THE DEEP ONES: "Beyond Any Measure" by Karl Edward Wagner

"Beyond Any Measure" by Karl Edward Wagner.

Discussion begins November 20, 2024.

First published in the March 1982 issue of Whispers magazine.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?75583

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

In a Lonely Place
The Mammoth Book of Vampires
Vampires: The Greatest Stories

ONLINE VERSIONS

No online versions currently available.

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions currently available.

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Edward_Wagner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVAK9l1I2Ws
https://karledwardwagner.org/LastInterview.html
https://www.karledwardwagner.org/
https://tinyurl.com/bdzn6rzd

I read this one in a public library copy of In a Lonely Place, but I also have the story in Whispers V.

The many bits with Lisette wandering around by candlight in antique nightgowns brought a smile to my face because I felt Wagner was deliberately evoking the cover of many a gothic romance.

I also appreciated the effort to sort of introduce a red herring with Magnus.

Bringing in the transmigraiton of souls into a vampire story was interestingly novel.

My original note on reading this story in In a Lonely Place:
The final story "Beyond Any Measure" shares the source for its title with "The River of Night's Dreaming" in the libretto of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This one concerns reincarnation and combines it in an unexpected way with a supremely traditional sort of gothic horror in a 1970s London setting.

I sort of thought the nightgowns were more evocative of Hammer horror, with the 19th-century gothic only at secondhand.

Dr. Magnus must be an allusion to Count Magnus, I think. Wagner was so well read that he couldn't have been ignorant of the James story.