Twilight vampires: accidentally clever

I'm sidetracking a bit today to discuss some information I picked up recently about Twilight. I'm deep into the world of Dracula at this time, and meanwhile vampire stuff is everywhere with the release of the New Moon film, so it's not completely off-topic.

I'm not a fan of the Twilight series. In fact, my friend J'Mel's article about the first movie pretty much expresses how I feel about the entire thing. I, like J'Mel, don't think you need to read the series to know that it's awful. Besides, someone is already reading it on behalf of all of us who refuse to. I've also met a few writers who have very strong (negative) opinions about the series, including one who specifically told me she thought it was dangerous for tweens. I don't agree that the books are dangerous, I just don't think they are very good.

I was surprised to learn, however, that there is some precedence for the seemingly non-vampiric nature of Stephanie Meyer's vampires. A big complaint is that they lack fangs, which are the most universally accepted trait of vampires. As it turns out, the title character in the vampire story Carmilla has no fangs, and this is a story that preceded and inspired Dracula.

Additionally, on Here and Now yesterday they discussed how there is precedence for the vampire as a stereotype of Mormons. It turns out that vampire imagery was used to demonize the Mormons in the early 1900s. Stephanie Meyer is a Mormon in case you've missed out on this detail, and the scholars interviewed on Here and Now note that it's a clever flip of the old archetype that Meyer's vampires are creatures with morals and self-control instead of demonic monsters gathering multiple wives.

Of course, all of this would be much more impressive if Stephanie Meyer knew it before writing these novels. As they note on Here and Now, she's never watched any vampire movies or read Dracula, or watched any vampire-inspired movies - so she's never seen these films that vilify Mormons either. I doubt she's read the lesbian vampire story Carmilla for that matter. So the fact that her stories are a part of the history of vampire fiction in interesting ways doesn't make the stories themselves interesting. It also doesn't change the fact that she arrived here by accident, having no sense of the history of the genre to begin with.

And it certainly doesn't make up for the more sparkly, baseball-playing offenses she has committed.

Songs about Dune

I've been checking out the podcast The Sword and Laser. I became aware of these guys some time ago when Veronica Belmont was on This Week in Tech, and I decided to check them out and see what things were like elsewhere in the online sci fi/fantasy reading neighborhood.

I feel compelled to call this the online sci fi/fantasy book club neighborhood, but I don't really constitute a book club, being only one person. However, if any of you want to start reading whatever book I'm working on and discuss it with me, then please feel free to do so. I would gladly turn this into the 149 novels book club.

On Sword and Laser they read Dune a few months ago, and are still talking about it a bit in the podcasts I listened to. I suppose I could go back and listen to the podcast where they discussed Dune, but it did not automatically load onto iTunes when I added their podcast, and the iPod is generally my main vehicle of podcast listening. Anyway, they are still talking about it, and also talking about music that is inspired by sci fi and fantasy. Among the many songs mentioned is a parody tune called "I'm the Kwisatz Haderach" by Abner Senires. Give it a listen - pretty funny stuff.

Also discussed in the same podcast is the song "To Tame a Land" by Iron Maiden which is also about Dune, and some history on that song. Check it out, it also has a lot of information (and spoilers) about George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones: S&L #021. The internet is abuzz with George R. R. Martin these days, who in case you didn't know, is not your bitch. As someone blogging about fantasy novels, it is mandatory that I mention this.

Unfortunately, he is not on the list. One day, I may have to take a hiatus from the list to read his stuff. People seem to like it quite a lot. The interesting thing about doing this blog is that I've learned about all these other things I want to read, but many of them are not on the list. This makes me think about the direction this will go in the future. I'm bound to finish all these books eventually, and when I do I may keep this blog going and just talk about the stories I was inspired to read by these stories.

Regarding vampires.

Happy Halloween! In celebration of the holiday I’ve decided to read Dracula. It’s not the only vampire story on the list, but clearly the most popular, and probably the most appropriate choice for this holiday out of all the novels on the list.

I’m not going to speculate too much on the novel at this point. I’ve just started reading, and the Dracula legend is such a part of pop culture that it would be easy to make assumptions based on creative works other than the novel.

Instead I’m going to go off topic and talk about a vampire story I read recently, Courtney Crumrin and the Prince of Nowhere. This is part of the Courtney Crumrin series by Ted Naifeh, who is my current favorite comic book guy. Courtney Crumrin is a series of stories about a girl who has inherited the power of witchcraft, and who uses magic to deal with both the ordinary and the unusual problems of a young girl.

