however, that Stoker also drew on his research for DRACULA in composing this tale.

Like DRACULA, THE LADY OF THE SHROUD has an epistolary narrative structure. It begins with a magazine story about an apparition of a coffin-like boat bearing a woman in a shroud. Most of the book consists of entries from Rupert’s journal, supplemented by letters and other documents. Once settled in the castle, formerly the home of the voivode (ruler) of the country, Rupert receives a visit from a woman of unearthly beauty “wrapped in white graveclothes saturated with water.” In addition to the shroud she wears, other factors such the chill of her skin, her need to be helped over the threshold of his room, and her insistence on fleeing at cockcrow lead him to seriously entertain the possibility that she may be a vampire. During the day he explores an ancient church nearby and finds her in the crypt, lying in a glass-topped coffin like a vampiric Snow White. Because of his many extraordinary experiences in exotic parts of the world, Rupert, like Van Helsing, has an open mind about the preternatural and occult. But unlike any of the characters in DRACULA, Rupert speculates whether the lady, if a vampire, could be redeemed and restored to life. That idea never comes up in the earlier book, where vampires are demonically evil by definition.

The lady turns out to be the voivodin (princess) of the Land of the Blue Mountains, carrying out the vampire masquerade for protection from her enemies. Having fallen into a cataleptic trance (a phenomenon that scholars have often cited as one hypothetical source of vampire beliefs), she had been pronounced dead and interred, a mistake she uses to her advantage. Rupert, of course, saves both the voivodin and her nation, rescuing his beloved and her father from Turkish kidnappers. THE LADY OF THE SHROUD has the distinction of possibly including the first fictional portrayal of aircraft combat, only six years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight.

Although lesser known than DRACULA, this novel and Stoker’s tale of a mummified Egyptian princess trying to return to life, THE JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS (1903), both hold up well as thrilling stories still worth a read today.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Shattered Glass

Elaine Bergstrom's richly detailed "vampire as alien" series begins with SHATTERED GLASS (1989), first published although not first in its internal chronology. In this novel and its prequels and sequels, she creates vampires of extraterrestrial origin but with such long-term residence on Earth that they consider this planet their home. Though clearly superior to Homo sapiens, most of them respect humanity. Like other more or less benign fictional vampires, Bergstrom's vampire clan, the Austras, balance their predation with service to the host species. The Austras contribute to humanity's long-term welfare through the products of their genius under the cover of their corporation, AustraGlass, whose creations in stained glass have adorned human architecture since the Middle Ages. Just as their empathic connection to their donors compensates for the blood they drink, their contributions to human culture balance (if not atone for) the killings some of them have committed over the centuries. Their weaknesses -- particularly their reproductive difficulties -- offset their superhuman powers. Not only do they take blood from human prey (as well as lower animals), they also need the human race to revitalize their gene pool. Austra females usually die in childbirth, typically producing twins or triplets. After her vampire nature is awakened by blood-sharing with Stephen Austra, Helen, the human-alien hybrid of SHATTERED GLASS, offers the promise of birth without inevitable sacrifice of the mother.

Stephen's twin, Charles, unlike his brother, feeds on pain and terror instead of the positive emotions that constitute the Austras' more usual nourishment. Charles yearns for death. Because these vampires' instinct for self-preservation makes them practically incapable of taking their own lives, Charles goes on a murderous rampage in the city where Stephen has settled, hoping to get his brother to kill him in the vampiric equivalent of "suicide by cop." Not surprisingly, to attract Stephen's attention he threatens Helen and her family.

Bergstrom's very sensual vampires exert an irresistible magnetism over human beings, especially when the vampires crave blood. Also, because they possess telepathy, they can shape their behavior to satisfy the human partner's inmost desires. Beyond sexual union, the Austras use telepathy to satisfy the human yearning to know the Other. For the reader, they fulfill in fantasy the otherwise unattainable wish to plumb the depths of another's mind. While drinking a human donor's blood (and sometimes even without blood-sharing), the vampire can share his or her memories with the donor in a reenactment so vivid it seems actually to be happening. Other novels in the series move backward in history or forward to Stephen and Helen's married life and the birth of their children, concluding with a book set in the near future, BEYOND SUNDOWN. Some short stories about the Austras have also been published, such as "The Ghost of St. Mark's" in THE TIME OF THE VAMPIRES, an anthology of historical vampire fiction, and "Ebb Tide" in the anthology VAMPIRES: DRACULA AND THE UNDEAD LEGIONS. I'm honored to mention that the latter, an outtake from SHATTERED GLASS, was originally published in the first issue of my fanzine, THE VAMPIRE'S CRYPT, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. You can find links to information about the zine (all issues are available free on DropBox) on my website:

Carter's Crypt

Margaret L. Carter

I Am Legend

I don't need to summarize the plot of Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND (1954), since Karen did it so thoroughly last week. If your only acquaintance with this classic, the prototypical treatment of vampirism as disease, comes from the blockbuster movie, be sure to read the book and get the story the way the author intended. Aside from the influence of the novel on Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, Matheson’s seminal work has been filmed twice before, as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price and THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston. THE LAST MAN ON EARTH comes closest of all to the original book, since Matheson worked on the screenplay, but because he was displeased with changes that were made (including the ending) he appears in the credits only under a pseudonym. The Will Smith movie also changes the ending, along with many other alterations that deviate from Matheson’s story. In this film, Robert Neville becomes a “legend” by giving his blood to create a cure for the disease, essentially the opposite of why he attains “legend” status at the end of the book.

