Dead Collections: A Novel

I enjoyed the similarities drawn between transness, vampirism, and archives. It was really interesting to think of the main character whose body was essentially frozen in time at the beginning of his transition. I thought the approach to vampirism as a condition was really interesting and unique as well. The touch of a world in which vampires are common knowledge, and yet society not evolving to be accessible for them is unfortunately realistic. 
I found the descriptions of the fictional Feet of Clay fascinating. An interesting take on that era of sci-fi programming. I was amused that some of the arguments the characters are now embarrassed about are still being re-hashed in fandom today! 
The relationship between the two leads was too show more based on sex/sexual desire to really be interesting to me, but I liked the personal character growth it brought to each of them.  show less

I really really loved this book, and I have no idea who I would ever recommend it to. I described it to a friend as the mid-life equivalent to those Rainbow Rowell books that are so filled with fanfiction and college age US pop culture.

Having read the blurb, I knew going in that Sol is a vampire, and the world building around this is wonderful. That vampirism is used as a treatment for otherwise fatal diseases, that there is a network of services, that it is the cause of issues with HR were all wonderful details that interrogated the vampire tropes from a disability perspective.

There were other things that I didn't know, which I did really love. Sol's relationship with gender, and then their relationship with Elise, and how gender was show more both fundamental and a tiny part of their relationship were beautifully done. And, as mentioned, fan culture and fanfiction played an important role. show less

I wasn't at all sure I was going to like this, but by about a third of the way through I realized that I really, really cared about these characters. Quotable, smart, messy, all over the place, but in like a tight neat well packaged way (I am a sucker for that kind of story). There are a lot of thoughts I want to return to here.

A few reviews bring up that it doesn't make sense to have both the metaphor (vampires) and the things it's representing (death, disability, transness---less so Jewishness, I agree that wasn't as well incorporated) in the same story, but I would argue that they're not metaphors, they're riffing on each other. What Fellman is trying to get at are instead the things that are common to all of them (and ultimately all show more of us human beings) in different ways and at different moments: contagion, rot, fear/disgust/desire, limitation, anxiety and coping with risk, legacy. show less

Really struggling to not give this two stars. Like others have said, some of this is just beautiful. And like others, I should have LOVED this: I am an archivist, I have a history of being trans, and I am obsessed with the Anne Rice vampires…

Here’s what I loved: The nuance of transgender and lesbian identities, the wisdom that obviously comes from actually *living* in queer spaces away from the internet, and the sex scenes (the best part of the whole thing imo). The author should write some erotica, not joking. Also, the discussion about gay women writing gay men was brilliant!!! “Reading slash is a drug.” Just brilliant. Writing women as a woman is scary, but it is just so much heartier.

Here’s what I found meh: AO3 inclusion, show more fandoms in general, sci-fi, the decaying archive metaphor, the vampire metaphor, and the jewish inclusion were all underdeveloped. Perhaps a bit more passé was the baby-trans (modern online) obsession with labels and identity and… meh. I get it, it’s super personal for the author, but I am exhausted.

Here’s what I hated: Elsie’s trans identity was so tenuous!!!It reminded me so much of my conception of my masculinity while I identified as trans/man that I can’t see her doing anything but detransitioning in a few years. She basically has a textbook detrans story I hear time and time again so…

Anyways, this was spoon-fed to me by my archives master program cohort so I had to try it. Meh? show less

Sol is a trans vampire archivist, turned (without his consent) early in his transition to save his life. He falls in love with a donor—the widow of a lesbian creator of the 90s series that at the time he loved and wrote fan fiction for. This book wasn’t for me, despite its immersion in fandom (his lover is on the board of the OTW! But the book mistakes the OTW for an ordinary nonprofit, assuming that board members are there because they’re big donors—an easy mistake to make, and it contributed to the uncanny valley feeling for me). But basically, I generally prefer f/sf that is about the job, and this book is very much about bodies, discomfort with bodies, comfort with bodies, how to manage having a body that doesn’t feel show more right and doesn’t read the way one wants to be read, etc., which then does affect what the archivist's job is like. The connections to work as an archivist were there but seemed more like signal flares sent up—an archive is like a dead body!—than as story drivers. Vampirism does work in the book as a prism reflecting on how we do gender and sex, so if you are interested in that this could be a book for you. show less

This read was strange and lovely. I haven't read much fiction that successfully describes fandom in such a critical yet understanding way. Also, I always enjoy a new take on vampirism.

An eccentric, heartfelt exploration of the paraphernalia people hold dear, the bodies we create for ourselves, and the different ways it’s possible to love both these things.