…and this is a 
Mass market genre surprise
Category: Books
Posted on: May 11, 2008 3:46 PM, by PZ Myers
Today, I briefly emerged from my little academic cocoon and stepped outside. I was shocked to discover that the snow had all melted, the lakes were all thawed out, there were birds in the air, and the sun was shining — I think I somehow missed the appearance of spring. Don't worry, I'm buckling back to work in my oubliette now, but it was a bit of a surprise.
But that's not what I wanted to mention. It was another surprising bit of weirdness. The reason I was dragged out of the dungeon of academe was to run an errand, and I was at Wal-Mart (don't ask)…and while I was there, bored and awaiting the mistress's orders, I was browsing their book section. It's also been a long, long time since I plumbed that paragon of mass-market genrefication, the warehouse shopping version of a bookstore, and I discovered a new (to me) development.
First, there was something entirely expected: wall-to-wall romance novels, with their pink covers and naked-chested manly men flexing their pectorals. That's a regular fixture in these places. I even read some, several years ago, and as formula fiction goes, they weren't my cup of tea, but they weren't that bad. There are well-honed conventions there, but some of the better authors do manage to sneak a little imagination into the filigree.
No, the real surprise was the second most popular genre that was everywhere on those book shelves: vampire novels. It's as if Laurell Hamilton and Anne Rice have recently had an unholy tryst and have spawned a scampering horde of little horror-romance novelists who have all skittered off and scrawled out series after series of stories about vampiresses, vampire huntresses, vampire princesses, vampire trailer park queens, and vampire lovers. They all seemed to be by female authors and feature female protagonists, too; some of the covers also blurred into similarity with the romance novels, except that the muscular-breasted Fabio on the cover was also sporting fangs.
I can't judge the contents, and maybe they're all wonderfully creative and entertaining, although I suspect Sturgeon's Law will still apply. I'm just a little baffled about where this sudden surge in one narrow genre has come from.
Comments
Pretty much from Laurell K Hamilton, just like the related surge of what I call Magical Detective stories.
Posted by: Flamethorn | May 11, 2008 4:15 PM
I remember vampires being insanely popular in the 1990s. Probably as a result of the Interview with the Vampire movie starring David Miscavige's butt-buddy. But I thought it was over and done with years ago.
Posted by: BoxerShorts | May 11, 2008 4:17 PM
Yeesh, my mother has started reading these vampire harlequin romance books as well. i looked at one and it was pretty bad.
it's just baffling.
Posted by: Cat of many faces | May 11, 2008 4:18 PM
If you're into trade paperbacks, you need look no further than http://salmongutter.blogspot.com - its fantastic!
Posted by: FigaroTheParrot | May 11, 2008 4:23 PM
PZ, I think you mean Sturgeon's Revelation. Sturgeon's Law is -- or was originally -- "Nothing is always absolutely so."
His Revelation (sometimes called the Second Law): "Ninety percent of everything is crap," has sort of overtaken it in notoriety (for obvious reasons).
/pedant off
Posted by: Kaf | May 11, 2008 4:24 PM
If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me, but it seems to me that vampires have been heavily eroticised since Bela Lugosi's "Dracula" in the early thirties.
Certainly, Bram Stoker's version of the character was presented as repulsive, as was the bloodsuckers in movies like "Nosferatu" and "Vampyr".
Posted by: Robin | May 11, 2008 4:26 PM
I'm just a little baffled about where this sudden surge in one narrow genre has come from.
Might it just be the latest fad or fashion in chicklit? Where do any such fashion constructs come from? Anyone who can answer that could make a fortune.
Posted by: Richard Harris | May 11, 2008 4:29 PM
vampire novels were exciting when i was in junior high. since i completed (as far as i can) my head-butt separation in later years they've been pretty dull.
(random aside: i've been in a non-science cocoon for a few days, did this story already get commented upon?)
Posted by: garth | May 11, 2008 4:33 PM
I tried reading a Laurell K Hamilton book, and while the story seemed passable, I quickly got bored by the constant sex scenes. Honestly, you've got to work quite hard to make sex and vampires seem dull, don't you? And since Hamilton and Rice are the originals, I haven't dared brave the stacks of pale copies.
For an entertaining book with (among other things) vampires in it, I'd say Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko wasn't bad at all. I've got Day Watch standing on my shelf as well, should really get around to reading it.