Unlike the Robert Neville of that movie, a black scientist in an urban setting, Neville in the book is a white, middle-class man barricaded in his house in the ruins of the suburb where he lived before losing his family to the vampire plague. He isn’t a scientist (one change in the movie that may be for the better, since movie Neville’s research into the disease is more believable in view of his role in creating it in the first place). He teaches himself enough bacteriology to identify the disease organism in the blood of the vampires he destroys. The suspected cause of the pandemic is fallout from nuclear weapons tests, so that Matheson’s novel reflects the dominant anxieties of its time (just as the Will Smith movie reflects the dominant anxieties of ours, with zombie-like hordes engendered by biological engineering gone wild). Dust storms spread the vampire bacterium, apparently mutated by radiation from an organism transmitted solely by biting into one whose dormant spores can be carried through the air. Neville figures out the bacteria must be anaerobic; when they come into contact with air, they instantaneously consume their host. That hypothesis explains why stakes kill vampires. The effects of sunlight and garlic are also scientifically justified. Vampires’ reactions to crosses and mirrors, on the other hand, are psychosomatic. Brain-damaged revenants crawling out of their graves expect to suffer the vulnerabilities of vampires as understood in popular culture, so they cower from holy symbols and can’t see their own reflections. Some superstitions are nothing but that, such as the inability to cross running water. The vampires besieging Neville’s house every night mock his experimental attempt to protect himself with running water. Although vampires can’t really change shape, some jump off high places under the delusion of turning into bats. Neville has run into vampire dogs, but they’re just dogs.

To me, the most fascinating dimension of the novel is its detailed rationalization of vampirism in terms of infectious disease, something sadly missing from the film (which retains hardly any vampiric content at all -- the revenants are more like Romero zombies). Emotionally, the strongest sequence consists of Neville’s nightly ordeal as he watches the vampires, some of them his former neighbors, gathered on his lawn, taunting him, waiting for him to break down and surrender. His bitter monologues as he pores over Stoker’s DRACULA and a collection of medical textbooks vividly convey his deterioration from a civilized man into a ruthless survivor. Eventually, as Karen mentioned, he stumbles upon a woman who claims to be another survivor. It turns out she belongs to a group of people whose bodies have achieved symbiosis with a further mutated strain of the disease. Neither dying nor turning feral, they are building a new society. Neville, for them, is the “plague” stalking in the night to kill them one by one. In the final scene, he realizes that as the last “normal” man on Earth, he has become a “legend” for the new race of humanity -- who are now the normal ones and he the monster.

In addition to Theodore Sturgeon’s SOME OF YOUR BLOOD (which I discussed on September 18), I consider I AM LEGEND one of the four classic pre-1970 twentieth-century vampire novels. The other two are DOCTORS WEAR SCARLET (1960), by Simon Raven, and PROGENY OF THE ADDER (1965), by Leslie H. Whitten. I commented on these works and many others in “A Gravedigger’s Dozen of Outstanding Vampire Tales,” an overview (updated to the late 1990s) of what I see as the best vampire novels of all time. The “gravedigger’s dozen” allusion means thirteen, of course, but I cheat on the number:

Vampire Reading List

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson was published in 1954, a post-apocalyptic horror novel that set the stage for zombie and vampire literature that's flooded in ever since. As with many of these types of stories, the concept of a worldwide apocalypse spreads through disease. In this tale, the vampires that populated what was left of the world more closely resembled zombies, despite what the protagonist called them. 

Robert Neville is the last man on Earth. A terrible plague has either killed mankind or transformed them into vampires...and all they want is Robert's blood. Robert's wife, Virginia, and daughter, Kathy, died from the plague. Kathy's body had been thrown in a fire pit. He hadn't allowed that to be done to his wife--he'd tried to bury her, but she came back, and then he had to kill her as he had the others. 

For the past eight months, since the plague infected the population--a plague he himself is immune to--Robert has been surviving the only way he can while systematically trying to get rid as many of the vampires as he can during daylight. By day, he also tries to repair the damage done to his property during the night attacks. He lives by his watch because, as soon as the sun sets, he must be behind locked doors and boarded windows. The vampires are drawn to him every single night, howling, snarling and trying to break through the barriers he's erected to keep them out. They want his blood; they want to make him as they are. He understands little about them beyond that they stay inside by day, avoid garlic, can be killed by a stake through the heart, fear crosses, and dread mirrors. The creatures are white-fanged and powerful, frequently attacking each other because there's no union among them--their need for blood is their only motivation. 

Robert isn't sure how much longer he can do what he's been doing--little by little trying to reduce their unholy numbers. He has no time to slow down and think, because his struggle is never-ending, but eventually he's driven to test the blood of a vampire and finally isolates a germ--the cause of vampirism. Sunlight kills the germ. It's too late to cure those who have already been infected, but, if there are others like him, how can he cure them? 

Robert finds a dog that seems as whole and intact as he is; later, a young woman, Ruth, who's survived all of this as well. Having believed that his investigation into how to destroy the vampires is worthless and that he has no reason for staying alive, the possibility of a life other than his own, a companion, renews his determination to keep fighting. He's clung to the idea all this time that a human being not infected will come, that he isn't the last person on Earth. But Ruth has a secret that could change everything, all he's known since the plague started, as well as his own views about survival.  

