Embracing the Dark | Vampyres Only

Review: 7/10

Embracing the Dark
Review by Marie Kuda, submitted on 15-Nov-1991

Embracing the dark.
Ed. by Eric Garber.
Nov. 1991. 90 p. Alyson, paper, $8.95.
ISBN 1-55583-167-2. Galley.

In his too brief introduction, Garber examines the horror-thriller genre, concluding that it is "overwhelmingly misogynous, anti-sex, and homo-hostile." These 11 stories, most receiving first publication, "signal something new."

In "Ferata," Kij Johnson creates a lesbian vampire who wreaks vengeance on rapists; Jewelle Gomez's "Joe Lewis Was a Heck of a Fighter" features the lesbian vampire star of her _Gilda Stories_ [BLK Je 1 91]. John Payton Cooke's "Strawberry Man" addicts first a male couple, then a rock group, and finally a whole clamoring disco-punk audience to his sweet, succulent, sensuous fruit. "Manor" by German homosexual-rights pioneer Karl Heinrich Ulrich (1825-96) deals with nocturnal visits from the grave, and Jay B. Laws' "Imagine" has a port writer visited nightly by his own creation who communicates via the typewriter, warning him "not to turn on the lights." Featuring occasional explicit sex, the collection may be uneven, but it's definitely not bad for the first anthology of both gay male and lesbian horror fiction.

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