Skal, David J
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1952- ) US author whose first novel, Scavengers (1980), suggests some sf basis for a plot involving Memory transfer in a corrupt world. His second, When We Were Good (1981), evokes a powerful sense of cultural despair in the tale of a sterile world in which Genetically Engineered hermaphrodites (see Gender) fail to represent an emblem of hope for the terminal remnants of normal humanity. A sense that Skal is by inclination a horror writer is intensified by the entropic dismay evoked by Antibodies (1988), a short accusatory trawl through the subcultures of California, where sf characters emit pretentious twaddle about Transcendence and the military-industrial complex conspires to transform pseudo-hippies into spare Computer parts; all this is told with a sense of gnawing revulsion.
Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of "Dracula" from Novel to Stage to Screen (1990), The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993) and Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture (1998), are all extremely competent nonfiction studies; here and in other nonfiction texts [see Checklist below] Skal's main emphasis is on the Vampire in literature and in the Cinema. [JC]
David John Skal
born Garfield Heights, Ohio: 21 June 1952
works
- Scavengers (New York: Pocket Books, 1980) [pb/Gerry Daly]
- When We Were Good (New York: Pocket Books, 1981) [pb/Gerry Daly]
- Antibodies (New York: Congdon and Weed, Inc, 1988) [hb/J K Potter]
works as editor
- Dracula: The Ultimate Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play (New York: St Martin's Press, 1993) [anth: various text and essays, including Dracula: The Vampire Play in Three Acts (1933) by John L Balderston: hb/]
- Vampires: Encounters with the Undead (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2001) [anth: hb/]
nonfiction
- Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of "Dracula" from Novel to Stage to Screen (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1990) [nonfiction: Bram Stoker: hb/]
- Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of "Dracula" from Novel to Stage to Screen (London: Faber and Faber, 2004) [nonfiction: exp of the above: Bram Stoker: hb/]
- The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1993) [nonfiction: Horror in SF: hb/Edward Gorey]
- Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywood's Master of the Macabre (New York: Anchor Books, 1995) with Elias Savada [nonfiction: hb/]
- V Is for Vampire: An A to Z Guide to Everything Undead (New York: Plume, 1996) [nonfiction: Vampires: pb/Todd Radom]
- Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1998) [nonfiction: Horror in SF: hb/]
- Romancing the Vampire: Collectors Vault (Atlanta, Georgia: Whitman Publishing, 2009) [nonfiction: Vampires: hb/]
- Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, The Man Who Wrote Dracula (New York: Liveright, 2016) [nonfiction: Vampires: hb/]
links
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