Richard Matheson is a master at creating stories like these, where the descriptions of the chilling settings, scenarios, and characters are so robust and realistic, you become convinced you're huddled in a fortress of a house smothered by shrieking, starving and subsequently ravenous creatures who not only want you dead, but want to eat you for dinner--though, in this case, it'll probably be a last meal. Every ounce of torment and torture this lone character feels day after day, endless night after night, is detailed as if you're sitting right next to the character, experiencing the suffocating burden laid on these weary shoulders. The flicker of hope at the potential of no longer being alone is utterly heart-rending. Even if Robert is a man who's grown rusty and bitter, forced into isolation, the reader can't help but be shattered by every blow he takes as if we're also receiving it. 

Simply put, no one can really top this masterpiece that set countless standards in supernatural, creature horror, end-of-the-world fiction. Fittingly, the Horror Writers Association bestowed on I Am Legend the Vampire Novel of the Century Award in 2012. 

As for the author's inspiration in writing it, Matheson credits Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man, where an immune person survived a plague that destroyed the world. Three films loosely based on I Am Legend were made (some under different titles), but the one I like best is the one that actually took the same name as the book and starred Will Smith (released in 2007), though of course none of the adaptations really follow the book version closely, which is kind of a shame. 

Readers would be remiss not to give this influential story a first or subsequent read or a watch, if you'd prefer a more visual medium that can appropriately be enjoyed in the dark. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Blood and Roses

If you want to read a delightful novel that might be described as "Jane Austen meets Bram Stoker," published long before the more recent "mash-up" fad (e.g., books such as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES), pick up BLOOD AND ROSES (1994) by Sharon Bainbridge. This author, a pen name for the writing team of Sharon Farber and Sharon Rose, actually sets the plot in the late Victorian era rather than the Regency, as evidenced by mentions of the American Civil War and the works of Charles Darwin. After the Gothic prologue in which a gullible village girl meets a vampire seducer by moonlight, however, the main action morphs into a comedy of manners almost worthy of Austen.

This novel could appropriately begin, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unmarried vampire in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife." Mrs. Portland, social-climbing wife of a rich merchant, is determined to marry her younger daughter Guenevere to the mysteriously reclusive Sir Geoffrey Utley. Elaine, Guenevere's sensible older sister, takes an instant dislike to Sir Geoffrey, who appears less like Bingley than Darcy, barely concealing his disdain for the local mothers pushing their daughters at him. Meanwhile, Elaine's cousin Violet, a doctor's daughter with up-to-date medical knowledge and a love of science, becomes acquainted with the progressive Dr. William Praisegood, who has come to High Grimmire to investigate an epidemic of "green sickness" (anemia) among the working-class girls. When a young lady drops dead of that same illness at a ball given by the Portlands, the suspense and horror aspects of the story shift into high gear. Dr. Praisegood explains vampirism as a contagious disease with which he and his physician ancestors have had long experience. Who is the master vampire preying on the girls, and even if he is found and destroyed, can any of the new undead he has created be redeemed from the compulsion to feed on unwilling victims?

While there's ample horror and pathos, the witty dialogue ensures that comic relief is never far away, yet without undercutting the terror of an unknown vampire stalking the village. Elaine's slightly ga-ga great-aunt, her nominal chaperone, matter-of-factly accepts the possible infestation of vampires as just another interesting episode in a lifetime that has seen much worse, such as the Napoleonic wars. She comes out with eccentric remarks at the most inopportune times. Violet reacts to a summary of Polidori's "The Vampyre" with the levelheaded and exasperated remark, "You mean the silly young twit lets an undead monster kill those near and dear to him because he gave his word under trying and falsified pretenses? He deserves to be in a madhouse!" I can't quote the most deliciously funny line in the entire book, because it gives away the main secret of the plot. (It's on page 268; if you decide to read the novel, you'll spot it.)

I guarantee this story will rivet your attention. Every time you're sure you've identified the villain, something else happens to cast doubt on your assumptions. The ending, dramatic but laced with humor, impressed me as totally satisfying. Aside from a few typos, the book seems to me practically perfect except for a glitch in the prologue that I didn't notice until my third or fourth reading. Maudie, the victim seduced by the vampire "lord," doesn't seem to recognize him in that scene, and there's no plausible reason why she wouldn't. The authors can be forgiven for misleading the reader in this minor way, though. Incidentally, don't trust the book's blurb. It's riddled with inaccuracies. The reference to Dracula and Van Helsing has nothing to do with this novel, which is set well before DRACULA, and Van Helsing is mentioned in the text only once in passing (as a young man). Nevertheless, BLOOD AND ROSES does expertly evoke the atmosphere of a classic vampire novel, but as filtered through the self-reflective lens of over a century of genre development.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Some of Your Blood

Classic SF, fantasy, and horror author Theodore Sturgeon’s unique short novel SOME OF YOUR BLOOD (1961) -- perhaps less remembered than it should be -- holds a special place in my heart as one of the earliest horror novels I read while first exploring the field as a teenager. Like Stoker’s DRACULA, SOME OF YOUR BLOOD is narrated in an epistolary format, as a collection of documents. In a provocative twist on this technique, Sturgeon includes a nameless frame narrator who, at the beginning of the book, invites the reader to delve into a psychiatrist’s files and, at the end, to reflect on the case. Thus we're drawn into the story as more than objective observers. How do we think the “vampire” should be treated, and why? “What is he to you?” the frame narrator asks.

