When asked how he would like to follow his huge success with The Black Lizard Book of Big Pulps, Otto Penzler immediately chimed in with "Horror."
His editor felt that was a little far-reaching and suggested narrowing it down to vampires. Why? Where have you been in the last 12 months?
The huge success of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels and the movie adaptations should be explanation enough. Then there's Charlaine Harris with her
HBO series True Blood and the books that inspired them and rumors of a remake of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires are everywhere.
Seems like every other book I have picked up lately has vampires in it. Even my 70-year-old
mother has noticed the trend. In an effort to break the nightmares she was having from reading so many vampire tales, she picked up a popular romance author. A few pages in, you got it...
vampires.
Otto Penzler did a commendable job gathering stories to compose this collection, the earliest
reaching back to ancient Greece and moving forward to well-known modern-day authors such as Anne Rice, Harlan Ellison, Stephen King and tons more, and the classics like H.P. Lovecraft, Tannith Lee and Edgar Allan Poe between.
Surely in this giant collection of 84 tales the vampire hungry can get their fill. A wonderful collection well put together.