Posted by: Ted D | May 11, 2008 4:33 PM
Oh, it's definitely the fashion now. The most popular young adult series is Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series with a teenager in love with a vampire. I'm not sure why it's the fad now but it's been popular the last few years but it seems to have really surged this year. Perhaps it means the fad is reaching its peak?
Posted by: Unstable Isotope | May 11, 2008 4:34 PM
I live in Portland, Oregon and recently overheard two Powell's employees discussing this phenomenon. One was explaining to his new-hire charge that "Supernatural Romance" is the largest growing, hottest selling category in fiction right now, a subgenre he described as "women committing every imaginable act of lust and perversion with vampires, werewolves, demons, Lovecraftian tentacled rape gods, basically anything you can imagine as long as it's not a normal human man." Selah.
Posted by: Stephen Couchman | May 11, 2008 4:34 PM
I'd bet anything it's the Twilight series that's doing this. It's massively popular- think Harry Potter for angsty, tennage girls. The series isn't that badly written, either- as far as teenmances go, not bad.
Not really good, either, but not bad.
(And a side note- the vampires in that series? Not your average mopey vampires, not sexy enough. Oh, no- these guys *sparkle* in the sunlight.)
Posted by: Sangy | May 11, 2008 4:35 PM
Vampire fiction has been hot for a few years now, long enough for its death as a genre to be predicted a few times. Hasn't happened yet. Now they're confusing the genres with paranormal romance, some of it even vampire-free.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | May 11, 2008 4:35 PM
"women committing every imaginable act of lust and perversion with vampires, werewolves, demons, Lovecraftian tentacled rape gods, basically anything you can imagine as long as it's not a normal human man."
So, kind of like anime, then?
Posted by: BoxerShorts | May 11, 2008 4:38 PM
Robin @ 5,
The eroticization of vampires started about two seconds after Dracula was published, actually. The connection between blood and sex and death was leapt on by the original audience of the book and hasn't let go since then. ;)
Ted @ 8,
If you liked Night Watch, you'll like Day Watch. And Twilight Watch, and The Final Watch. Lukyanenko is pretty cool.
Tho' I have no idea why vampire romantic fiction is suddenly being found at Wal-Mart. There's been a market for vampire romantic and erotic fiction for at least 20 years - one of my friend's ex-wives actually had a magazine of vampire poetry, hehe, so I had some exposure to the phenomenon even back then. To me, the interesting thing is that . . . it's in Wal-Mart.
Posted by: Chris Bradley | May 11, 2008 4:40 PM
Aren't all xians, well maybe only catholics, vampires? They all have the same victim though, and not even female.
Posted by: bernarda | May 11, 2008 4:40 PM
@5
You're wrong. :)
Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897, and was continuing a literary tradition of erotic bloodsuckers in the vein (sorry) of Le Fanu and Lord Byron.
If we accept the interpretation of vampire encounters as paralytic sleep hysteria, they neatly identify with hag attacks, incubi, and alien abductions (gotta love them anal probes), all of which have erotic, though terrifying, associations that reach back through millennia of folklore and protopsychology.
(I don't know much, but I know me some woo.)
Posted by: Stephen Couchman | May 11, 2008 4:42 PM
I love vampires and I read all kinds of trashy vampire novels and watch just about anything about vampires that comes out on film or on TV.
I'm writing a monster series over at Skepchick. Here's what I've written so far:
Vampires
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1337
Mummies
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1356
Zombies
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1361
I'll be returning to some of these again, and I have a long list of other monsters to discuss.
Posted by: writerdd | May 11, 2008 4:46 PM
Vampire eroticism has been around a long time, to be sure, but I think this latest round stems from the continuing effect of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel TV shows. They were very well-written and have only gained fans and influence in the five and four years (respectively) since they were cancelled.
Posted by: DGS | May 11, 2008 4:54 PM
I suspect that it simply is the new romance paperback, tailored for goth/emo kids.
Posted by: AntonGarou | May 11, 2008 4:55 PM
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is certainly all the rage on DA at the moment.
And there're several animanga titles, too. I think Vampire Game or summat is one I've seen here in Denmark. A friend of mine is head over heels with Tsubasa: Reservour Chronicle.
Never quite appealed to me, but to be fair my reading as a young adult consisted mainly of Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Detectives.
