Gay vampires. Blues-playing vampires. Taboo-breaking vampires. Bureaucratic vampires. Family-oriented vampires. Oedipal vampires. Sick vampires. Vampires who appear on Oprah. Friendly. Vicious. Helpful. Hurtful. Nancy Kilpatrick has gathered them all in Evolve, a collection featuring twenty-four 100% red-blooded Canadian writers determined to stretch the vampiric envelope.
The premise behind Evolve is a simple one: just as humans have undergone a social evolution from the time a caveperson picked up that thigh bone and smashed his/her neighbour over the head, so vampires have evolved from the somewhat crude lurkers of the 18th and 19th century. One of the results of such evolution is that the evolved ones bear only a slight resemblance to the original. Evolve is an excellent example of this, demonstrating changes that would have made these vampires unrecognizable to Ur-vampire Dracula.
Once the aristocrats of the horror genre, today’s vampires often resemble the disaffected and weary outsider whose most common haunt is the dingy, low-lit bar. The vampire reflects a post-modern lack of centrality, of clearly defined lines between good and evil. In story after story, vampires come across as uncertain, ambivalent, questioning themselves and their destiny. There is a fatalism here that the Count would not have tolerated.
Not matter at what evolutionary stage, however, a good vampire story should make the reader feel somewhat icky while at the same time envious (which is why teens are so attracted to these types of tales). As Kilpatrick says: “Vampires still have the same struggle … they are torn between wanting to love and be loved by us and wanting to rip out our throats to get to our blood.”
This collection features plenty of stories that get this reaction from the reader. In Michael Skeet’s “Red Blues,” a night club jazz musician/vampire uses his riffs to captivate audience members who are looking for a thrill. If that thrill turns out to have a fatal ending, well … Kevin Cockle’s “Sleepless in Calgary” has a disillusioned office worker become involved with a vampire who promises to help him cross over – with unexpected results. Rhea Rose brings together street children, a mysterious disease and an injured vampire in “Alia’s Angel.” In Natasha Beaulieu’s “Evolving,” a wannabe is desperate to become a vampire and then learns that his ideas of who is and isn’t a vampire are outmoded.
Obviously, in a collection featuring this many writers, there are bound to be some that the reader may not fancy, or will find lacking in the type of innovation that fictional evolution calls for. However, there are also some stories that will stand out and sparkle, that come across as an exceptionally new take on what some think is rapidly becoming an over-plowed field.
Among these is Claude Lalumière’s “All You Can Eat, All The Time,” his female-narrated first-person take on vampirism as an extension of the hyperactive, quick-to-burn, fear-of-growing-old generation being spawned at this very moment. In “An Ember Amongst The Fallen,” Colleen Anderson gives the reader an all-too-visual/tactile glimpse at a world where humans are used as cattle for food and blood – and the results when the metaphoric apartheid barriers are crossed.
One of the most fascinating stories is Jennifer Greylyn’s “Mother of Miscreants.” Here, she turns the mythology inside out, introducing us to Lilith Adams, the mother of all vampires. Lilith is confronted by one of her angry children after she decides to come clean by writing a book on the myths and misconceptions that have accumulated over the millennia. It is meta-fiction at its best and puts it all into delightful focus. Not to mention adding a goddess element.
Now that’s what I call some truly creative evolution.
Michael Mirolla’s latest novel The Facility is due out in the Fall of 2010.
