Vampires have come a long way since I began reading about them as a kid back in the ‘70s: King’s 'Salem's Lot (1975), Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), Yarbro’s Hôtel Transylvania (1978), etc. Just look at some of the wildly innovative vampire stories published in the last few years – The Greyfriar by Clay and Susan Griffith; The Passage by Justin Cronin; The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer by Lucy Weston; Mel Nicolai’s The Shake; etc.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the stellar Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead anthology, released last September, which featured 24 never-before-published stories that imagined a new breed of bloodsucker, one that has evolved from Bram Stoker’s archetype: a vampire for the 21st century.
Some of the stories in the Evolve anthology were unarguable masterworks: Colleen Anderson’s “An Ember Among the Fallen” envisioned a world ruled by vampirii where humans were nothing more than mindless cattle kept in pens and fed specific diets to enhance the vintage of their blood; “Mother of Miscreants” by Jennifer Greylyn revolved around the Mother of Vampires, Lilith, meeting one of her children and giving him an impromptu history lesson; and Claude Lalumière’s “All You Can Eat, All the Time,” about the nighttime misadventures of a goth chick from rural Manitoba in Montreal; to name just a few.
Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, just released a few days ago, takes the theme of the original Evolve anthology – vampires in the 21st century – and advances it one step further. How will vampires evolve in the centuries to come? How will future events – like radical technological advances, the apocalypse, colonization of space, etc. – affect the nosferatu?
Like the original Evolve anthology, Evolve 2 contained some remarkable bloodsucking gems. David Tocher’s impressive “Chelsea Mourning” was a post-apocalyptic tale that followed a survivor of the Scorching – an asteroid strike that essentially destroyed human civilization – as she struggles to survive amidst the ruins of Montreal. “[The city] had become a disemboweled corpse, stone and steel guts scattered amongst the bones of its streets and avenues.” Chelsea Mills is an emotionally scarred young woman whose nightmarish past rivals that of her current hellish existence. She’s also a telepath – and when she is captured by a colony of vampires, an unlikely redemptive path shows itself…
John Shirley’s creepy “Soulglobe” takes place on an asteroid – “a nearly perfect sphere a little over a kilometer and a half in diameter… a gigantic, transparent bubble of crystal” – that has become the resting place of affluent (and eccentric) humans. Floating within this structure, the corpses become part of a kinetic sculpture and are choreographed in a “grand balletic display” – but the deep space necropolis turns out to be anything but restful…
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Puddle of Blood” is set in a future Mexico City and chronicles the fateful meeting of an intrepid street urchin with a mesmerizing woman who happens to be one of Mexico’s legendary native vampire species.
Steve Vernon’s “The Faith of Burning Glass” is another post-apocalyptic gem. Set in a nuclear wasteland, the story follows a nameless vampire – a "walking shadow" – as he travels the earth in search of food. “We emptied the sky. We poured it out like the last drop of cheap wine. That deodorized confidence that kept the earth safe, the Colgate shield that surrounded us, the ozone that distanced the earth from the sun’s blind rape had swallowed itself down into nothing, leaving us naked to the burning eye of fate.”
Michael Lorenson’s “Six Underground” brilliantly fused courtroom drama with the vampire mythos in a story revolving around the murder trial of a gang of boys accused of killing a young woman.
Bev Vincent’s “Red Planet” envisions a vampire on Mars, Kelley Armstrong’s “The List” is set in her Otherworld universe and follows Zoe Takano as she gives a poser an invaluable life lesson; and Sandra Kasturi’s darkly lyrical “The Slowing of the World” – the perfect story to end the anthology with – chronicles a pair of vampires preparing for the Long Night:
“When we waken, the world will be cleansed of its fever; the cool palm of ice laid on the brow of the earth will give us all a new beginning, an immaculate story.”
Evolve 2 may even be better than its predecessor – and that’s quite a statement considering how spectacular Evolve was.
Bottom line: hardcore fans of vampire fiction who don’t read these anthologies, aren’t.
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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