Posted by: Sili | May 11, 2008 4:56 PM
Necrophilia is the new black.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | May 11, 2008 5:00 PM
You aren't the only one who has noticed the interest in vampires. This theme will be featured at this year's Polaris (Toronto convention for "science fiction, fantasy and beyond")as described on their website:
http://www.tcon.ca/polaris/modules/content/?id=9
==========================
STEP INTO DARKNESS: A VAMPIRE EVENT
This is a theme Polaris Event featuring panels on vampire inspired topics, displays of costumes and props, and the "Victorian Vampire Reception" on Friday evening.
The "Victorian Vampire Reception" is a Vampire costume party that starts on Friday evening at 10:00 PM. Vampires from all time periods and genres are welcome, or just wear black and come and party. Don't forget vampires need victims too.
============================
The April 24 issue of Time had an article about Stephenie Meyer who writes in this genre:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734838,00.html
Time also included her in their 100 Most Influential People of 2008.
Posted by: JayneK | May 11, 2008 5:01 PM
Does anybody remember that business with Kaavya Viswanathan? It was a big to-do a couple years ago: a Harvard freshman got a sweet book deal for a "chick-lit" story about a girl who had to remake herself in order to, surprise surprise, get into Harvard. Then somebody noticed that snippets from Viswanathan's book appeared verbatim in other, earlier "chick-lit" books, and the whole situation turned nasty.
Now, at the time, the biggest shock to me was how different Viswanathan's novel was from the one I would have written. In my book, the girl would have gotten to Harvard in chapter 2, been bitten by a vampire in chapter 3 and had to use her vampire powers to fight a host of zombies unleashed upon Boston by a virus leaking from the BU biotech lab in chapters 4 through 9. There's a real opportunity for inner conflict in that situation: every time the protagonist gives in to her vampiric urges, she loses a bit of her humanity, but she has to use those powers to save her friends. It's got potential.
Now that vampires are everywhere, I might have to try harder and ratchet up the story even beyond the vampires + zombies level. Curse you, market saturation. . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | May 11, 2008 5:02 PM
Hmmm... maybe phylomemetic trees will give us the answer to this. Oh, wait that'l never work there's too much horizontal meme transfer.
Posted by: Clarke | May 11, 2008 5:03 PM
I don't know if your Walmart is like this, but mine has a very large section with bibles and other books on faith. I happened to be in a Walmart on Friday and noticed at ours the arrangement of romance to vampire to religious books. Perhaps it is not a coincidence?
Posted by: Saraht | May 11, 2008 5:11 PM
Clarke (#24):
Is your invocation of "phylomemetic trees" and "horizontal meme transfer" a descendant of mine or an independent occurrence of the same traits? ;-)
Posted by: Blake Stacey | May 11, 2008 5:12 PM
The entire urban fantasy genre is plagued by this shit. I've read dozens of series in hopes that some of them wouldn't suck and all but two or three of them have. It's enough to make a compulsive reader shoot himself.
The worst part is that if you actually read a lot of these, the majority of the women forbid the vampire from drinking their blood. It's really just shitty romance novels with a bit of additional pseudo-danger.
Posted by: NinjaDebugger | May 11, 2008 5:13 PM
Ah, yes. I call them "sexy-sexy vampires" (with two sexies).
Stephen Couchman, sure you're not thinking of Polidori? (Although, IIRC, there's a fragment of a poem by Byron with a vampire, but I don't recall whether it's sexy-sexy or not.)
Polidori's The Vampyr has the distinct disadvantage of not making a lick of sense, but LeFanu's Carmilla is not only a ripping good vampire story, but is still as effective as teen lesbian softcore as it was when it was new.
The penny-dreadful Varney the Vampire has a vampire who's a bit more horrible, but he nonetheless holds a powerful sway over his victims (from what I recall; I never finished Varney).
The first half of Lovecraft's The Shunned House (before it goes all science-fiction) is the best example I know of a truly otherworldly, repugnant vampire.
Still, I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to learn how to write fiction, and then do a loose adaptation of the Arnold Paoli case, with bloated corpses covered in adipocere, contagion, and unexplained death. It's time for the disgusting vampire to make a comeback.
Posted by: HP | May 11, 2008 5:15 PM
I always associate Vampire novels with Anne Rice, as I was a big fan of her books in my teens (in the late eighties). I've just checked her Wikipedia entry, and was surprised to see that in 1996 she became a Catholic! She's "declared that she will never again write another vampire novel"; she's decided to write novels about Jesus, instead. Religion is such a killjoy.
Posted by: MH | May 11, 2008 5:19 PM
There are some good ones, but there are also lots of really, really bad ones.
I like the Black Dagger brotherhood books. They have a plot, and something happens other than sex.
