Thank you all very much.
Oh, something about mutant bacteria wreaking havoc with dress sense.
It’s a decent book, though, and the Will Smith movie has veeery little to do with it. It’s probably the least faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen. (I haven’t actually tried to remember any others I’ve ever seen. I just made that up to sound dramatic. But it’s pretty unfaithful.) In the book, at the end, the title ‘I Am Legend’ actually gets relevant!
Here’s a thought. Tie in the vampire’s longevity/healing ability with their need for blood. Say they’ve got some kind of super antibody that cures any diseases or physical breakdown due to injury or aging. But there’s one bad side-effect - the antibody also attacks some vital element (let’s call it Factor X) that a person needs to stay alive. So the person needs to obtain Factor X from an outside source - the blood of people who do not have the antibody. And they have to keep consuming new blood because once the blood is in their body, the antibody will start attacking the Factor X.
That isn’t bad, but they would still have to eat a regular diet in addition to the blood supplements.
I think the key conundrum with the bloodsucking is not just coming up with a reason they would need blood, but in fanwanking a pseudoscience reason for how they could feed only on blood.
If some things like super powers, healing and longevity can be dialed back, then I think it coul also really help to dispense with the idea that vampires feed only on blood and reimagine it as something they need to do in addition to eating regular food. This would still make them dangerous to humans without being as scientifically nettlesome as a explaining an exclusively blood based diet. It could also be worked into the story that an exclusive blood diet is a popular myth, like light sensitivity or aversions to rligious symbols.
I came here exactly to mention Blindsight. It’s a great book and well worth the read, especially since you can get it for free on the author’s website. The vampires - Homo sapiens whedonum - are incredibly well thought out (I loved the idea of the “crucifix glitch”, now medically controlled through the use of “anti-euclidean” medication). In the site there’s also a PowerPoint presentation from an “in universe” point of view which explains how the vampires came to be and how they were rediscovered: Taming Yesterday’s Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow, presented to you by Fizerpharm Inc.
Are vampires depicted as feeding exclusively on blood? I thought at a minimum they are shown as sometimes taking wine and other beverages; occasionally raw meat as well.
“I do not drink …wine.”*
Extremely famous line by Dracula, both in the book, on stage, and on screen. He’s also shown conspicuously not dining with Harker at the castle.
- “and I do not smoke…shit.” saith George Hamilton as Dracula in Love at First Bite
Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series does try to solve some of the inconsistencies noted in vampire lore. In the first novel, we see a Victorian England in which Dracula had not been defeated by Van Helsing, et al. In fact, he’d turned Queen Victoria & become her second consort. Vampirism became the Done Thing in England & vamps from all over (from vampire lit beyond Bram Stoker, that is) congregated there & came out.
Are the vampire fictions & folktales inconsistent? Of course; that’s because there are different lineages of vampires, with different characteristics. Some are shape shifters–temporarily or permanently. Some, especially when newly turned, are vulnerable to sunlight. Others simply prefer overcast days. Crucifixes & holy water only bother those who’d been Good Catholics while Warm. (Warm = not a vamp. Yet.)
The series doesn’t go deeply into vampire origins. But it’s an excellent pastiche–with fictional characters from non-vampire lit & real people playing roles in the 3 novels (& several stories).
Then there’s Sabella or The Bloodstone; A Science Fiction Vampire Tale by the great Tanith Lee. In which our heroine discovers the real reason behind her Interesting Condition.
I came here to recommend Fevre Dream, a great vampire novel set along the Mississippi River; the kind of book Bram Stoker and Mark Twain would’ve written together.
The vampires in that book have such ancient origins that they’ve forgotten them; they may or may not predate humanity. They have legends of a giant, elegant underground city but aren’t sure if it’s true. Martin’s vampires cannot turn humans into vampires by bite or any other means (although one human, memorably, tries to “turn”). The plot turns on the development of an effective blood substitute by a scientifically-minded vampire who wants his species to stop preying on humanity, but is resisted by traditionalists who strongly prefer the old ways.
I was always dissatisfied with Stoker et al. who said any vampire could turn any human into a vampire. If that were so, the whole population would be vampires in jig time.
Anyone seen this recent vampire movie? I haven’t. What’d you think?: Daybreakers - Wikipedia
I’ve mentioned this before in an old thread about non-supernatural vampires, but it’s on topic here too: I write an ongoing web-based serial, which, in its first year (back in 1997-98), had as a major plot point a group of ‘vampires’ where the conceit is that they weren’t supernatural, but humans with a disorder (along the lines of hemophilia) requiring the blood-drinking thing.
Symptoms include photosensitivity and a certain hardiness, though not immortality. The society of people with this rare disorder developed a cult, which has lasted for centuries in a certain section of Italy, based around pseudo-religious stuff that really revolves around money and power – kind of a Scientology deal. All so-called supernatural elements were explained biologically. The disorder was identified in one of my main characters when she developed Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia after a bad injury, and thrived only when given packed blood – which triggered the dormant disorder and required continual infusions, which stymied the doctors since normally there’s a limit to how much blood you can give someone (obviously, considering blood volume).
