Girls' Night Out

[jonathan122]

Girls' Night Out - edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble 1997)

"Twenty-nine female vampire stories."

Introduction - Stefan Dziemianowicz
The Insufficient Answer - Robert Aickman
Mrs. Amsworth - E. F. Benson
The Scent of Vinegar - Robert Bloch
Good Lady Ducayne - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Sometimes Salvation - Pat Cadigan
The Brotherhood of Blood - Hugh B. Cave
A Mystery of the Campagna - Anne Crawford
For the Blood is the Life - F. Marion Crawford
I Vant to be Alone - Barb D'Amato
Nellie Foster - August Derleth
Madeleine - Barbara Hambly
Ken's Mystery - Julian Hawthorne
Revelations in Black - Carl Jacobi
The First Time - K. W. Jeter
Girl's Night Out - Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg
Night Laughter - Ellen Kushner
La Dame - Tanith Lee
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes - Fritz Leiber
Dress of White Silk - Richard Matheson
Shambleau - C. L. Moore
My Dear Emily - Joanna Russ
American Gothic - Ray Russell
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen - Micheal Shea
The End of the Story - Clark Ashton Smith
The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady - Brian Stableford
The Last Grave of Lill Warran - Manly Wade Wellman
Luella Miller - Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
...To Feel Another's Woe - Chet Williamson
The Canal - Everil Worrell

[dem]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, jonathan. I wonder how much Greenberg actually contributes to these shared anthologies because i'm sure the excellent Dziemianowicz and Robert Weinberg would be more than capable of doing the job either together or individually - perhaps he's just responsible for commissioning original stories? Apart from the usual suspects, this looks very much like the more recent material has been recycled from previous vampire anthologies bearing Greenberg's name - Vamps, Ladies Of The Night, Vampre Detectives and the consistently fun Celebrity Vampires, maybe more - rounded off with odds and sods from Masques II, Alien Sex & Co. That probably reads like a criticism, but on the contrary - Girls' Night Out looks like a marvellous collection. I'd buy it if i saw a copy hanging around, put it that way.

[jonathan122]

You'd certainly hope that with three editors they could do something a bit more interesting than just ordering the stories alphabetically, especially if it means that Aickman's story (which is great, but completely unrepresentative of the rest of the collection) is first off the bat. However, it's certainly a fine collection of stories, and I'm tempted to award extra marks to whoever realised that anyone who was likely to pick up a book about female vampire stories would undoubtedly already own at least fifteen copies of "Carmilla", and didn't really need a sixteenth.

[dem]

I'm sure Greenberg must have been tempted! He'd already used Carmilla in Vamps (Daw, 1987) ..... along with Ken's Mystery, The Last Grave of Lill Warran, Luella Miller, Dress of White Silk, The Girl with the Hungry Eyes and For the Blood is the Life, all of which return from the grave for Girls' Night Out!

You can understand commercial anthologies of the Best Vampire/ Horror Stories strain resurrecting Carmilla yet again, but it's really taking liberties when they truncate it without warning you in advance that it's been abridged by a souless editor who clearly has no love of his or her subject matter (thank you Anthology Of Fear, Marshall Cavendish, 1988)

Less easy to comprehend is the reason for it's inclusion in an anthology of otherwise original, or at least, contemporary fiction by female writers, as in.

Pam Keesey (ed.) - Daughters Of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Stories (Cleis, 1993)

Introduction - Pam Keesey

Zana - Dracula Retold
Jody Scott - I, Vampire
J. S. Le Fanu - Carmilla
Elaine Bergstrom - Daughter Of The Night
Jewelle Gomez - Louisiana: 1850
Robbi Sommers - Lilith
Karen Marie Christa Minns - Virago
Pat Califia - The Vampire
Katherine V. Forrest - Oh Captain, My Captain
Anna Livia - Minimax


Blurb:

"Sexual and seductive, the lesbian vampire is a creature of great appetites, the quintessential bad girl who defies the rules. 'Daughters Of Darkness' will get under your skin, piercing with tales of desire so sharply erotic you'll swear you've been bitten!

'Daughters Of Darkness' collects the most popular authors of lesbian erotica writing today - along with the most famous lesbian vampire story of all time, 'Carmilla', written in 1871 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Oh, and I certainly agree. The Insufficient Answer is not the ideal opener for this, or indeed any collection of stories unless they all happen to be written by Robert Aickman.