Darrell Schweitzer (ed.) - The Secret History of Vampires

[andydecker]

Darrell Schweitzer (ed.) – The Secret History of Vampires (DAW Books, 2007, 310 pages)

Content:

Darrell Schweitzer - Introduction
Harry Turtledove - Under St. Peter's
Mike Resnick - Two Hunters in Manhattan
P. D. Cacek - Smoke and Mirrors
Ron Goulart - Garbo Quits
Sarah A. Hoyt - Blood of Dreams
Carrie Vaughn - A Princess of Spain
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Harpy
John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer - Honoured Be Her Name
Gregory Frost - Ill-Met in Ilium
Brian Stableford - The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Ian Watson - Bohemian Rhapsody
Tanith Lee - Green Wallpaper

Keith Taylor - Sepulchres of the Undead

This is basically the same book as The Time of the Vampires only without Greenberg and a decade later. But is is a better anthology of this tired topic.

Schweitzer's introduction is more interesting than the boring Elrod introduction, and while he also has comissioned a lot of duds, he has some entertaining winners. Way above everything else and worth the price alone is Ian Watson's Bohemian Rhapsody. It is about Tycho Brahe, pet astrologer at Emporer Rudolph's crazy court in Prague shortly before the 30 Years War. Rudolph believes himself to be bitten by a vampire and contemplates suicide. Brahe stumbles about the first Chinese Take Out in Prague with its mysterious cook/sex-magician Su Nü who proceeds to rescue the Emporer by getting rid of the vampire essence. The story is wickedly funny and makes the best of its colourful setting. There also is a fake joust with a midget on a giraffe.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Harpy is one of her Saint-Germain stories which amounts to not much more than a Highlander flashback. Vampire Saint-Germain meets Socrates' suffering wife Xantippe before she and her many children gets banned from Athens because of the teachings of her husband. Not one drop of blood gets spilled here, and you have to grant Yarbro that the ending is pleasantly ambigious and the writing is nice. On the other hand, there is no plot except to represent history slandered Xantippe in a different light.

Mike Resnick's Two Hunters in Manhattan is a by-the-numbers story of Teddy Roosevelt as police commissioner in New York hunting a vampire and staking him. It is competently written, but that's it.

Biggest disappointment may be Betancourt's and Schweitzer's Honoured Be Her Name. The narrator meets Sir Henry McPherson again in Alexandria who has vanished in 1899 on their archeological dig. McPherson hasn't aged a day and tells of scheming vampire Cleopatra who still wants to rule the world. Now she is recruiting Englishmen. This tries so hard to be a Pulp pastiche right down to the twist at the end, but it left me cold and didn't work.

Also not very good is P. D. Cacek's Smoke and Mirrors which teams up Conan Doyle and Houdini. It just reminded me of the awful but politically correct tv show Houdini & Doyle which mercifully only lasted 10 episodes.