Les Daniels
Encyclopedia
Leslie Noel Daniels III, known as Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011) was an American writer
.
in Providence, Rhode Island
, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein
, and he worked as a musician
and as a journalist
.
Don Sebastian de Villanueva, a cynical
, amoral
and misanthropic
Spanish
nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic reincarnation
s. These are: the Inquisition
in The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolution
ary 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.
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.
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". 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
.
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).
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
.
Background
He attended Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, and he worked as a musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
.
Career
He was the author of five novels featuring the vampireVampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
Don Sebastian de Villanueva, a cynical
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
, amoral
Amorality
Amorality is an absence of, indifference towards, or disregard for moral beliefs. Any entity that is not sentient may be considered amoral. In addition, it can be argued that sentient but non-human creatures, like dogs, have no concept of morality and are therefore amoral...
and misanthropic
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
s. These are: the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
in The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
ary Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
in Citizen Vampire (1981). In the later novels Yellow Fog (1986, revised 1988) and No Blood Spilled (1991), Sebastian is resurrected in Victorian London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
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
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
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.
Daniels also worked with the historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada
Tomás de Torquemada
Tomás de Torquemada, O.P. was a fifteenth century Spanish Dominican friar, first Inquisitor General of Spain, and confessor to Isabella I of Castile. He was described by the Spanish chronicler Sebastián de Olmedo as "The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the...
and Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
; in Citizen Vampire he has a couple of friendly encounters with the Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
; and Madame Tussaud
Marie Tussaud
Anna Maria Tussaud was an artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussaud's, the wax museum she founded in London.- Biography :...
makes an appearance in Yellow Fog.
Daniels described his works as "tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
, in which evil consumes itself", as opposed to the melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
of most contemporary horror novels, in which "customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls". He cited Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
as an influence on his sardonic style, and was an enthusiast of the works of John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn....
, who in several of his own works combined historical fiction with horror and the detective story
Detective Story
Detective Story is a film noir which tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. It features Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell, Lee Grant, among others. The movie was adapted by Robert Wyler and Philip Yordan...
.
Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of the Comic Book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
in America (1971) and Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975).
Don Sebastian de Villanueva
- The Black Castle (1978)
- The Silver Skull (1979)
- Citizen Vampire (1981)
- Yellow FogYellow FogYellow Fog is a horror novel by Les Daniels. It was first published in 1986 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 800 copies which were signed by the author and slipcased. The novel is part of the author's Don Sebastian series. An expanded edition was published by Tor Books in...
(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)
- MarvelMarvel ComicsMarvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (1991) - DC ComicsDC ComicsDC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (1995) - SupermanSupermanSuperman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
, 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 BatmanBatmanBatman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
(1999) - The Complete History: Wonder WomanWonder WomanWonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....
(2000) - The Golden Age of the Amazon Princess: Wonder Woman (2001)
- The Golden AgeGolden Age of Comic BooksThe Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s...
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)