An Army psychiatrist receives a referral for an enlisted man who hit an officer with no apparent provocation. The psychiatrist tells the patient to write an autobiography, which he does in third person, calling himself “George.” George, a bright though not highly educated young man from a rural mountain community, is the son of Hungarian immigrants. The autobiography reveals him as an odd loner, abused by his father. Between the lines of George’s life story, however, lurk clues to his dark secret -- he drinks blood. The Army doctor comes across as intelligent and likable, and his case notes as well as a lively exchange of letters with a colleague at another military base let us follow him step by step as he uncovers the truth behind the patient’s façade of quiet cooperation.

Hints of the young man's pathology hide in the cracks of his unpolished yet vivid self-portrait. Through the transcripts of the subsequent therapy sessions, we gradually come to see those details from an entirely new angle. The doctor’s notes include intriguing background materials about historical human blood drinkers, set in a Freudian framework. Young George emerges as a surprisingly sympathetic character for a sociopath. (He isn’t a stereotypical serial killer; he commits his couple of murders almost by accident.) His very brief letter to his girl back home holds a touch of pathos: "Dear Anna, I miss you. I wish I had some of your blood." In another neat touch, Sturgeon pays homage to the genre’s roots with “George’s” real name -- Bela.

By the way, Sturgeon, in addition to his numerous novels and short stories in a variety of subgenres, wrote the groundbreaking STAR TREK episode "Amok Time."

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Fevre Dream

A science-fiction explanation for vampire biology. Richly detailed historical fiction set in the antebellum South. A bond of friendship developing between members of two different species. Exploration, through dramatic action and character growth, of philosophical issues surrounding good versus evil and human versus nonhuman. FEVRE DREAM (1982), by George R. R. Martin, has it all.

Yes, THAT George Martin. FEVRE DREAM is one of my all-time favorite "vampire as naturally evolved species" novels. Set in the heyday of the Mississippi steamboats, this story centers on Joshua, a vampire who, orphaned in childhood during the French Reign of Terror, grows up believing himself an aberrant human being. Eventually he realizes that he is neither human nor supernatural (religious symbols have no effect on him), but a member of a species that combines features of the legendary werewolf and vampire. He has been taught the superiority of his family over ordinary people, and he knows he must avoid daylight, but the "red thirst" -- the monthly need for blood -- comes upon him only at the age of twenty, adolescence for his kind. Having always considered himself "superior," he now decides that instead he is "something unnatural, a beast, a soulless monster." Aside from vulnerability to sunlight, Joshua leads a more or less normal life except for a few nights each month. At those times his uncontrollable bloodlust drives him to kill human victims, despite his best intentions. By the time he eventually finds members of his own species, his remorse compels him to seek an alternative to killing. He invents a potion that substitutes for blood, freeing himself and his followers from the "red thirst" or "fever" (hence the name of his steamboat, Fevre Dream). Joshua's rivals of his own kind want to continue ruthless exploitation of their prey rather than living at peace with humanity.

In addition to an early example of a "good vampire-evil vampire" conflict, FEVRE DREAM is a fascinating historical novel about the Mississippi in the mid-19th century. Joshua purchases the Fevre Dream as a refuge for himself and his few allies, and he hires steamboat veteran Abner Marsh as the riverboat's captain. Abner provides the viewpoint through which we learn about vampires. As he grows from horror at Joshua's nature to understanding that vampires, like human beings, are individuals with both good and evil traits, he serves as a representative of the reader who gradually discovers the same truths along with him. One thing I love about this novel is the depth of the relationship between the human and nonhuman heroes as they grope their way toward mutual understanding. One of my favorite lines in all of vampire fiction: When Joshua remarks that his kind have never before revealed the truth about themselves to one of the human "cattle" they feed on, Abner counters, "Well, I never lissened to no vampire before neither, so we're even. Go on. This here bull is lissenin'."

As Joshua explains to Abner, "In English, your kind might call me vampire, werewolf, witch, warlock, sorcerer, demon, ghoul...I do not like those names. I am none of them...We have no name for ourselves." In effect, his people depend for their identity on the distorted perceptions of the human prey they call "cattle." Growing up with the mistaken belief that he's human, unlike others of his kind Joshua feels guilt over killing. This emotion goads him into creating his potion and seeking a way to live without preying on human victims. The fact that his friendship with Abner is vitally important to his new way of life is demonstrated by the book's epilogue, long after the riverboat captain's death. Joshua places an elaborate tombstone on Marsh's grave and visits the site regularly for decades thereafter.

