Les Daniels

Leslie Noel Daniels III, known as Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011^[1]) was an American writer.

Background

He attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.^[2]

Career

He was the author of five novels featuring the vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva,^[3] a cynical, amoral and misanthropic Spanish nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic reincarnations. These are: the Inquisition in The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror in Citizen Vampire (1981). In the later novels Yellow Fog (1986, revised 1988) and No Blood Spilled (1991), Sebastian is resurrected in Victorian London and India, where the horror of his vampirism is again contrasted with non-supernatural evil, now in the person of Sebastian's human enemy, Reginald Callender. A sixth (and presumably final) Don Sebastian novel set in Tibet and entitled White Demon was planned and is advertised by some sources as being available for purchase, but in fact remains unwritten: Daniels had begun writing it before abandoning it due to the demands of his non-fiction projects and was told when able to resume that his publisher had lost interest.^[4]

Daniels also worked with the historical fiction genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada and Columbus; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés; in Citizen Vampire he has a couple of friendly encounters with the Marquis de Sade; and Madame Tussaud makes an appearance in Yellow Fog.^[4]

Daniels described his works as "tragedy, in which evil consumes itself", as opposed to the melodrama of most contemporary horror novels, in which "customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls".^[5] He cited Robert Bloch as an influence on his sardonic style, and was an enthusiast of the works of John Dickson Carr, who in several of his own works combined historical fiction with horror and the detective story.^[6]

Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America (1971) and Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975).^[4][7]

Fiction

Don Sebastian de Villanueva

• The Black Castle (1978)
• The Silver Skull (1979)
• Citizen Vampire (1981)
• Yellow Fog (1986; revised and expanded edition 1988)
• No Blood Spilled (1991)

Non-fiction

• Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America (1971)
• Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975)
• Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (1991)
• DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (1995)
• Superman, the Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel (1998)
• Superman: Masterpiece Edition (1999)
• The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Dark Knight Batman (1999)
• The Complete History: Wonder Woman (2000)
• The Golden Age of the Amazon Princess: Wonder Woman (2001)
• The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days (2004)

As Editor

• Thirteen Tales of Terror (1971; with Diane Thompson)
• Fear (1975)
• Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre (1976)

See also

• List of horror fiction authors

References

1. ^ New York Times obituary
2. ^ Daniels, Les. The Black Castle (1978, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY), jacket bio.
3. ^ Stephen Jones, ed (2004). The Mammoth Book of Vampires. London: Robinson. pp. 484. ISBN 0786713720. 
4. ^ ^{a b c} Ward, Kyla (1995). "Living With Fear". Tabula Rasa. http://www.tabula-rasa.info/Horror/LesDaniels.html. Retrieved 2009-07-19. 
5. ^ Daniels, Yellow Fog (1986), author's introduction
6. ^ S. T. Joshi, "Les Daniels: The Horror of History" in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus Press 2004), p.166.
7. ^ Les Daniels, Historian of Comic Books, Dies at 68

External links

• Les Daniels at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Persondata
Name	Daniels, Les
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1943
Place of birth
Date of death	November 5, 2011
Place of death