It sounds a little Harry Potter-ish, but this series goes well beyond Harry Potter’s heroic yet simple tale. Courtney is not learning to be a hero. She’s trying to learn about love and trust, learning at a very young age that giving your heart to someone means risking great pain and loss. Her flawed guardian is her uncle Aloysius, who is quite capable of instructing her in magic, but is not a much help regarding love and friendship. He allows the non-magic people in his town to believe that his house is haunted, seeming to prefer that they fear and avoid him. Likewise, he has disdain towards the community of magic users as a whole, because they tend to be as fearful, ignorant, and prejudiced as the non-magic people.

Prince of Nowhere begins like all the recent novels in the popular vampire romance genre; Courtney has never truly had a boyfriend, and she falls in love with a vampire who appears to have been turned when he was a little older than she is. Unlike the popular stories of this genre, however, Courtney’s vampire is not safe, not resisting his vampire urges in order to live a more humane life. The possibility of this kind of life is not even discussed in the story, leaving me to assume that in this story the life of a vampire is the life of a predator, with no special exceptions you can make to ease your conscience. In fact, the story doesn’t mention our vampire’s conscience, and I assume he doesn’t have one. Genteel behavior, special attention paid to his human love, these all appear to be tricks played in order to turn Courtney and gain the companion that he craves.

Which brings up an interesting point, one which I’ve noticed is a problem lately: modern vampires are always telling us that we should not want to be vampires, but the argument is always so poorly supported. The following is just a handful of popular reasons our tortured vampire male leads give for not turning their girlfriends (or boyfriends, if you are reading Anne Rice) and their obvious counter-arguments:

1. Being a vampire is awful! You crave human blood all the time! You must live with the knowledge that you are an evil killer! First of all, the vampire delivering this speech is somehow managing the temptation to eat all the tasty humans, because his lover is there, not getting eaten. So this argument condescendingly suggests that the fang-bangers wouldn’t have the strength of will to avoid biting everyone in sight, or to just fill up on True Blood or rats or – what do Twilight vampires eat, deer or something? – prior to going out amongst the humans. Also, some humans are really awful people. While we are imagining a world full of real vampires, why not also imagine that it’s ok for vampires to chow on murderers and rapists?

2. Being immortal may make you insane! This is also a side effect of mortality. Doesn’t happen to all of us. It probably doesn’t happen to all of them either. Not to mention, it’s at least worth giving it a try. Surely you’d have a millennia or two in you before the crazy set in.

3. You will watch everyone you love die as you remain the same. Not if you turn them. I guess some of them will refuse, but hey. People make decisions that are life threatening, and those of us who love them have to accept that, even if we are only mortals. By the way, this is why you should turn me into a vampire, so you won't have to watch me die. Go ahead, ease your suffering.

4. You will learn that life is meaningless. Yes Louis I might, but I might decide to dwell on that as a mortal too. I think I am more likely to mope about my meaningless existence in a cubicle all day than I would while being fast and strong and awesome all night long.

5. You will never see the daylight again. Eh. I am not a big fan as it is.

In The Prince of Nowhere the reason why Courtney should not become a vampire is simple and clear. Vampires have a particular nature about them which means that once you are turned, you are no longer like the humans. Being human is the only way to maintain your humanity.

It's not that I dislike the stories of the vampire boyfriends. I am a big Buffy fan, and I love the show True Blood. It's just that the vampire/human love story does have this one major flaw in the plot, and it's nice to read stories where the vampires stick to their guns and accept their predatory nature, and where the humans realize that they must choose human or vampire and cannot have both.

When it comes to that, I feel that Dracula will not disappoint.

My meager attempt to explain why Dune is amazing

I finished Dune over a week ago, but I haven’t written about it yet because I’ve needed time to process it. As I mentioned in my review of the Alice books, it’s very hard for me to describe what I like about a well written story. When talking Dune over with a friend I said a good story is like a magic trick. Dune is a good story, and is my favorite book from this list so far.

So what is so great about Dune?

For starters, Herbert created this detailed, rich, living universe. A lot of critics talk about Dune as an ecological novel, or a political novel. It’s hard to miss these associations. The planet Dune is also called Arrakis, which in the film version is pronounced “Iraq-us”. The spice found on Arrakis enables space travel. It makes a clear point about the relationship to certain desert lands on our own world and the travel enabling substances we get from them. But in addition to this very contemporary subject, the world of Dune contains a vast, multi-tiered political system. The story is not simply hero and villain. There are numerous parties, each with complex motivations for their actions. There are religious influences ranging from the amalgam of popular earth religions represented by the Orange Catholic Bible; to the part nun, part mystic, part spiritual manipulators of the Bene Gesserit; to the prophetic and zealous faith of the Fremen.

And inside this world Herbert constructed live these vivid characters. There is Lady Jessica, who rebels against the Bene Gesserit out of love for her Duke and her son. And there is Paul Atreides, the legend that the Fremen have been waiting for. My aforementioned friend told me that Herbert said Dune is a story about a man playing god (and she ought to know, as she contributed essays to The Science of Dune). In Paul this theme is excellently carried out as he fulfills the prophecies in order to gain the devotion of the Fremen, even while fearing a time in the future in which he foresees zealots committing atrocities in his name.

