In most cases there are fantasy monsters like fairies and sci-fi monsters like aliens, but at least one horror icon seems to comfortably occupy both. What about vampires who integrate them so easily into the past, the future, the domestic world and the depths of space?
Most horror fans know the origin of vampires. 18th-century superstitions mixed with the semi-true stories of Elizabeth Bathory and Vlad III gave way to groundbreaking fiction. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is widely regarded as the first recorded piece, but that of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the one who defined the genre. From those humble beginnings, the concept has grown into an unimaginable variety.
Those early examples of vampire fiction are strictly fantastic. There is little to no science to speak of. Dracula is magical in nature, his powers and weaknesses are handcrafted by the Christian god as a form of punishment. However, over the years, vampires have shifted from horror monsters to one of the countless fantasy races. There is seemingly no fictional world in which vampires cannot emerge. The rules are loose, most fictional vampires pick and choose from the list of characteristics established in the early works. It’s fair to say that vampire fiction is its own genre, not tied to any need for consistent appearance in any specific type of story. With that in mind, there are a few interesting themes that come up when vampires enter the world of science fiction.
It didn’t take long for the vampire to make its way into space. The popular suggestion of real vampires came in the early 1700s and the early stories of vampires in space came in the early 1900s. Perhaps the groundbreaking stories of space-bound vampires came in 1908 when Gustave Le Rouge’s Vampires from Mars was released. That strange story followed classic sci-fi tropes and mixed planetary romance with cosmic horror when a team of reckless space heroes encountered a planet of vampires. The creatures of this novel are the native inhabitants of Mars, humanoid monsters with huge bat wings and deadly fangs. This concept of alien species that happens to closely match human descriptions of vampires is common in sci-fi stories.
Most space-hopping fiction has at least one or two planets inhabited by an alien that shares some or all of the traits with vampires. doctor who, for example, has become entangled in a few versions of vampires. Within the lore of that long-running series, vampires are a type of parasite descended from a more powerful species, and every intelligent species has to deal with a vampire phase. Great horror director Tobe Hooper’s 1985 film Spirit featured the invasion of a group of deadly space vampires who threatened to consume the living souls of the Earth. Mario Bava’s Thrilling Giallo Movie Planet of the Vampires sees a crew of space explorers crash into a hostile planet, then their dead rise and attack. Aliens like vampires is a pretty common concept in sci-fi and largely serves as an excuse to get the creatures into a sci-fi story.
Many, but probably not most, vampire stories are inherently hostile. They depict the conflict between humanity and the creatures of the night. The problem is that in a fair fight no human can reliably defeat a vampire. A common way to solve this problem and to make the conflict grow in size is to arm humanity with futuristic or specialized weapons. This is the ethos of working as Knife, Ultraviolet, and underworld. These works align with another trend of sci-fi vampires, scientific explanations for their unique condition. Sometimes it is the result of unorthodox experiments, sometimes it is a rare blood disorder, and other works describe it as a plague. These are examples of reaching a known conclusion through a new route. Telling the classic story of humans killing monsters, now with the benefit of scientific enlightenment.
Science fiction and vampires go well together, easily transferring the genre’s tropes into classic sci-fi settings. This concept works for several reasons. The concept of something that looks like a normal human being but behaves like an unforgivable monster is common and recognizable fictional fodder. Vampires specifically represent themes such as sexuality, class struggle, and the abuse and trafficking of the poor by the rich. These themes are no less relevant to the modern age than when they arose, and most sci-fi authors consider them relevant to the future. Cyberpunk dystopia, nightmarish outcomes of the future, and the ongoing cyclical nature of progress and regression are all as common to sci-fi as they are to everyday life. With all that in mind, vampires act as mindless monsters of the week and as entries in the ongoing mythos defined hundreds of years ago.
The truth about vampires in fiction is that they work wherever they want. Vampires might as well be a genre of fiction in their own right, but that genre’s crossover with science fiction is one of the most interesting in the medium.
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