Darrell Schweitzer: Full MoonCity

Icons of Horror and the Supernatural (2007) that the predominant image of the werewolf in Western culture stems, not from literature or folklore or true crime, but from Lon Chaney Jr.’s portrayal of the unfortunate Larry Talbot in the 1941 film The Wolf Man , which defines the “rules” against which subsequent werewolf stories are measured, even when those rules are broken. We all know the “standard” Hollywood werewolf: the unwilling victim who was very likely bitten by another werewolf, who cannot control his urges whenever the full moon rises, who kills and cannot be stopped by anything other than a silver bullet. Wolfbane may repel him, but it’s the silver bullet that’s needed in the end, very often delivered in a moment of tragedy, as in the 1961 film The Curse of the Werewolf , by someone near and dear to the raging man-beast. Perhaps the most significant change the movies have made on our image of the werewolf is that, due to technical limitations not fully overcome until An American Werewolf in London (1981), most movie werewolves move about on two legs. They are hulking, hairy, clawed, wolf-faced men. Werewolves in folklore and literature have generally been wolves , with four legs and a tail, even if sometimes very large. Since the printed page does not have the same limitation, most literary werewolves, even post-Lon Chaney, are of the four-legged kind.

There’s another great line from the film Young Frankenstein, that springs to mind. The heir to the Frankenstein legacy (Gene Wilder) is being driven from the train station by hunchbacked, pop-eyed Igor (Marty Feldman). A wolf howls.

“ Werewolf …” says Frankenstein with obvious dread.

Igor nods to one side. “ There, wolf…”

It’s a great throwaway, but, Dear Reader- here wolves .

Inherently, a werewolf anthology must have werewolves in it. The present volume has plenty, and at least one, by some stretch of the definition, in every story. The one narrative strategy that will definitely not work in this context is the Ultimate Shocking Revelation: “My God! He really was a werewolf!”

We know that. Having gotten such superficialities out of the way, then, the authors, who include some of the most prominent fantasists of our time, can still render any number of changes on the werewolf theme. Each story addresses the question of the werewolf in a city environment. It is one thing for the wolf-man to undergo his transformation, then race howling across the relative privacy of the rural countryside, killing sheep, deer, and the occasional hapless peasant. But, we wonder, as the world changes and as populations move off the land and into vast, artificial jungles of stone and concrete, what is a werewolf to do? How can he (or she) blend in?

The resultant stories repeatedly break the Hollywood rules. There is a notable shortage of silver bullets. Most of these werewolves live in the contemporary big city, in a world of cell phones and subways. There are terrifying werewolves, funny ones, sympathetic ones, unsympathetic ones, and more. You can meet a werewolf on the Internet. Greg Frost shows what happens when a werewolf just happens to be among the bystanders at a bank robbery. Carrie Vaughn’s continuing character Kitty (already the star of a series of novels) is a werewolf who has been outed in the national media and who hosts a late-night talk show for uncanny creatures. The werewolf packs of Kitty’s world have a great deal in common with biker gangs. Esther Friesner’s werewolf is a child who lives among the very rich in the best part of Manhattan. Lisa Tuttle’s Austin, Texas, werewolves attend a support group. Holly Black provides a striking portrait of the modern warewolf as performance artist. Ian Watson returns to Eastern Europe, the home of so many of our scariest legends, but it is the modern Romania of the post-Ceau?escu era. Tanith Lee suggests that a modern British werewolf might want to live comfortably in the city while commuting to the countryside to carry out his bloody business.

The possibilities multiply. Lycanthropy can be a curse, a lifestyle, or even, in some cases, a solution.

The wolves are there, lurking in the dark of our own minds.

Happy hunting!

– Darrell Schweitzer

The first meeting of the Lycanthropy Support Group came nowhere near Mel’s best fantasies; in fact, it barely missed disaster.

Besides herself, only seven people turned up, a number that made the classroom she’d reserved at the Town & Country campus of Houston Community College look ridiculously, over-optimistically large.

She watched them straggle in: two couples, two single men, one single woman. Mel took an immediate dislike to that one. She was pretty, in a blonde and doll-like manner, very petite, and way overdressed in a beige cashmere sweater, stiletto heels, and gold jewelry. None looked anything like Mel’s idea of a werewolf, but the woman was the worst of all, a designer-accessorized Chihuahua.

She was shopping, Mel decided; drawn by the lure of the supernatural to seek out something ahead of trend, not available in any store, soon to be a must-have bit of arm-candy: a werewolf boyfriend.

Just like me, said the bitchy voice inside her head. You’re nothing special, just desperate to hook up with somebody who is.

Mel ignored that self-hating part of herself. It always cropped up when she got nervous-or when she might just be about to win. Her feelings about werewolves ran much deeper than idle curiosity. What she felt was more than interest; it was a compulsion. People talked about choice-about choosing what you did and how you lived and who you loved and what you wanted, as if life were a restaurant, and anyone who wasn’t happy with the menu must be sick. Well, after years of unhappy, failed relationships, and several months of therapy, she’d decided she needed to visit a different restaurant.

Some things just could not be changed, and it was a waste of time to try. Take homosexuality. Some would rather deny its existence, or treat it as an illness, but that never worked. Whether allowed to flourish or forced underground, by now it was obvious that homosexual desires were every bit as real as heterosexual, and no more amenable to a “cure.”

Her fascination with lycanthropy was like that; so deeply-rooted, so much a part of herself that she couldn’t have changed it if she’d wanted. Some things couldn’t be denied, and you ignored them at your peril. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried; she was twenty-seven years old and had been dating since she was fifteen. But not one of the men she’d met had been right for her. There was always something missing, making true love impossible. Something that was not to do with personality or sexual technique; something that could not be fixed with good intentions.

She’d finally realized it was not her fault that her relationships never lasted-and it wasn’t the guy’s fault, either. It didn’t matter how physically attractive he appeared, no matter how kind or understanding he was at heart, no matter how clever, rich, or creative; she could never be satisfied with a man who was just a man. She wanted something else.

Mel remembered the magazine advice columns she’d read when she was younger, when she hadn’t yet figured out why none of the men she’d met made her happy. The first step to finding “the right man” was to put yourself in a position where you’d meet men-lots of men. Forget quality; think quantity. Sooner or later, amid all the disappointing strangers, there’d be one who suited you. That could never happen if you stayed home dreaming about Prince Charming. You had to get out there and hunt. In another evocative phrase: You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.

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