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Post by dem bones on May 3, 2009 18:46:52 GMT
Fred Saberhagen - The Dracula Tape (Warner, 1975: Tor, 1989) Cover art: Glenn Hastings Blurb: Brain Stoker portrayed him as a terrifying creature of the night, heartless, soul-less, preying on the pure and innocent. The truth is far different. Dracula is no villain but a tower of strength, eternally protecting his land and his people from the depredations of invaders. Those who hunt him are the true villains, for they seek to kill what they do not understand. Here, then, is the story of the Count's greatest love, Mina Harker, and the bloodthirsty vampire hunters hose cruel pursuit drove the master of the night to actions ever more ruthless. Listen, as Count Dracula sets the record straight....Saberhagen landed the Bram Stoker's Dracula novelisation chores on the strength of The Dracula Tapes, and it's easy to see why. This, the first book in the 'New Dracula' series is as brilliantly executed as it is gleefully irreverent. True to the blurb, it's Stoker's novel from the perspective of the vampire, with Van Helsing depicted as a religious maniac and murderer, Mina Harker as an enthusiastic blood donor and Dracula himself the real victim of the piece, totally undeserving of the bad publicity afforded him by his self-serving enemies. Considering that he's supposed to have once been known to man as Vlad the Impaler, he must surely be used to being on the receiving end of hurtful propaganda by now, but no; our man, it seems, is quite the sensitive wallflower at times and, in this instance, his problems began with Jonathan Harker. The Count is keen to stress that Harker was a very decent young man, but, alas, hopelessly neurotic. Why should his good name suffer just because a naive English cuckold got the wrong end of the stick and entertained paranoid fantasies about him? As to the lovely ladies, well! Far from being the helpless victims of a monster as Stoker would have us believe, Lucy Westenra and that 'pure as the driven snow' floozy Mina Harker came onto him. Mina was so smitten after their first encounter, it was all the poor old undead fellow could do to fight her off for so long! He was as upset as anyone when Lucy met with such an appalling death, but it was all that lunatic Van Helsing's doing, leaning on the simpleton Arthur to whack a stake through her just so the repressed old perve could get a hard on! And so it goes on. Dracula's arguments against Stoker and Van Helsing's smear campaign are so compelling, you could weep for him as the most wronged man since Jesus (which reminds me: we haven't done The Last Days Of Christ The Vampire yet. That should be fun). A minor criticism. This reader would not be the first to suggest ...Tapes is best read once and then worshipped from afar (unless you really detest Stoker's classic romp, in which case you'll want to keep a copy handy at all times to annoy Dracu-bores). Out of necessity, Saberhagen quotes very liberally from the original, and second time around, knowing what's coming, you notice it's less an inspired horror comedy, more a sharp piece of literary criticism in it's best clothes. It's still very slickly handled, but ultimately he's doing the same as those who would spend 200 pages outlining every last inconsistency in Frankenstein. And it doesn't feature a giant, plague-spreading rat, either. Unlike ....
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Post by killercrab on Jan 15, 2012 19:29:29 GMT
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Post by Michael Connolly on Mar 29, 2019 13:14:48 GMT
The cover of the first edition of The Dracula Tape (Warner Books, 1975) makes it look like a lightweight spoof. It's much better than that, using inconsistencies etc in Stoker's original novel to provide a new and solid counterplot. It also works as a black comedy and could well be the best single spinoff.
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Post by jamesdoig on Mar 29, 2019 21:52:03 GMT
Looks like it's a book that's never attracted decent cover art. Here's the 1980 Ace version: Can't say I've ever read it.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Mar 30, 2019 13:46:48 GMT
Looks like it's a book that's never attracted decent cover art. Here's the 1980 Ace version: Can't say I've ever read it. That's the cover of the edition that I have. I highly recommend it. It's better than the other spinoffs that I read later. I can remember nothing about Dracula the Undead by Freda Warrington. I can't even remember which one of Peter Tremayne's trilogy that I read. I've just checked. It must have been The Revenge of Dracula. The cover looks familiar.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 31, 2019 19:42:03 GMT
That's the cover of the edition that I have. I highly recommend it. It's better than the other spinoffs that I read later. I can remember nothing about Dracula the Undead by Freda Warrington. I can't even remember which one of Peter Tremayne's trilogy that I read. I've just checked. It must have been The Revenge of Dracula. The cover looks familiar. I like the Warrington. As a direct sequel to Stoker it is not bad. It is better than the Kalogridis trilogy. I have the Tremayne as a omnibus collection, only read the first one and have no recollection either.Saberhagen I never bothered with, though. I couldn't get into his sf and therefore had no interest in this.
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