Like many "good guy vampire" novels, FEVRE DREAM uses its vampire species to present a fresh perspective on real-world racial differences and prejudices. In contrast to the difference between human and vampire, culturally imposed distinctions among human beings appear trivial. Joshua comments on the exclusion and destruction of human beings by their own kind in the name of superstition and prejudice: "I have seen your race burn old women because they were suspected of being one of us, and here in New Orleans I have witnessed the way you enslave your own kind, whip them and sell them like animals simply because of the darkness of their skin. The black people are closer to you, more kin, than ever my kind can be. You can even get children on their women, while no such interbreeding is possible between night and day." Also as in many books with similar themes, the evils committed by our kind against other people make the bloodlust of vampires seem relatively mild. Joshua highlights the horrors of war and the crimes of such notorious villains as Vlad Tepes and the woman who "whipped her maids and bled them...and rubbed the blood into her skin to preserve her beauty" -- a clear reference to Elisabeth Bathory. Most vampires, on the other hand, kill only to get blood necessary to their survival. Human criminals such as Countess Bathory commit murder because of "an evil nature," a far worse sin than acting under a biological "compulsion." There's hope for us, though. Joshua's detached view of humanity enables him to recognize the "enlightened" members of the human race, "men of science and learning" who offer the potential for acceptance and cooperation between the two species.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Dracula Tape

The fanfic impulse often expresses itself by a flip of perspective that turns the villain of a classic work into the protagonist -- an antihero or maybe even a hero. I love stories like that, if done well.

When I first read DRACULA, at the age of twelve, I wondered how the title character felt about all those incidents in which he was portrayed as the villain. Fred Saberhagen’s THE DRACULA TAPE (1975) was the book I’d always wanted to write. Count Dracula (having faked his alleged death in Bram Stoker's novel) records his side of the story on tape in a car belonging to a descendant of Jonathan and Mina Harker. While Saberhagen's Count isn't an unbelievable paragon of virtue, he's an honorable warrior rather than a caricature of diabolical evil. According to Dracula, he never intended any harm to Jonathan during the latter’s stay at the castle. Like most vampires, the Count lives mainly on animal blood; drinking human blood is an erotic experience. His encounters with both Lucy and Mina were completely consensual. He didn’t cause Lucy’s death. That ignorant fanatic Van Helsing did, by transfusing her with blood from four different men several years before the discovery of blood types. Oh, and that stuff about crosses and holy wafers? Dracula still considers himself a Catholic, even if not a very good one; he retreats from holy objects partly to maintain the illusion of their effectiveness and partly to avoid desecrating them with his enemies’ blood.

Saberhagen plays fair. Aside from fudging the date of Mina’s pregnancy, he stays faithful to all the “facts” of Bram Stoker’s novel. It becomes a different story through the Count’s interpretation of the facts. Intelligent, witty, and occasionally sensual, THE DRACULA TAPE definitely ranks as one of the top vampire novels of its decade, if not of the second half of the twentieth century. It has several sequels, of varying quality. For me, the best of the later books is the second in the series, THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE (1978). Told in the first person alternately by Dracula and Dr. Watson, it’s effective and memorable as both a vampire novel and a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. (Clearly superior, in my opinion, to Loren D. Estleman’s SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. DRACULA, published in the same year.)

THE DRACULA TAPE predates a certain bestselling novel of a vampire’s tape-recorded autobiography by a year and deserves similar recognition.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Attack of the Bloodsucking Plants

The September-October issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article about the "Vegetable Man of West Virginia." This alleged cryptid barely qualifies as a legend, having been encountered by only one person, with the incident publicized by a notorious UFO hoaxer. Still, the peculiar tale has points of interest, even though (like most "true" alien encounter stories I've come across) it reads like an attempt at science fiction by somebody who doesn't know much about science fiction. In 1968, a man named Jennings Frederick, while hunting in the West Virginia woods, claimed he was accosted by a humanoid creature about seven feet tall, with yellow eyes, pointed nose and ears, and arms "no bigger around than a quarter." It communicated, perhaps telepathically, a need for medical assistance. It then grabbed him with its long, thin fingers, pierced his skin with their "needle-like tips," and used their "suction cups" to draw his blood. Its eyes paralyzed him with a hypnotic effect. After possibly no more than a minute, the being disappeared into the surrounding woods, and Frederick heard a "humming and whistling sound" he suspected to be a spacecraft taking off.

In the drawing shown with the article, the creature looks like a grotesquely thin humanoid with wood-textured skin, a weed-like tuft on top of its head, and ears and nose like gnarled carrots.

Of course, blood-draining plants go back at least as far as H. G. Wells's classic 1894 story "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid." Numerous other authors have imitated that premise. It's not totally implausible, given the existence of carnivorous flowering plants such as Venus flytraps. Most memorably, the musical LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS presents the giant, sapient, talking (and singing) plant Audrey II, which turns out to have an extraterrestrial origin.

If we stop and think about the premise, however, bloodthirsty plants shouldn't be terribly frightening. Unlike the Vegetable Man of West Virginia, Audrey II, Wells's orchid, and other similar flowers described by SF writers are rooted in place. If you have the presence of mind not to get too close to them, they can't hurt you. They would have to either catch victims off guard, maybe by entangling them in vines, or lure them with hypnotic perfumes.

There's another flaw in the notion of hypothetical bloodthirsty vegetation, such as the West Virginia cryptid, invading from a different planet: How could the body fluids of Earth animals nourish them? Our biochemistry would surely be incompatible with theirs. Granted, though, SF writers regularly ignore this inconvenient problem. Wells himself wrote about Martians that live on the blood of Earth-human victims.