Dune is great because it is more than just the well-developed world, more than the characters, more than the plot. All these elements combine just right to create an atmosphere. While reading this novel I kept thinking of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These stories aren't particularly similar, but both give me a sense that while I'm reading the book, I'm living in the story. I have a tendency to multi-task my reading - I might interrupt my progress in a novel to read magazines or comic books on the side. I found with Dune I did not want to be sidetracked in this way. I wanted my full focus on this one novel. That's the magic trick, the thing that I can't point to and say "here's what's so great about it." Whatever it is that makes it impossible for me to put a novel down, or to leave it for a while to look at other stories, or to stop thinking about it all the time, Dune has it.

Back from DragonCon

In case you've never been to DragonCon, here's a little sample of what that's like.

We drove to Atlanta very early Thursday morning after getting no sleep at all on Wednesday night. Seriously, no sleep at all. Why? Because we had costumes to finish up, and we hadn't packed yet. Trust me, we are not the only people at the Con who stayed up all night finishing a costume. We left at 6:30 in the morning, stopping at Lowe's on the way out of town for a nut I needed for my Steampunk gun.

In Anniston, we stopped for breakfast and decided to take a nap in the McDonald's parking lot afterwards, just because we were so tired. We napped for 40 minutes, and strangely this was enough to get us the rest of the way to Atlanta.

As for the rest of the weekend, I can only say that we got more sleep each night than we did on that night, but not necessarily enough sleep. We ate junk food. We walked a lot, dashing from hotel to hotel to catch events. We sometimes crashed out midday out of sheer exhaustion.

Also, Amanda wore a very large and heavy costume for several hours, and suffered sore legs the rest of the weekend as a result. However, she won two prizes for her efforts. In the Friday Night Costume Contest, she won Best Novice and Audience Favorite. Totally worth it.

And then we went home on Monday, feeling worn out. This is considering that we don't drink at the Con. I can't imagine what Monday must be like for those who do.

DragonCon is great fun. It's like Halloween all weekend long. But it's also one of those places that you like to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Who could live there? Just 5 days of it beats the crap out of me.

Off Topic: SyFy

Warning: I switch between Sci Fi and SyFy quite often in this post, and it may be confusing. It's not helped by the sci fi genre, also often mentioned. To assist in your navigation, I say Sci Fi when it makes sense to me to refer to the channel that was, and SyFy when I mean the channel that is. I use standard capitalization on both, so that the sci fi genre is distinguished from the network. It may be that the network would have been better off imitating the world of sci fi publishing, with names like Tor or Tachyon, or something else that begins with a T. It could not have been less awesome than SyFy, after all.

It may also be that this explanation strikes you as unnecessary and dorky. As is explained later, I am aware of and comfortable with my dorkiness.

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I've waited a long time to have my say on this, so you've probably heard - the Sci Fi channel has changed its name to SyFy. They've matched this new name with a fairly lame new slogan - "Imagine Greater" - and the most bland and unattractive web site to come out of web 2.0.


I mean really. Look at that logo. It's as if they were trying to do something retro like a 60s science fiction TV show title, only without being awesome.

So why this change?

According to the VP of the channel in an article in Wired.com, SyFy can be trademarked and branded, and sci fi cannot because it is a genre.

According to the President of the channel in an article in TVWeek.com, the old name reminds people that they don't like science fiction, although they really do, they just don't know it. Quoting the article directly:

Mr. Brooks said that when people who say they don’t like science fiction enjoy a film like “Star Wars,” they don’t think it’s science fiction; they think it’s a good movie.

The president of a network that was once called the Sci Fi Channel believes that people watching Star Wars don't think they are watching science fiction. Oh, the implications of this statement. For starters, I don't recall ever seeing anything as classic and popular on the Sci Fi Channel as Star Wars. But then, it's not like playing a Star Wars marathon would be groundbreaking programming, and would not exactly win them a devoted audience. The statement reveals a tremendous misunderstanding and disrespect for their audience, that ranges from "they don't know what science fiction is" to "people like good movies, not science fiction". As if sci fi and good movies are mutually exclusive.

I present to you, the highest grossing films of all time. The vast majority of these films are sci fi or fantasy, a genre divide that I think we should overlook considering that the Sci Fi Channel often did. Obviously, this list is no representation of whether these films are good or not, but it does represent what sells - something that I think SyFy is much more interested in. It would seem that either SyFy is out of touch with what is popular, or just incapable of delivering it. Considering how few hits they've had, I'd say both.

Further evidence that they don't understand the audience they should be marketing directly too is this direct quote from the SyFy president, also from TVWeek.com:

The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.

