Well, I did not think yesterday that my vampire chick-lit post would lead to another one, but it does give me the opportunity to promote a Christian writer who is working in the area of Furry Science Fiction or the Furry Universe. His name is Ken Pick and he has been published in a Christian science fiction anthology about which I have talked about before, Infinite Space, Infinite God. He has now had one of his stories published as a one hour podcast. Let me give you a fair warning that you had better be a science fiction fan because the short story starts off without much explanation so that if you do not have a science fiction background, you may end up befuddled.
The Furry Universe is a difficult place in which to work. The vast majority of the characters are intelligent animals, most of whom walk on two legs (bipedal) and have developed gripping hands, civilization, space travel, etc. But, much of furry fiction uses the “animal nature” of the characters as an “opportunity” to delve into areas of soft to hard porn. Mind you, one can turn on Saturday morning TV and see Japanese furries involved in quite safe activities, so the genre is not automatically bad. The image to the right was drawn by an artist who has won Reuben awards and has drawn furry characters.
Ken, however, writes stories in which the underlying theme is that of beings overcoming their animal nature. Thus, Ken has taken one of the themes of the genre and turned it on its head. Rather than using the “animal nature” to either give extra powers or abilities to his characters or using it as an excuse to write some bedtime stories, Ken has used the animal nature as a metaphor for the internal fight that all of us Christians go through as we try to overcome our fallen nature in order that we might follow Our Lord. He does not do this in a preachy manner. In fact, you can read his stories without fully realizing that this is what he is doing.
So, why have I talked about him? Because vampire chick-lit for teenagers is also turning the vampire genre on its head. In answer to a comment yesterday, I mentioned that our previous conception of vampires had some problems of its own. Think about it. The old vampire myth has it that a completely innocent person can be bitten, become a vampire, and be damned to hell forever, with no recourse. Does this sound like any type of conception of God?
You see, I have heard Christians over the years complaining about how the modern Hollywood movies always show that priests and the Church are weak against vampires (well, and against demon-possessed people) and often cannot effectively fight them. They “reminisce” about days in which the vampire myth had them recoiling from a cross, holy water, the Eucharist, etc. That is, the Church had clear power over these evil creatures. But, let me repeat, none of them ever questioned that an innocent maiden could be turned into a damned demon without any choice on her part. Talk about an extreme form of Calvinism! This is definitely a matter of being predestined with no free will! And, this is a long way from the idea of the thief on the cross who could repent even at the end of a lifetime of evil.
This new conception of vampires is interesting. There actually is an acknowledgment of the previous history of vampires in the sense that the older vampires are pictured as regularly bloody and violent. But, these new vampires are centuries away from those. And, this is a different world than the medieval world. And, so, the previous conception is challenged. What if an innocent victim is bitten, but chooses to fight the vampiric urges? This is what one finds in the vampire chick-lit for teenagers. Often it is actually the vampire that helps the teenager learn to control his/her urges by giving an example of fighting their own vampiric urges!
So, here is an interesting question for you. Have not all Christians been “bitten?” Not by a vampire, but by the sin of Adam and Eve. Are we not all damaged? Are we not all fighting dark impulses that all too often have their way with us? Are we not striving to hold at bay that which wants to turn every one of us into creatures of the dark rather than Sons and Daughters of the Light? Oddly enough, the new vampires, like Ken’s writings about the Furry Universe, are fighting one nature in order to learn a better nature.
It is true that vampire chick-lit for teenagers is very far from Christian. You will not read it and find a Christian conception of the universe. As one commentator pointed out, vampires are pictured as always being irresistibly beautiful and almost unattainable. But, in its presentation of the fight against a dark nature, of chaste behavior between boyfriend and girlfriend, etc., there are some very good themes present. That is why I commented yesterday about having mixed feelings about the genre.
One warning, do not expect to read adult vampire tales and find the same thing. That is a different genre and definitely not Christian.
His name is Ken Pick and he has been published in a Christian science fiction anthology about which I have talked about before, Infinite Space, Infinite God.
Even if I’m from the opposite side of the Adriatic?
What if an innocent victim is bitten, but chooses to fight the vampiric urges? This is what one finds in the vampire chick-lit for teenagers. Often it is actually the vampire that helps the teenager learn to control his/her urges by giving an example of fighting their own vampiric urges!
