Less Than Human [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

Gary Raisor (Author), Joe Lansdale (Author), Guy Aitchison (Author), Guy Aitchsion (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1992

Signed Limited Edition. Signed by Joe Lansdale, Artist Guy Aitchison and author Gary Raisor. --Nominated for Best First Novel by the Horror Writer's Association! The Greyhound pulled into Carruthers, Texas a little after nine and unloaded seventeen people into the unseasonably cold autumn night. All had family waiting for them. All, except two. The town of Carruthers, Texas, has seen its share of drifters and lowlifes. But never anyone like Steven and Earl. They move from town to town. Hustling the pool halls. Raising a little hell. Drinking a little blood. They sleep by day and hunt by night--the ultimate predators. The perfect life. Until now. A barroom brawl ends in disaster. The soil from Steven's grave has been stolen. And a young boy's death sparks an all out war between vampires and mortals that will turn the local Frontier Day celebration into a blood bath....

Editorial Reviews

Review

A unique twist on the traditional vampire myth. -- Nancy Collins, Award-Winning author of Sunglasses After Dark. =Gary Raisor's LESS THAN HUMAN is a good chunk of a damn fine novel. The author's got an effective voice for capturing the distinctive flavors of the Texas/Southwestern backdrop for this supernatural thriller. LESS THAN HUMAN is colorfully inventive, paced at a gallop, and frequently nicely skewed.-- Edward Bryant, Locus Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.Gary's vampires...failed to read the book on how vampires are to behave. They may be less than human, but their actions are very human.And they're disturbing and scary because they're funny.Gary is one of the few writers I've ever read that realizes humor and horror are truly opposite sides of a double-edged knife.--Joe R. Lansdale, from the Introduction to Less Than Human.If you thought the vampire novel had been sucked dry, think again. LESS THAN HUMAN is funny, offbeat, scary, and poignant, and Gary Raisor's characters Earl and Steven are the Hope and Crosby of vampires. If you love the work of Joe Lansdale, you'll love this book!--Al Sarrantonio, author and editor of the millennium anthology. Raisor writes a very mean, lean line of prose in Less Than Human. This book resonates with the work of Jim Thompson, Ed Gorman, and a touch of Rod Serling. --Thomas F. Monteleone, Award-Winning Author

From the Publisher

This Limited Edition Special Features:

-Bound in white Kivar, with a blazing red-foil stamping of Guy Aitchison's serpent Tattoo.
--Special red endpapers with silver serpent tattoo
--The whole book is printed in "vampire red" on a grey text.
--Signed by Gary Raisor, Joe R. Lansdale, and artist Guy Aitchison

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Overlook Connection Press (August 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963339710
• ISBN-13: 978-0963339713
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,566,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars White Trash Vampires, April 2, 2004

By 

Samuel L. Smith II "Mentally Tough" (Evansville, IN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Less Than Human (Paperback)

I read this book a couple of years ago. I really enjoyed it. I thought Raisor's portrayel of vampires as rednecks and white trash was unique and insightful.

I've never been a pool player, but Raisor's descriptions of the vampires playing pool was enlightening. It's been a while since Raisor has been published and I'm looking for more of his books.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun., December 20, 2007

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Less Than Human (Hardcover)

Gary Raisor, Less than Human (Overlook Connection Press, 1993)

You can never be quite sure what you're getting with small press horror, especially in that area between the eighties horror boom and the revival that started around 2002, when the big companies were snatching up everything that even remotely smelled like horror. In between, some really interesting stuff fell through the cracks. Less than Human, which originally found its home with drugstore-magazine-rack publisher Diamond in 1992, then was picked up by Overlook Connection in 1993, definitely identifies as interesting.

Earl Jacobs and Steven Adler are vampires, of a sort. Not a sort you normally hear about (Less than Human owes a great deal more to Brian Lumley's Necroscope novels than it does to any more conventional vampire tale), but close enough for government work. They're also pool sharks, and they make their living going from town to town hustling in the American southwest. Until, that is, Steven's cue stick, which is very important to him, gets stolen. Thus begins a trail of blood that puts Adler on a collision course with John Warrick, the best pool hustler in the Southwest, and a psychic to boot.

There are rules for books like this. Raisor basically ignores every last one of them. Joe Lansdale says in his intro that Steven and Earl "failed to read the book on how vampires behave"; so Raisor on the way horror writers behave. He's more interested in the backstory of how Steven and Earl came to be what they are than he is in the tale that's happening in the present, and as such, a great deal of this book is presented in flashback. To me, that's what separates this from the pack; Raisor is interested in making his bad guys as well-drawn and interesting as his good guys. There's also a sense that, unlike most horror writers operating today (hell, most writers of any stripe operating today), Raisor is willing to give the reader the benefit of the doubt; you'll have to pay attention to make sure you catch some of the details, but Raisor assumes you've caught them, and so avoids repeating himself. It's kind of pathetic when that's a sign of intelligence in a modern novel, but there you go. And Less than Human is, certainly, an intelligent novel.

Overlook Connection came out with another edition of the book in 2000, but it hasn't been seen since. Let's hope Leisure, who have been sporadically releasing part of OCP's backlist, bring this one back into the daylight in a hurry; if you missed it the first time round, the publishing industry owes you a second chance. *** ½

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eight Ball in the Corner Pocket, March 6, 2004

By 

Tim Hewitt (Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Less Than Human (Paperback)

It's been several years since I read this novel. I was deep in the thrall of the "splatter punks" who were the outlaw stars of the horror market (Ray Garton, David Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, etc.). I'd heard about this book, picked it up in paperback and later in it's hardcover edition (at the World Horror Con in Atlanta where I met Gary, but opted not to play pool with him). If your taste in vampires runs along the lines of Ann Rice variety, you'll probably find Steve and Earl, the pool-shark bloodsuckers of Raisor's novel a little on the unpolished side. But if your taste runs more in the vein of Joe R. Lansdale and the movie "Near Dark," you'll love this book. They just don't write 'em like this anymore. And that's a shame.