Yeah, I wrote a vampire story — wanna make something of it?
by Rob - August 3rd, 2009.Filed under: Short Fiction.
John Joseph Adams has just published the anthology By Blood We Live, which is full of vampire stories — including one by yours truly.
My story actually was previously published (so please don’t accuse me of jumping on the current bandwagon!):
“Peking Man” copyright 1996 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as the lead story in Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula, edited by Edward E. Kramer, White Wolf, Atlanta, October 1996.
And, when it was reprinted in my own collection Iterations and Other Stories, I had this to say about it:
Ed Kramer wanted to do an anthology in honor of the hundredth anniversary of a particular literary character. That character wasn’t one I was fascinated with, but I did have a lifelong interest in paleoanthropology, although at this point, I’d never written any fiction on that theme (later, I went on to write a trilogy about Neanderthals). But having recently looked at a picture of a Chinese Homo erectus skull, and having thought, gee, those perfect, square teeth must be fake, an idea occurred to me that I thought might be right for Ed’s book.
To my delight, Ed used this story as the lead piece in his anthology (editors usually put what they consider to be the best stories in the first and last slots). I occasionally think about expanding the premise of this story into a novel; perhaps someday I will.
“Peking Man” went on to win Canada’s Aurora Award for Best English Short Story of the Year. You can read it, and 32 others, in John’s new anthology, on sale now.
Pictured: Robert J. Sawyer receives the Aurora Award for “Peking Man” from Babylon 5 star Richard Biggs, 1 November 1997.
Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com