The Anita Blake books were OK at first - the first 3-4 of them had a focus on fighting whatever bad guy was causing trouble. But as the series went on, they become soft-core porn novels with a really thin plotline coming along for the ride.
The "Harlequin romance" style ones are pretty bad. They are just like every other romance novel, only the man has fangs. Yawn. I don't mind a little love thrown in with my vampire books, but I hate romance novels with a little bit of vampire thrown in.
Posted by: Heather | May 11, 2008 5:21 PM
Does any of this have anything to do with what I learned in Psychology 101 about consuming the love object or conversely being consumed? The drinking of human blood to transform one into a higher (or lower) state of being smacks as too much of an analogy to transubstantiation to whet my interest. Besides, I will forevermore see Vampires as little more than fallen Sociologist.
Posted by: Rub R. D'Key | May 11, 2008 5:21 PM
Dang! Saraht beat me to it.
Posted by: MH | May 11, 2008 5:22 PM
What was the vampire RPG that was so popular in the mid-90s?
Posted by: IanR | May 11, 2008 5:24 PM
Meaning no disrespect to "Sociologist" I meant "Scientologist." Senior moment there!
Posted by: Rub R. D'Key | May 11, 2008 5:26 PM
Not sure what all the vampire stuff is about. I was never into Buffy either. How do the religious people reconcile the coolness of vampires, the strength of their cross against them, with the implicitly sacrilegious belief in monsters?
I can't speak for Muhammad, nor can I quote the Bible. But I'm damn sure of one thing.
Jesus hearts Muhammad, and that's what the crazy f*cking world needs to recognize.
Posted by: El Vampire | May 11, 2008 5:31 PM
It's the... penetrative aspect.
(see? I didn't even have to bother to make up my own explanation... this is what mass market literature does to you)
Posted by: wazza | May 11, 2008 5:32 PM
Don't let the ninjitsu-trained Trophy Wife catch y'all together, and remember the TW is the one to call the next time you need bailing out from the police station late at night...
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 11, 2008 5:35 PM
#28, there's just one more horrifying, otherworldly sort-of slightly vampirish thing that I've come across, and it was also a product of Lovecraft. It was the subject of The Color out of Space.
I think that story is the literary equivalent of a lot of stuff done by the band Opeth: I've never come across anything quite like either before or since, and for me, neither ever lose their sense of pulsing with dark life and power.
Posted by: Facehammer | May 11, 2008 5:35 PM
And yes, the christian interpretation of vampires is that they perform a dark sacrament, in order to gain eternal life. So even christians think of vampirism as a satire of communion.
Posted by: wazza | May 11, 2008 5:36 PM
"Anne Rice 'declared that she will never again write another vampire novel'; she's decided to write novels about Jesus, instead.
Posted by: MH"
There was a comic book series a few years ago, Jesus Christ, King of the Vampires, which pointed out the reasons why Jesus was a Vampire.
I don't remember them all, but he wants your soul, you must drink of his blood to be a follower & he must be invited in.
Personally, I love Cthulu Sex magazine.
Posted by: Jaycubed | May 11, 2008 5:38 PM
Ted, Day Watch and Twilight Watch are as good as Night Watch.
And for Magical Detectives that don't suck, see Dresden Files after about book four, and Patricia Briggs starting with Moon Called.
Posted by: Flamethorn | May 11, 2008 5:38 PM
My guess is that the attraction of typical romantic stories, first appearing in the Medieval period, has run its course. People no longer expect beautiful but innocent young women to be found and won by tall dark handsome men. The genre has become commoditised and therefore devalued, but the desire for socially acceptable stories about sex and/or love has been met by the more fantastical vampire stories.
Baudrillard proposed an 'immanent rerversal', a reversal of meaning and direction, where things turn into their opposites. Goods for barter become symbols of value (money), which in turn becomes credit cards (so we go from wealth in the hand to payment for current goods by 'future' money).
By the same process I suggest romantic stories of pure love and life transform into stories of lust and death. I suspect the transformation of hard Sci-Fi into airy fairy Fantasy is also the result of immanent reversal.
You could of course argue that, similarly, religious faith could transform into atheism, but at the risk that atheism could in turn transform into another illogical belief...
Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | May 11, 2008 5:40 PM
#18:
Since you bring him up, Byron is a protagonist (along with Shelley and Keats) in what is perhaps my favorite vampire novel, Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard. Tim Burton's film Corpse Bride shamelessly rips off the setup of this novel, in which a young man, while nervously practicing his wedding vows, accidentally marries a creature of the undead.