"Eripmav," a humorous story by vintage science-fiction author Damon Knight, avoids the issue by making predators and prey inhabitants of the same extraterrestrial world. On this planet, ambulatory, intelligent plants comprise the dominant species. Meat, on the other hand, grows on trees. The vegetable vampire in this story is destroyed by driving a steak (sic) through its heart.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Vampire as Alien

In horror fiction and dark fantasy, we encounter two main types of scientifically explained vampires -- vampirism as an infectious disease or as a hereditary condition. In the latter case, if the vampire belongs to a naturally evolved different species or human subspecies (as opposed to, say, a mutation in one family line, although in many stories the distinction is fuzzy or left unspecified), that's what I mean by "vampire as alien." They might either originate on Earth or migrate here from another planet.

In my opinion THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, by Suzy McKee Charnas, is one of the best vampire novels of the twentieth century. It’s one of the earliest book-length works of fiction to explore the question, “How would nature design a vampire?” (as the vampire himself rhetorically asks in the first section of the book). The inimitable Dr. Weyland, the sole survivor of his species, so old he remembers no parents or childhood, holds an acerbic view of the human race, the “cattle” he preys on. Although he can’t digest animal blood and therefore must feed on people, to avoid unwelcome attention he usually refrains from killing or seriously harming his victims. He has great physical strength and endurance and extremely keen senses, but no overtly “supernatural” abilities such as transformation or mesmerism. THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY chronicles a series of events that open him unwillingly to an emotional connection with some of the short-lived creatures he prowls among. He periodically renews himself by withdrawing into a state of suspended animation, to rise decades later with his clear-eyed predator’s perspective restored.

The naturally evolved vampire occasionally appeared in short stories of the classic pulp era, e.g., the vampire child of Richard Matheson’s “Dress of White Silk,” the family of “monsters” in Ray Bradbury’s “Homecoming,” the pragmatic predator in Jerome Bixby’s “Share Alike.” With the veritable explosion of vampire fiction that started in the mid-1970s, however, especially with a new emphasis on vampires as sympathetic protagonists, natural vampires proliferated at novel length.

Miriam in Whitley Strieber’s THE HUNGER, like Weyland, is the last of her species (as far as we can tell in this novel; the sequel, published years later, reveals otherwise). Unlike Weyland, she admits to being lonely, treats her human companions like pets, and tries to transform some of them into creatures like herself -- with consistently disastrous results. Elaine Bergstrom in SHATTERED GLASS introduces the Austra clan, subjects of several later novels. They can interbreed with human beings, and they have tremendous powers, including regeneration from severe injuries, telepathy, and the hypnotic compulsion common to many literary vampires. The nonhuman creatures in FEVRE DREAM, by George R. R. Martin, combine traits of the traditional vampire and werewolf, since they go into a frenzy of uncontrollable bloodlust for only a few days each month. They can’t reproduce with our kind, and their race is dying out because of the infrequency with which their females go into heat. Jacqueline Lichtenberg presents a race of extraterrestrial vampires in THOSE OF MY BLOOD. Stranded on Earth, they’ve interbred with humanity. One faction, the Tourists, regards human beings as simply prey, while the other group, the Residents, has a moral and emotional investment in the welfare of the people around them. These vampires can exert powerful influence over unsuspecting human minds. Octavia Butler introduces a child vampire whose family has been wiped out in FLEDGLING. Her vampires live in symbiosis with human companions who often fill the role of lovers as well as food source. S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy, beginning with A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, features a human subspecies underlying all the darkest myths and legends of vampires, werewolves, incubi, ghosts, and sorcerers. It's a homage to and updating of the same concept in Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK.

In the design of a natural vampire, many questions have to be answered, leading to practically endless intriguing variations: Can they breed with human mates? Are they solitary or pack predators? Can they consume any food besides blood? If not, does the blood have to be human, or can it come from other animals? Do they have to kill when they feed? Do they have any adverse reaction to sunlight? (Daylight didn’t destroy the classic nineteenth-century vampires such as Carmilla and Dracula, nor were all folklore vampires limited to nocturnal activity.) Are they immortal or only long-lived? What can kill them? What powers do they have? Any psychic abilities?

Many other authors besides the few mentioned here have explored these possibilities. I analyze this theme in fiction from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1990s in my nonfiction book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN:

Different Blood (This mini-essay first appeared on a now-defunct blog called VampChix. I plan to continue reposting these retro-reviews of older vampire fiction here in the near future. Since they're all over ten years old, and VampChix was taken down quite a while ago, they'll probably be new to our readers.)

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

What's Horror For?

As I mentioned last week, one of the speakers at this year's ICFA proposed that horror articulates feelings and experiences for which we often can't find the words. It gives concrete embodiment to metaphors for our fears.

In IT, which I still consider one of Stephen King's best novels (even though an older one), he creates a monster that incarnates fear. It appears to people in the form of whatever they're most afraid of. I always get irked when commenters reduce the eldrich cosmic entity in IT to a "monster clown." Pennywise is only one of It's many faces. As the narrator reflects at one point, It prefers to feed on the emotions of children because their fears are more concrete, raw, and primal than those of adults. Grown-ups are afraid of dull, mundane threats such as heart disease, old age, and financial ruin. In the nightmares of children, deeper horrors show up unmasked.