Anne Rice started the trope with Interview With a Vampire. Besides Vampire-as-Emo-Boi, a continuing theme in the novel is the struggle to retain humanity after becoming a vampire; Louis tries to hold on to what humanity he has left, while his “parent” Lestat glories in his loss of humanity and new “life”/undeath as Immortal Uber-Predator.
And there’s a Christian Vampire/Werewolf romance novel, Never Ceese by Sue Dent of the Lost Genre Guild. (Small-press published because no Official Christian publisher would touch it.) Her romance is between a male vampire and female werewolf who became Creatures of the Night because of a curse; they first meet because both are trying to find a way to lift their curse before it locks in permanently.
One warning, do not expect to read adult vampire tales and find the same thing. That is a different genre and definitely not Christian.
Because they have taken the Erotica aspect of the Vampire and firewalled it. You see the same tendency in most Furry art and fiction.
Never Ceese is available from Amazon, of course! http://www.amazon.com/Never-Ceese-Sue-Dent/dp/0976994704/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261585289&sr=8-1
Indeed Never Ceese is available through Amazon and anywhere else books are sold save for larger Christian bookstores because my publisher isn’t affiliated with CBA or ECPA who only write for a specific denominational and specific audience of Christians that being conservative evangelicals.
Never Ceese was short-listed for a Bram Stoker award in 2006 and Forever Richard garnished a book blurb from the British Fantasy Society. Both books were nominated last month for the 2009 Pluto Award with Never Ceese moving into the finals.
I’m excited to be among the ranks of those who’ve provided wonderful vampire and furry fiction. And thank-you so much Headless Unicorn Guy or HUG for short. 😉 And indeed, I have just as many adult readers as I do teens. In fact, you’ll find it in adult fiction more often than you will young adult because after all, it doesn’t matter what a publisher labels their book, the bookstores will put it where ever they see fit. And if the story is from a mid-range publisher like mine and not from a big powerhouse publisher, they don’t see fit to shelf it at all. Gotta love the publishing industry. It’s a wonder any author survives long enough to see their book do anything.
Well, now I really want to read them. GRIN. Are they on Audiobook or are they Kindle-ready yet?
There is another Christian vampire novel (less on the romance than some though it is there) by Werner Lind, entitled Lifeblood http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2828180.Lifeblood – very good – not sure if it has gotten republished yet (the original small publisher has gone out of print – but I know the author has been trying to get it back into print…) Fits more into the traditional older traditional vampires in many ways, but turns it on its side (a vampire who is repelled or hurt by crosses, yet wishes it were not so, remembering her life and faith prior to being turned, for example) One really big plot point that does make it Christian that I can’t give away without giving away too much plot…
Werner’s book is wonderful as well. Sticks to lore for the most part too. I enjoyed that about the story. Also meant to add that though you can’t find my books in larger Christian bookstores because of the exclusive nature of this industry, both of my stories have been approved for distribution to the Christian market. I know, right?
Thanks for promoting Ken’s work! I’m a long-time friend of his and I’m always glad to see him get some of the credit he and his work so richly deserve.
That said, about vampires, or at least the the traditional European version of same… originally it wasn’t the original person who was attacking people. They would get killed by a vampire (or commit suicide, or die a unrepentant heretic, or one of several dozen other things depending on the local myths) and their corpse would be possessed by a demon that would then attack the living. Really, the original Balkan vampire was more like one of the walking dead from a Romero movie than the Lugosi/Lee Dracula.
Sorry to be so nitpicky.
Thank you, that is helpful. But, I do know that within a short time, the possessed-before-the-death theme had grown. The History Channel had a recent story on an Austrian princess that was buried in such a way that it indicated vampire burial (hmm, anti-vampire burial).
Eric himself is trying to make it as a writer. So far he’s done mostly sword-and-sorcery; if this were the Thirties, he’d be giving Bob Howard (“Conan”) a run for his money through the pages of Weird Tales.
(Unforutnately, the market has changed so much these days that unless you’re BORN a Big Name Bestselling Author (whose vampires SPARKLE), you’re going to be grubbing for matches. And don’t expect to get paid for it by the Napster generation — “Information Yearns To Be FREEEEEE!”)
