Horror and Leprosy: Pavlov Salivating in a Bookstore

So there I am in Borders with a gift-card from my Auntie Gail, a woman my Mom knew from way back that still sends Christmas gifts after all of these years, even though she isn't a blood-relative and hasn't seen anyone's face in maybe 10 or 15 years from my family. So I'm wandering the horror-stacks, and there is Brian Lumley's, "Necroscope."

I read the book when I was 17 - please, take your kid to a licensed pastoral counselor, something AAGH! - anyway, I survived and I'm not totally mutilated - and it was in beach-market paperback for 7.99. I couldn't resist, but as I'm turning the book over, I'm blushing like a salivating-Pavlov thinking about going up to the counter and buying the book. As I recall, the really bad scene out of Lumley is in the Necroscope sequel, but if it isn't - I'm skipping the scene.

The thing that is so amazing about the Lumley-scopes is that you have a vampire-gothic horror novel that doesn't remotely resemble Anne Rice. The only other one on the shelves like that today is "Salem's Lot," by Stephen King, and that is actually one of King's best novels as well. The wonderful part about "Salem's" is that it is more like the original Van Helsing, but also has King's kind of "country," or "Super-America," feel. Also, that novel is plenty scary and has no splatter, or maybe just one scene. That would be an okay 17 or 18 year old book, and wouldn't require a licensed pastoral counselor.

Otherwise, every vampire novel on the shelf now is a Vamp-ricer. The original "Interview with the Vampire," ay-may-zing, and deserves to be on the literature shelf and will probably get there someday. Many women like "Queen of the Durned," as a pillow-book because of its powerful female heroine, and the book is okay, but their is accounting for taste. At her best, Rice is somewhere between "dry and to-style," and "gothic prose poetry," and that makes me a bit of a student, as I am going for a similar type of prose style in some of my story-telling.

We have got to talk about her husband Stan Rice and his poetry in a later article, but let us go back to Lumley. In Lumley's Necroscope we have a kind of convergence. First off, the vampires, "vampyri," in his book, are a soft-science-fiction creature. There is a parasite that invades the nervous-system when the vampyri's contagion takes hold, and a young vampyri is little more than a bloodthirsty zombie, and an old vampyri is an Underworld demi-god of incredible villainy. Also, there are certain beings other than a human that the contagion can invade, and this makes for some tasty-weird blood-monsters in the book.

The main figure of the novel is, "The Necroscope," who is a young man who hears the voices of the dead speaking to him. Downside is that he is nuts because of the ability and everyone thinks he is nuts. Upside is that he has access to all of the knowledge of any dead being, and as he ages he figures out how to access that knowledge with some control. He has a more normal name, but I haven't opened the book to find what it is yet.

So as Necroscope starts, the KGB have found a Vampyri in ROMANIA! Transylvania - as it later is revealed. They have isolated the parasite, and they want to use it as a biological weapon. And then, as you might imagine, the biological weapon starts eating everything in sight in Siberia. So - once the remainder of the novel gets going, the Necroscope undertakes to eradicate the Vampyri, Van Helsing style, from the face of planet Earth. Life gets far more evil when the Necroscope finds the Vampyri's home planet, and that is when the book becomes astoundingly vicious.

It is clear that this Lumley-guy wrote the whole book. The book is organized, well-plotted, scary, and if that really sick scene isn't in the first book - not over the invisible boundary line between good horror fiction and "don't walk into my house with that in your Borders bag." Still, this Lumley guy was not a healthy psychology, and I strongly recommend avoiding any of the sequels.

I am sitting here chortling to myself thinking about the novel. I am not letting the cat out of the bag, but let us just say that when the Necroscope arrives on the Vampyri's home planet that we can no longer joke about tasty-weird blood-monsters. It is very well-realized fiction, and it is great storytelling, but this stuff is a bit exotiques! Look, setting up a novel this way is generally a good idea. You've got vampires, you've got a parasite, you've got a government taking advantage of biological devilry and the inevitable mishap that results - and one man to save the day! RAHR!

There is always room for another such novel, and sure - it is nice to try for something more exotic in your writing. However - in the end, even with this barbarian setup, exotiques doesn't quite give us the flavor! Alright, alright. Look, I'm going to be even more lame than usual. If you're 17 or 18 and you like vampires, which is per usual, go ask your parents about Salem's Lot, and see what they have to say. As far as Necroscope, maybe 30 isn't old enough, and after 21 in the states you want to watch what form of liquor you're imbibing while reading the bastard. I'm going to have to drink less coffee when I get to the second half of the book, as I might start having ether-visions.

Horror-fiction is great, but I'm laughing at myself trying to figure out how I got to the counter and bought a simple mass-market paperback. Lumley is what they used to call "black-dog," in publishing - this was before the White Wolf subsidiary - and, "man be not proud!" I can't resist though, and I'd like to re-read a very queer old friend. If that scene is in there, I'll either skip it and trash the book (oh another funny story, but Hellbound Heart first) or I'll cut the pages out and see if I want to pillow-book this one again. Next on the list, leprous-horror, part exotiques and part deux! (My french is pidgin in English!)

Addendum: (That pron tag ought to increase my hits! LOL! Still, I want the tag for a reason other than shameless self-promotion.)