I recommend The Dracula Tape to fans of Stoker’s novel who want to see a respectful and believable version of the events from the Count’s perspective.The Dracula series is a set of fantasy books written by American best-selling author Fred Saberhagen. I also really enjoyed Saberhagen’s version of Lucy Westenra’s story. I especially like the way Saberhagen addresses both Dracula and Mina’s fate after the events of the novel. For example, in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary gentlemen series, she’s granted at least some vampire-like powers, including apparent immortality. Over the years, numerous authors have speculated about Mina Harker’s fate in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The effect is that he paints Stoker’s characters as unreliable narrators and yet, readers familiar with Dracula may wonder if the count is a reliable narrator himself. Of course, Count Dracula sees himself as the hero of the story and endeavors to paint himself as such by presenting alternate versions of the accounts as presented by Stoker’s characters without outright contradicting them. The one point of view we never heard in the novel was Dracula’s own. Saberhagen’s approach works well, since Dracula is an epistolary novel told from several points of view. It turns out that Arthur and Janet Harker are descendants of Jonathan and Mina Harker of Stoker’s novel and Dracula is on a mission which will be revealed at the end of the novel. He relates the events of Bram Stoker’s novel from his point of view. On the tape within, is the voice of a man purporting to be Count Dracula. Arthur Harker and his wife Janet arrive in a hospital after their car dies on a remote road. Fortunately, Fred’s wife, Joan Saberhagen, has made certain that The Dracula Tape is still available in ebook and audio formats, so I was finally able to pick up a copy and dive into a book I’d long meant to read. Unfortunately, by the time I actually read Dracula in the mid-1990s, Saberhagen’s novel had fallen off my radar. However, in 1986, I hadn’t yet read the original Dracula and I thought it would be more enjoyable if I had some background. After I’d read and enjoyed The Frankenstein Papers, I’d always meant to seek out a copy of The Dracula Tape. It occurred to me that was a serious omission. Recently, a friend asked if I’d ever read Saberhagen’s 1975 novel, The Dracula Tape.
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