That said, Eric’s first semi-pro publication, the Furry Mesoamerican Sword-and-Sorcery short “Crossroads”, should be joining “Kill 23” up on the AnthroDreams podcast later this month.
(“Mesoamerican Sword-and-Sorcery”? Shouldn’t that be “Macahuitl-and-Nahualli“?)
I can’t say whether the market has changed all that much as I’ve not been in it long enough to compare. I do believe that Meyer and Rowling and King, Grisham and whoever–weren’t BORN a Big Name Bestselling Author but rather happen to be in the right place at the right time and in some shape, way form or fashion had paid their dues. It’s just that there’s no middle of the road publishers. They are either small dreaming that impossible dream that they can one day be a big publisher. Or they are a big publisher laughing at the hopeless dreams of all the smaller publishers who will die dreaming because they know they have way too much money to ever be stopped. Wow. That kind of sounds hmmm . . . political. 😉 *Sue moves a little to the right of where she was standing a minute ago* Maybe this is the spot where I need to be standing for that big contract to fall on my head. HA!
Friend of Ken “Headless Unicorn” guy here. He pointed this post out to me since I’m such a vampire nut.
I too always wondered about the idea of the vampiric curse being forced on someone, but I never thought that it meant that the person upon whom it was inflicted would be damned to hell. Dracula, after all, had “a look of peace” on his face when he was destroyed in the original novel. I always figured that in traditional vampire fiction, the human soul was a prisoner inside of a body possessed by dark forces, and that staking the vampire released it.
At least in THAT version of vampires. Heaven knows that there have been enough permutations of the mythos over the years…
For those who are not aware, below is the sentences in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” that describe his death:
” By this time the gypsies, seeing themselves covered by the Winchesters, and at the mercy of Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward, had given in and made no further resistance. The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well.
“As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.
“But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart.
“It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.
“I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”
Ahh, thank you for that. I was a bit too lazy to copy and paste it myself.
Relevant to this discussion is also the description of Lucy Westenra’s body immediately following her (much more violent) staking:
“There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste. But these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever. ”
So in the Stoker tradition of vampires (which is the basis of our modern mythos), the curse is only in effect so long as the vampire itself exists in its state of undeath. Upon its destruction, the curse ends and the human soul is finally freed for its final reward (or judgment). In that sense, perhaps the vampire is even MORE comparable to the sinful human condition, for much like us, death releases them from the burden of their evil impulses.
As a tangential aside, it’s interesting to note that the guilty vampire, full of remorse for his evil actions and seeking to resist them, is a trope that’s far older than most people realize. Before Twilight, before Buffy, before Anne Rice, before Dark Shadows and Barnabas Collins, even before Dracula, there was the Penny Dreadful “Varney the Vampyre,” whose titular character began the labyrinthine, plothole-ridden story as a monster and became the first known fictional vampire with a conscience by its end (in which he decided to end his curse by throwing himself into a volcano). And I’ve heard that there are legends of vampires repenting and serving God by fighting their fallen brethren that date back further than that. Nothing new under the sun (or moon), I suppose…
OK, now you have me seriously interested in doing some more research. Do not be surprised at a soon-to-come future post. Hmm, but Christmas first!
Stoker — I do remember something about a kind of ‘good vampire’ from either Italian or Dalmatian (I think) legendry. It was literally called something that translated as ‘Good Vampire’, benefici something.
And while they weren’t vampires, there were the Benandanti of Eastern Europe, werewolves who traveled into Hell to fight demons and witches who would steal the harvest and inflict famine on the land if they weren’t stopped.
And while “benadanti” sounds Italian, I remember something about werewolves having the same reputation in Finnish lore. They were basically protectors against the witches — but still dangerous, because they were some sort of wild force of nature.
Ahh yes, it was the Italian ones I was thinking of! If only I hadn’t left the book that mentioned them back with my family before I moved…
Stoker:
The good Italian vamoires are called stregoni benefici, while the Dalmatian ones are called something like either kudlak or kresnik. Just in case you wanted to know.
I look forward to it! And do let me know if there’s any way in which I can assist. I could probably point out a few good books at least as starting resources, but I’m sure you could probably dig up some pretty good ones yourself.
…hrm, this comment was supposed to post up there. The computer gremlins have clearly been at work again!