We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,566,927.92 | Books Available: 795,598 | Members Online: 51

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Different Blood: The Vampire As Alien

Different Blood The Vampire As Alien
Author: Margaret L. Carter

Different blood flows in their veins—but our blood quenches their thirst. From Bram Stoker´s 1897 creation of Count Dracula, portrayed as a foreign invader bent on the conquest of England, the literary vampire has symbolized the Other, whether his or her otherness arises from racial, ethnic, sexual, or species difference. Even bef... more »ore the bloodsucking Martians of H. G. Wells´ War of the Worlds, however, popular fiction contained a few vampires who were members of alien species rather than supernatural undead. Guy de Maupassant´s Horla is only one of the best-known. Vampire invaders from other planets appear in pulp fiction throughout the 20th century. Among others, interplanetary adventurer Northwest Smith meets a shapeshifting, Medusoid seductress in C. L. Moore´s Shambleau. Even more intriguing, though, are humanoid and quasi-humanoid beings who live on Earth among us, often camouflaged as our own kind. Jack Williamson´s Darker Than You Think, for example, features an inhuman race, vampiric as well as lycanthropic, that has preyed on humanity from prehistoric times. A gentler view of the Earth-born "alien vampire" appears in Ray Bradbury´s Homecoming, a poignant tale of the one "normal" boy in a clan of "monsters." Such fiction can use vampirism either to valorize or to undercut racism and xenophobia. Richard Matheson makes the vampire a misfit child in Dress of White Silk and Drink My Blood. Cyril Kornbluth´s The Mindworm, at mid-century, uses the alien in the form of a mutant born of human parents to foreground another cultural preoccupation, the fears spawned by the nuclear age. Similar fears underlie Matheson´s I Am Legend, in which a worldwide plague wipes out all "normal" human beings and transforms the survivors into a new species. The boom in vampire fiction that began in the 1970s engendered a variety of "alien" vampires, many of them portrayed as sympathetic characters. The science fiction vampire is especially suited to the presentation of vampirism as morally neutral rather than inherently evil. Suzy McKee Charnas´ The Vampire Tapestry, Whitley Strieber´s The Hunger, George R. R. Martin´s Fevre Dream, Jacqueline Lichtenberg´s Those of My Blood, Elaine Bergstrom´s Shattered Glass, and Melanie Tem´s Desmodus are only a few examples of this richly diverse subgenre. In the ´80s and ´90s the new subgenre of vampire romance also flourished, exploring the naturally evolved vampire (as well as the more traditional undead type) in terms of the redemptive power of love. Different Blood surveys the literary vampire as alien from the mid-1800s to the 1990s, analyzing the many uses to which science fiction and fantasy authors have put this theme. Their works explore issues of species, race, ecological responsibility, gender, eroticism, xenophobia, parasitism, symbiosis, intimacy, and the bridging of differences. An extensive bibliography guides the reader to numerous novels and short stories on the "vampire as alien" theme, many of them still in print.

ISBN-13: 9781592798520
ISBN-10: 1592798527
Publication Date: 4/1/2004
Pages: 168
Rating:

Currently 3/5 Stars.

3 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Amber Quill Press, LLC
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Criticism & Theory >> General
Horror >> Vampires

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Different Blood: The Vampire As Alien

Loading...