Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Children of the Sun"

This story emphasizes the vampiric nature of Vampira.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Children of the Sun" by Joe Overbay

Dracula's brides from the 1931 film.

Synopsis: Vanessa Davis, an ex-NASA test pilot turned secret agent, is piloting a propeller plane to Romania as part of her latest dangerous mission. Her passenger is a mysterious, powerful man she has only recently met named Anton Voytek. For this mission, they are both using codenames. His is Lucifer; hers is Vampira. Over the Transylvanian Alps, the plane runs into bad weather and has to land. When Vanessa looks at Anton in the mirror, she realizes to her horror that he casts no reflection. Once the plane is on the ground, Vanessa tries to outrun Anton but to no avail. He soon overpowers her.

Some time later, Vanessa wakes up in a coffin in a remote chateau. She opens a curtain, only to be burned by sunlight. She is greeted by Diana, another female vampire under Anton's control. Vanessa soon realizes what she has become. Her life now revolves around hunting human beings and drinking their blood. Whenever she can, she lashes out at Anton and the other vampires in his "brood," but she is generally unsuccessful because she herself has the same weaknesses they do. She does manage to impale Diana, but Anton proves impossible to kill.

Eventually, with numerous vampires following her, Vanessa makes it back to her plane and even manages to take off. Anton takes the form of a bat and pursues her. They have an epic battle in the air, ending when Vanessa crashes the plane. Unfortunately, when the smoke clears, it is Anton who survives. He declares Vanessa to be a worthy adversary and sends her mortal remains back to her hometown of Oakdale, CA. Back home, Vanessa's elderly husband attends her funeral but is so grief-stricken that he himself wanders into traffic and is killed. Soon after, aliens begin to invade the earth as part of an initiative called Plan 9.

Excerpt:

She tried to fight him, but she just couldn't. To this moment her life mind and soul were hers alone to command, and the agency had invested long years training her to keep her that way she's been judged resistant to almost all forms of external persuasion. But this was different. Anton, this vampire, was inside her mind, and there was no damn way she could keep him out. In a moment, he knew her innermost thoughts, of her dreams, all the private things that she cherished. In a moment she was mind raped and in the end she was his.

Reflections: As I've made my way through Warm Angora Wishes, I've occasionally found myself wondering what would happen if someone totally unfamiliar with Ed Wood's films picked up this book and started leafing through it. How would that happen? Maybe, years from now, a copy turns up at a used bookshop, and the cover catches a shopper's attention. Would such a reader be able to make any sense of it? Or does the reader have to have at least a passing knowledge of Ed's 1950s films, particularly Bride of the Monster (1955) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) to be able to enjoy this anthology?

Take "Children of the Sun" as an example. Now, there is plenty here to entertain the average reader of genre fiction, regardless of that person's level of familiarity with Ed Wood. At heart, this is a horror story that emphasizes the punishing physical and mental tortures of being a vampire. Vampirism is often romanticized in film and literature, so it was strangely refreshing to read Joe Overbay's brutal, unappetizing take on the lifestyle—which is basically like being a junkie, but a thousand times worse. And all of this is set against a backdrop of Cold War intrigue, complete with plenty of tense, high-flying action sequences. The author is mashing up a couple of popular genres in this story, so there's something for everybody... theoretically.

But what is the uninitiated reader to make of the early, totally-out-of-nowhere reference to UFOs? Or the mention of someone called Dr. Eric Vornoff? Or the fact that, in the final paragraphs of this story, the setting suddenly switches from Transylvania to California and involves aliens invading the earth? My guess is that these aspects of the story would be very, very confusing to an outsider. That's not a problem, necessarily. It's just something that's been on my mind. Maybe that's the secret gift of Ed Wood; as a muse, he lets you make imaginative leaps you might not otherwise dare.