King's nonfiction work DANSE MACABRE suggests that ultimately the work of all horror is to portray our fear of death in shapes we can deal with. In horror fiction, the monster can frequently be destroyed. A boy character in King's vampire novel 'SALEM'S LOT declares, "Death is when the monsters get you."

At ICFA, our panel on changing concepts of monsters in popular culture discussed the phenomenon that classic folklore and literary/film monsters often serve as metaphors. Werewolves and other shapeshifters may represent the beast within, the animalistic or savage side of human nature, as the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does. Lycanthropy can also suggest the trauma of puberty, an uncontrollable transformation of one's body accompanied by strange new impulses. Body horror in general (for example, a pair of anthologies I recently read that focus on pregnancy and childbirth), too, portrays the experience of one's physical self in an out-of-control state. Characters such as the Phantom of the Opera and Quasimodo illustrate revulsion toward deformity and disability. Vampires serve as metaphors for disease, foreign invaders, forbidden sexuality, transgressing the barrier between life and death, forced transformation, toxic power dynamics, and allegedly threatening Others of countless types. Both vampires and zombies embody the horror of a loved one changing into an unrecognizable Other. Ghosts may awaken guilt about how we treated the dead during their lifetimes and what revenge they may take on the living.

Conversely, nowadays the horror of monsters often comes from the image of an inhuman or no-longer-human creature as the persecuted outsider. In stories of this kind, ordinary humans can become the real monsters while the Other represents the oppressed and abused victim. Frankenstein's creation, of course, is a classic example of body horror and a monstrous violation of the line between life and death as well as a victim of persecution.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

ICFA 46

The 46th annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was held in its usual Orlando hotel last week. Guests of honor were Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of MEXICAN GOTHIC and other horror fiction as well as an editor of the sadly now defunct Innsmouth Free Press online magazine, and guest scholar Sarah Juliet Lauro, a zombie specialist. The con focused on the theme of "Night Terrors" (not in the technical meaning of a specific sleep disorder, which one attendee who's a medical doctor as well as a horror film scholar brought up, but in the broader sense).

My plane took off an hour late because of an unspecified maintenance-related delay but miraculously landed only 30 minutes late. Orlando had bright sun all week. However, Thursday was unusually cool for this time of year and Friday downright chilly. Saturday warmed up nicely.

The two luncheons and the Saturday night banquet served abundant and delicious food, as usual. Happily, each meal's dessert included plenty of chocolate. (Sometimes banquet menus miss the point on that requirement.) They're always buffets, so there's something to please everybody and lots of it.

At the guest author lunch, Silvia Moreno-Garcia proposed that horror fiction articulates experiences we can't find words for in mundane contexts. She also discussed the concepts of "hostile architecture" and the horror of the "unplace." Sarah Juliet Lauro's guest scholar lunch talk elaborated on the connections among zombies, slavery, and capitalism.

Some other items I particularly enjoyed: A panel on horror in comics. A paper on Dark Lords, their motivations, typical traits, etc. A session on fairy tales and folklore, including a presentation on diseases that helped to shape the folkloric images of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. The annual iteration of "Fifty Shades of Nay," about issues of consent in speculative fiction.

I read three flash fiction pieces at a "Worlds and Words" short-reading session for multiple authors. People seemed to enjoy all of the stories, especially my own favorite, "Interview with a Reluctant Vampire." (All my experiments in flash fiction are available as free reads on my website, whose URL is below; click on "Complete Works" in the sidebar and scroll most of the way down.) I also participated in a panel called "Reimagining the Night," on the development of monsters in popular culture, especially contemporary fiction and film. It was organized by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and revenant division. A lively, fun discussion with good attendance.

The annual LRA business meeting took place on Friday, followed by a screening of THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, Hammer Studio's adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla." The film adheres fairly closely to the original story, aside from pointlessly switching the names of Le Fanu's heroine (Laura) and her friend who's killed early in the movie. The LRA awards for work produced in 2024 were announced at the Saturday banquet: Fiction, WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, by T. Kingfisher (my top choice among the many novels considered); nonfiction, THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF THE VAMPIRE, edited by Simon Bacon; other media, a tie between ABIGAIL and the latest adaptation of NOSFERATU.

My Sunday return flight launched on schedule and arrived home on time.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

45th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

I've just returned from the ICFA in Orlando, with perfect weather all four days (five counting Sunday morning departure). This year's theme was "Whimsy." Author guests were urban fantasy writer C. E. Murphy and poet and fiction writer Mary Turzillo. Special guest scholars were a husband-wife pair from Senegal, Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo. He was present in person, and she delivered her luncheon address over Zoom. I bought a copy of Turzillo's story collection COSMIC CATS AND FANTASTIC FURBALLS, a delightful "litter" of science fiction stories involving cats. I especially like "Chocolate Kittens from Mars." At one of the two luncheons, a free book given away was a poetry collection by Turzillo and Marge Simon (a constant contributor to the horror zine NIGHT TO DAWN and the cover artist for my collection DOCTOR VAMPIRE), which I picked up. At C. E. Murphy's author reading on Thursday night, her two selections impressed me so much I ordered the books as soon as possible, ROSES IN AMBER (a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling) and a funny shapeshifter romance, SOMEBUNNY TO LOVE (under the name "Zoe Chant"). I'm pretty sure that's the only were-rabbit romance I've ever read, and the were-rabbit is the heroine.