Oh, the many things I could rage about, where to begin? That video games are a thriving mainstream business? That "geek" has become a word so over-adopted by hipsters that people who bore the title before it was cool make feeble attempts at reclaiming their cred (not to mention their community) by crying out "but you were POPULAR in high school!"

Or perhaps, that sci fi has plenty of female fans, of which I am one, blogging about sci fi novels? OK, this activity does not really put me in the mainstream of female sci fi fans. But what about the tons of women I see at sci fi conventions, their numbers equaling or exceeding those of the men? Women who are not just the sci fi women that the president of SyFy is thinking of. Most of them are young, attractive women, the type who will gladly make out girls-gone-wild style for the attention of slobbering men. Those women you see at your local bar on ladies night? They are also at the sci fi cons. Don't these women represent the very demographic that they think they are missing?

In the end, I think the best explanation for why Sci Fi became SyFy was described in the TWiT podcast, episode 207: that Sci Fi is too specific, and in order to justify showing non-sci fi programming while also telling their audience to quit their whining about the non-sci fi programming, they must change their name. Sci fi fans do tend to be sticklers for details, and we are more likely to complain - far more likely than the viewers of AMC when they show films that are not really movie classics. This post is part of that.

Of course, they could have tried something really wild, like acquiring better original programs instead of the occasional hit, thus permitting them to keep their focus on science fiction and keep their old name. But that's just crazy talk.

The one's I've already read: the Alice books

So, it will take me a while to finish Dune. I knew this when I started it; I have a lot of preparations to make for DragonCon, and so I have less time to read right now. Also, a friend of mine confirmed that Dune is a slow read. This made me feel better, because I've frequently re-read paragraphs to try and figure out what all was just said. It's nice to know that it's not just me.

But until I finish Dune, I will try to keep the blog going with a few more of these posts about the books I'd read before I started the blog.

So here's a way in which I'm a bit of a hypocrite - I did not like the free love in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Meanwhile, I love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Of course, the Alice stories have no sex in them, but it is believed by many scholars that Lewis Carroll was most likely a pedophile - although a pedophile who didn't act on his desires.

It's a debatable topic. There's information that his family removed and marked out of his diaries. but that information may not be what we think it is. There are the nude photos of girls - but they were taken with the permission of the girls' mothers, and given to the families rather than kept by Carroll. But they are creepy to the modern eye. But there was a trend of photographing nude children at the time, as a theme of innocence. But still, they are creepy photos. I've seen them, and they make me want to wash my brain.

But when I read the stories, I don't find myself thinking about the biographical details. In my mind, the Alice stories exist outside of the seedier details of Carroll's life. Instead, I see his love of math, and games, of language and puns. He doesn't appear to have an agenda, and that allows me to forgive his personal flaws.

With Stranger in a Strange Land, on the other hand, I felt like I was being told that life would be better if we learned what the Man from Mars knew. I felt preached to (the long, speechy style did not help), and therefore I felt compelled to review the novel in terms of the flaws I perceived in the lesson. Likewise, Chronicles of Narnia. It's preachy at times. It evokes a response against preachiness in me.

Having said that, I am not a scholar on any of these works. I did not like Stranger in a Strange Land, but it's considered a sci fi classic. I disagree, and I can think of books that I liked a lot more which would be a good replacement on the list. But the list-makers are entitled to their opinions. This is the thing about reading books on a list - you won't like it all, and that's alright. These genres were not created strictly for my tastes. It gives me the opportunity to shape a sense of what I like in the genres, and choose directions from that. For instance, this list has made me into a Philip K Dick fan, and that's a good thing. It's nice to have things to read, but it's also nice to gain a sense of direction in my reading.

I'd also like to add that at the time in my life when I was surrounded by people who took illegal and recreational drugs, I spent many days amongst the druggies watching Disney's Alice in Wonderland. The druggies liked to speculate that anyone involved in something this weird must have been on drugs. Lewis Carroll must have been on drugs while writing Alice in Wonderland. The Disney animators must have been on drugs while they were creating this film - which is a ridiculous and laughable assumption for many reasons. Primarily, it just seems very unlikely that Disney employees were getting high at work. Not to mention, making an animated film is a very difficult and technical process, and back then they did the whole business by hand. I sincerely doubt anyone could carry this off under the influence of hallucinogens.

Lewis Carroll may have taken opium. It certainly was available, although it seems there is little to support the rumors of his opium addiction. Even if he did, I sincerely doubt he wrote under the influence. It was my observation during those years amongst the druggies that none of them ever did anything creative, or even productive.

Sure, there are artists and musicians who are both exceptionally creative and drug users - the 60s as a collective whole prove this. But those people were talented to begin with. Drugs don't create talent.

I feel a little regret that this post has very little to do with these actual novels. But this blog isn't about reviewing each novel, it's about the experience of the novels. My experience with Alice is complicated.