Anyway, even the myths surrounding vampires were explained as having developed due to locals who misunderstood the disease and were (justifiably) afraid of those who had to steal blood to survive. Similar to how epileptics were considered possessed by devils. Even the cross thing was explained because many centuries ago, the first people who evinced the symptoms of the disease were persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition, and thus churchly relics (particularly Catholic ones) were considered symbols of that persecution and suffering they endured. This anathema developed into the myth that crosses are literally deadly or will ward off vampires.
It was a lot of fun and though the plotline doesn’t really figure in the serial anymore – the writing’s much more realistic and less campy – there are still characters on the canvas who have the syndrome. The disease is now dormant thanks to a serum developed with a certain organic compound called Allicin … which explains another hoary old vampire-related myth. 
This is a good idea if one is trying to make scientifically plausible vampires. It’s easy to imagine how the “they only feed on human blood!” myth would have arisen – the horror of the blood-drinking would overshadow the rest of their diet. In the real world the term “cannibalism” applies to any instance of a human eating another human’s flesh, it doesn’t suggest that anyone lives solely on “long pig”, but if news came out about a cannibalistic serial killer then I doubt anyone would spend much time thinking about the ordinary food the killer also ate.
Vampires are almost always depicted as feeding only on blood. Sometimes they can subsist on animal blood rather than human blood, and occasionally you’ll get a vampire who eats very rare steaks, but off the top of my head I can’t think of any vampire books or movies where they could get nourishment from ordinary food or drink. (There probably have been some, but I can’t think of any.) Sometimes they can force it down, but it doesn’t do them any good. The fact that the vampire character refrains from food or drink is often one of the hints that there’s something sinister about them.
In Dracula it’s not totally clear how the Count turns humans into vampires, but this doesn’t seem to happen to everyone who gets bitten. He kills the entire crew of the ship Demeter, and none of them appear as vampires. (Most of the bodies were disposed of somehow by Dracula, probably just thrown overboard, but the captain’s body is found lashed to the wheel and he doesn’t rise again.) Both in Transylvania and in England several children are bitten by vampires and we don’t hear that they become vampires either. Had Jonathan Harker not escaped from Castle Dracula he probably would have been drained of blood by Dracula’s three brides, but there’s no suggestion that he would have become a vampire himself and it seems unlikely that the Count would want Harker lording it over his ancestral home in his absence.
So while Dracula probably could turn any human into a vampire, he apparently chooses not to. He doesn’t seem interested in “vampirizing” anyone except attractive young women.
I just read a book where vampires eat regular ordinary food, but “live” off of a small bit of blood once every two weeks or so. Damned if I can remember the title though.
ETA: The Joe Pitt Casebooks by Charlie Huston!
Elendil’s Heir and Lamia, I think that in order for Dracula to turn somebody (like Mina Harker) in the book, he didn’t just feed on them, but made them drink some of his blood.
Thanks. That didn’t seem to be the case in Stephen King’s 'Salem’s Lot, where IIRC everybody who got bitten was ultimately turned into a vampire.
Yeah, becoming a Vampire because you were bitten by a Vampire doesn’t make sense. It’s drinking Vampire blood that makes you become a Vampire. This is how it was handled in Anne Rice’s books–a vampire drains someone to the point of death, then as they are dying the vampire gives the human vampire blood.
Most attempts at realistic, scientifically plausible vampires just stink.
While we’re discussing neck biters, I recommend Fat White Vampire Blues. I expected it to be funny and it was. I did not expect well-developed characters I could care about and who behave in a believable manner. I got them anyway.
Re I Am Legend
I just finished reading it this week. It’s been a while since I saw Vincent Price’s Last Man On Earth, but IIRC that actually was a pretty faithful adaption.
You can get a fair bit of mileage out of assuming it’s a retrovirus. Retrovira actually change the host’s DNA, and so could grant traits (beneficial or otherwise) that the host didn’t already have. And anything that could be encoded in DNA (which is a heck of a lot) could in principle be contained in a retrovirus, though you might be strained to explain why the retrovirus evolved to grant those particular traits.
This came up in another thread a while back, and I re-read the relevant passage from Dracula. According to the Count himself, he forced Mina Harker to drink his blood in order to form a psychic bond between them and make her his minion:
This doesn’t totally rule out the possibility that blood-drinking is a necessary component of becoming “vampirized”, but if so it’s never stated in the book. We do know that Dracula drinks from both Lucy and Mina several times, and since they are the only characters he wants to turn into vampires it may be that multiple bites are required to do the job. This is just speculation though, the vampirization process isn’t ever fully explained in the book.
Interestingly, Dracula himself was NOT transformed into a vampire by another vampire. He’s not given much backstory in the novel, but Van Helsing obtains information from a professor in Budapest indicating that the Count became vampirized through a pact with the Devil:
There’s a scene in Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum where the vampire Vlad is talking to the human (witch) girl Agnes and explains that although he can transform people into vampires, this isn’t normally done. I don’t have the exact quote, but he says something like “If you could transform chocolate into another girl, would you do it? Of course not. You’d rather just eat the chocolate.”
I recall a few stories where it was genetically engineered that way. Sometimes as a deliberate homage to the vampire mythology by the designers.
Spike was quite fond of the blooming onions served at The Bronze. And he grossed Giles out by adding Weetabix to his pigs’ blood.
He was also known to drink a beer or two. Under stress, Spike would guzzle whiskey–but had a hard time getting or staying drunk, thanks to his demon constitution.