I participated in two sessions, a group "Words and Worlds" author reading and a panel on Vampire Humor, which I organized and moderated. In the "Words and Worlds" time slot, I read a short section from "Therapy for a Vampire," one of three lighthearted stories in my e-book collection DOCTOR VAMPIRE, and all of a humorous fanfic, "Support Group," in which my vampire psychiatrist, Roger Darvell, leads a therapy session for a group of vamps from popular culture. You can read it free here:

Support Group

People laughed in the right places, and I received some gratifying comments later. The vampire comedy panel discussed numerous books, movies, and TV programs, with lively input from the audience.

The Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and revenant sub-group, chose a new president. After the business meeting, we viewed the rather odd and lesser-known Hammer movie VAMPIRE CIRCUS. Popcorn was served. Then our resident film historian, Lokke Heiss, delivered a brief presentation (with slide show) on "why NOSFERATU is not an Expressionist film." Our book and media awards for both 2022 and 2023 were announced at the Saturday night banquet: Nonfiction, A HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE IN POPULAR CULTURE by Violet Fenn and CONTAGION AND THE VAMPIRE by Simon Bacon; fiction, A DOWRY OF BLOOD by S. T. Gibson and THE GOD OF ENDINGS by Jacqueline Holland; other media, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (TV series) and THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (movie).

Some other highlights: This year's version of "50 Shades of Nay," the panel on consent in speculative fiction, didn't focus on interactions among fictional characters, as I'd expected. They apparently covered that in previous years. Instead, they mostly discussed issues that arise among authors and readers, which I had never thought of in those terms -- does the reader "consent" to encounter certain potentially traumatic situations in fiction, and when are trigger warnings appropriate? They even mentioned a whole website for readers who want to be forewarned, which covers many more tropes besides animal deaths. (Unfortunately, one has to register to be able to read the material.)

Does the Dog Die?

A panel on editing practices in fantasy and SF included a retrospective on Lester and Judy-Lynn Del Rey of Ballantine Books and how they ignited the modern fantasy boom. The panelist presented a chart showing the "Tolkien score" of various authors, that is, how many tropes similar to elements in THE LORD OF THE RINGS their works contain. Cool! A session labeled "Psychology and Wonder: The New Uses of Enchantment," rather than focusing on the psychological effects of fairy tales on children as I'd expected (although they did get into that toward the end), delved into suggested procedures for counseling Donkey in the Shrek series with techniques from various contemporary schools of psychology. Also a lot of fun.

My plane arrived in Baltimore on time Sunday; however, it landed without my suitcase because a batch of luggage for that flight had been left behind in Orlando. After much waiting around, I filled out a report, and we drove home. Southwest delivered the errant bag early the next morning. Too bad it couldn't have walked onto the plane on little feet by itself, like the Luggage in Pratchett's Discworld series.

Happy Spring Equinox!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Vampires Rule

I recently read a novel with an unusual slant on a world ruled by vampires, DAY BOY, by Trent Jamieson. It takes place in a rather dreary post-apocalyptic world. The narrator is a teenage "day boy," a vampire's mortal servant. These vampires suffer from the movie-invented disability of helplessness during the sunlit hours, so they can't get along without human helpers. One thing I admire about this novel is the realistic treatment of predator-prey ratios. The narrator's small town harbors only about five "Masters" (vampires). While they don't normally kill their donors, they still exercise caution about expanding their own numbers.

It's listed on Goodreads here, with reviews, including mine:

Day Boy

Books and films about vampire-dominated worlds too often portray societies overrun by the bloodthirsty undead, with ordinary humans as a small, hunted remnant. There's no way that model would be sustainable unless the vampires can survive on animal blood and/or a reliable supply of bagged blood. For the latter, they would still need human victims to "donate" unless a synthetic substitute has been invented, as in the Sookie Stackhouse series and its TV adaptation, TRUE BLOOD. And even with the artificial blood supply, in that series the undead remain a minority.

S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy, beginning with A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, features a subspecies of Homo sapiens who combine the traits of vampires, werebeasts, and sorcerers, with the power to warp reality in their close vicinity as well as control human minds. They aspire to restore the prehistoric Empire of Shadow, when they openly treated the human majority as livestock and slaves. The vampire-shapeshifter species is a tiny minority of the total population, though, as apex predators should be. For instance, in the present the principal antagonist reigns over her own private village where she's the only resident Shadowspawn. Its human residents are well treated, a few supplying her with blood in regular rotation, while most serve her in other capacities or just keep the town running. The blood donors ("lucies") have to endure only one downside to their pampered lifestyle, their mistress's cheerfully sadistic personality.

A 1991 anthology, UNDER THE FANG, collects a variety of original stories on the theme of vampire-dominated societies, including a collaboration between Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Suzy McKee Charnas in which Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain and Charnas's Professor Weyland meet in unpleasant circumstances. You can find copies of the book here:

Under the Fang

Considering that vampires are typically envisioned as solitary predators, it seems likely that if they did take over the world, they wouldn't bother with the day-to-day business of ruling. They would probably control human officials who'd do the actual work, while the structures of society would function much as usual, aside from the obligation of catering to the needs of the vampire lords. As Stirling's evil Shadowspawn princess asks in A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, "Do I LOOK like a bureaucrat?"

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt