Flip Flop Genre

[dask]

In his book CLASSICS FOR PLEASURE, literary critic Michael Dirda makes reference to what he calls "the three overlapping genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction." Mixing vampires with sf presents no problem for me either conceptually or personally and the book in question sounds like it might be good.

And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
---Walter Scott

 

[Ursa major]

The book to whose review Harebrain gave a link looks more like the way to go, i.e. the genre-mixing is introduced early on and not as a quick fix for an otherwise insoluble plot problem.

 

[dask]

That's probably true, but isn't the custom to allow at least one "miracle" or "rabbit out of the hat" literary trick per sf story/novel? Seems I read something to that effect somewhere.

 

[Ursa major]

I've heard that, usually in the context of permitting a means of FTL travel. Allowing the existence of a fantasy species whose characteristics breaks many laws isn't quite the same; it tends to change the genre from SF to Fantasy (which is fine, though best not left to the last chapter(s)).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Maybe vampires in hard-sf is becoming a trend? Maybe they'll start infiltrating every genre, even cookery books.

An intriguing idea. Not appealing, exactly, but it would be fun to track down the vampire references in, say, books on auto repair or gardening.

I don't quite like to think of what the recipes would be like in vampire cook books, though.

 

[Ursa major]

Lots of black puddings; very few cloves of garlic and steaks.

 

[Interference]

"Gentlemen, you all know General Vlad, in charge of our nocturne division"?

LOL

Oh, the vamp cliche has found itself to a new genre. I suppose it had to happen. How many stories do you think there are, now, where the punch line is, "I know this happened. I was that vampire ..." and its like.

It's a cruel deception, forgivable only if this is part of a series where the vampire is more prevalent in the story - and perhaps that's what this author is hoping. Sequel after sequel featuring these champions of Earth.

 

[Arkose]

Strangely, this review was posted earlier. Maybe vampires in hard-sf is becoming a trend? Maybe they'll start infiltrating every genre, even cookery books.

I see it now

"Southern cooking done right" by Paula Deen dressed as a sexy vampire

I would be perfectly fine if vampires where never created, but its just a phase. I'm sure buffy the vampire slayer brought some stupid stories to main stream. Yes, alittle of a digression in quality of writing but don't you need the real bad stories to appreciate the good ones?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I would be perfectly fine if vampires where never created, but its just a phase.

Wow, I wouldn't say so. There are some amazing classic vampire tales, written long, long before the current fad, and it would have been a great pity if they had never been written.

Not to mention all of the folklore going back hundreds of years.

 

[Arkose]

Wow, I wouldn't say so. There are some amazing classic vampire tales, written long, long before the current fad, and it would have been a great pity if they had never been written.

Not to mention all of the folklore going back hundreds of years.

I shouldn't have said it that way. I really meant more of the current vampire stories, and I am sure there are plenty of amazing vampire tales.

I personally still dislike vampires, for some reason that I don't fully understand, I can't get passed the science behind a vampire (even though I am fine with other imaginative creatures and fantasies).

 

[Dave]

I can't get passed the science behind a vampire (even though I am fine with other imaginative creatures and fantasies).

It is obviously developed out of mis-heard and unexplained tales of Vampire Bats and other nocturnal creatures that go bump in the night. The Chupacabra is the same, and is probably actually a parasite-riddled Coyote.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Ah, but which vampires, Dave? The vampires of folklore are so diverse, it would be impossible to point to any one source and say with any great certainty, "This is where the idea originates."

And Arkose, I think it's probably only been in the last half century or so that anyone has even tried to apply "science" to vampires.

 

[Parson]

It's a cruel deception, forgivable only if this is part of a series where the vampire is more prevalent in the story - and perhaps that's what this author is hoping. Sequel after sequel featuring these champions of Earth.

This is an interesting idea and not at all unlikely given the author's demonstrated pension for series. Even though the author in question has been my favorite author for some time, I will avoid this series like this like the plague if it comes to be.

---

This discussion makes me want to re-iterate a point I made earlier. It wasn't so much the vampires that turned me off, it was their appearance to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with magic, where the rest of the book was given over to science and tactics to win battles. There was a nary a hint of anything like their existence until the very end of the book.

---

I hadn't really ever thought about the folklore behind vampires before, but I would be shocked if it were not all tied up with tall tales about the Christian Devil. The way the classic vampires are able to seduce young women, live in comparative luxury, are smarter than humans, offer a counterfeit eternal life and are defeated by a cross and a nail are simply too suggestive of folk Christianity, not to have some share in the story development.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I hadn't really ever thought about the folklore behind vampires before, but I would be shocked if it were not all tied up with tall tales about the Christian Devil. The way the classic vampires are able to seduce young women, live in comparative luxury, are smarter than humans, offer a counterfeit eternal life and are defeated by a cross and a nail are simply too suggestive of folk Christianity, not to have some share in the story development.

Those vampires, however, are a 19th century invention. In much of the folklore, the vampire is as likely to be the village carpenter (or someone equally humble), who only has the time to kill a few women and children before the other villagers figure it out and take the necessary steps to dispose of him or her. But the legends are remarkable diverse. I would say that the majority of them do not involve crosses or nails. The vampire was only vulnerable when he or she returned to his grave to sleep during the day. Many simply drained their victims of life without bothering to suck their blood, and the more seductive ones were usually demons, fairies, etc. who certainly were not offering to pass on their own immortality, supposing they even could.

The glamourous vampire you are talking about is a literary invention, with generous borrowings from other characters of folklore and fiction, and a lot of wish fulfillment thrown in for good measure.

 

[Parson]

I bow before T.E.'s expertise.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I knew you weren't likely to have delved into the literature of the vampire, Parson. That falls well within the area of things that wouldn't have interested you at all. I am far from an expert myself, but it does overlap with a great many things that do interest me.

And thanks to all the pop culture vampires we are seeing these days, which are creating their own new "mythology," it's common for people to think that what they are reading or seeing on TV or in movies is the definitive version. Anything else is an unwelcome deviation from the "true," traditional vampire. But there is no one traditional vampire, so it would be hard to go astray ... except in thinking that vampires have to be one particular way.

 

[Dave]

Arkose said that he couldn't get passed the science behind a Vampire, but could there be an actual medical/ mental health explanation for Vampires in history?

• Zombies could be sleepwalkers with an extreme narcosis possibly brought on by powerful psychoactive drugs.
• Werewolf legends are earlier than Peter Stubbe but it shows the same "village carpenter (or someone equally humble), who only has the time to kill a few women and children before the other villagers figure it out and take the necessary steps to dispose of him or her" that Teresa just mentioned. I could easily imagine the persecution of someone with a condition that makes them excessively hairy.
• Then, there is the girl born in India in 2005 with four arms and four legs, named Lakshmi after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth.

I guess we have strayed off-topic because even if we could prove Vampires really existed and produce a TV documentary with them living together happily in an apartment just off Times Square, that does not explain how they could defeat these alien invaders when all else had failed. That would require some element of magic - surely that is the part that is all wrong?

 

[HareBrain]

I don't think the idea of the vampire needs to have been based on anything so rational as a medical condition. Early man existed in a state of fear of a world he didn't understand and couldn't control, which led to a system of taboos and other magical thinking as a means of exerting that control and allaying that fear.

Once you realise how important blood is, it doesn't take much to imagine that somewhere out in that dark mysterious world is something that wants to take it from you. The same could easily apply to zombies (where the thing stolen is the soul, or free will).

 

[Beamer]

While I admit the ending was totally unlike anything else he has done before, I personally enjoyed it. And while there were hints both in the tittle and a sentence or two late in the book, it did catch you a bit by surprise. Lol it was so sudden I had to go back and reread the last chapter.

I read all types of science fiction and fantasy, and one of the sub genre I have recently started reading a lot of was urban fantasy so this fit right in.

 

[Parson]

Beamer:

I'm glad some people liked it. I disliked the ending intensely. I felt used. I felt cheated. And I'm afraid I'll never be able to think of Weber so positively again.