My second favorite vampire novel would probably be George R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream, in which vampires haunt the antebellum South as Mississippi riverboat gamblers. What makes this book interesting is Martin's naturalistic slant on it: these vampires aren't supernatural; they're a nocturnal hominid species evolved to prey on Homo sapiens, and all the nonsense about mirrors and holy water and converting people to vampirism is just ignorant mythology that has grown up around the kernel of anthropological truth.
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | May 11, 2008 5:41 PM
Not a big difference, switching from vampire stories to zombie fiction.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 11, 2008 5:42 PM
Hey! What are you doing out! Get back in there ...
/poke/ ... /poke, poke/ ....
There. Now stay in there.
Posted by: Greg Laden | May 11, 2008 5:46 PM
Visited family in Florida last weekend, and my precocious 13-year-old cousin is devouring the latest Stephanie Meyer book (gads, that thing is huge - when I was that age, I was almost the only kid reading books that size). She's never heard of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, apparently, but squealed in excitement upon just seeing the word on the cover of the Season One DVD set I gave her. [rubbing hands and cackling in villainous glee] Another convert... eeeeexcellent.
Posted by: MPW | May 11, 2008 5:49 PM
Not having read any vampire books save for the original Dracula, I would have put down the speculation that the recent glut might have been due to the fans of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" coming of age and writing their own fan-fic. From the descriptions of the genre listed here, I'm pretty certain that I've spent my reading time wisely.
Only slightly off-topic, does anyone else here have the perception that the real value of Buffy, Angel, Forever Knight, et. al., was to show what the world would look like and how really screwed up it would be if religion actually worked as advertised?
Posted by: Hairy Doctor Professor | May 11, 2008 5:50 PM
@Flamethorn #42:
Excuse me, are you saying that the first four Dresden Files books suck? Because if so, I'm afraid I may have to suspend your geek membership.
Posted by: MRL | May 11, 2008 5:51 PM
Actually, I think that Anne Rice's "re-conversion" probably directly correlates with the gradual decline in quality of her Vampire Chronicles series. Honestly, they jumped the shark after Queen of the Dammed and just kind of spun off into endless navel-gazing drivel. The last couple were just awful. (Reading the last couple of books for review at my job was a real chore.)
To be quite honest, I don't think she was ever more that a "self-proclaimed" atheist - most likely for the media shock value of calling herself that. If you read her later Vampire Chronicle books they are overtly religious examinations of good and evil and the nature of godhood.
Remember kiddies, even when the scary satanic vampires fail you, God is always profitable.
Posted by: parmasson | May 11, 2008 5:53 PM
Actually, I think that Anne Rice's "re-conversion" probably directly correlates with the gradual decline in quality of her Vampire Chronicles series. Honestly, they jumped the shark after Queen of the Dammed and just kind of spun off into endless navel-gazing drivel. The last couple were just awful. (Reading the last couple of books for review at my job was a real chore.)
To be quite honest, I don't think she was ever more that a "self-proclaimed" atheist - most likely for the media shock value of calling herself that. Kind of like all of those 16 year old girls who become Wiccans to (subconsciously) shock their friends and family. If you read her later Vampire Chronicle books they are overtly religious examinations of good and evil and the nature of godhood.
Remember kiddies, even when the scary satanic vampires fail you, God is always profitable.
Posted by: parmasson | May 11, 2008 5:55 PM
At last I get to reveal my sole claim to fame!
Back in the late 80's, I worked with and was friendly with Laurell's husband (now ex), and played D&D with the two of them maybe half a dozen times. This was before the vampire thing, when she was still doing conventional fantasy.
Now for the pathetic part. Even though Laurell has certainly forgotten I ever existed, I feel compelled to read each of her books. I actually like the vampire ones, although I admit they have strayed away from good old-fashioned blood-sucking fun and into "How many ways can we shock grandmother this time" territory.
Posted by: xebecs | May 11, 2008 5:56 PM
"I don't think she was ever more that a "self-proclaimed" atheist" -# 50
No true atheist would become a Catholic, right?
Posted by: JayneK | May 11, 2008 6:02 PM
[Sturgeon's] Revelation (sometimes called the Second Law): "Ninety percent of everything is crap," has sort of overtaken it in notoriety (for obvious reasons).
Which is not to say the other 10% isn't also crap.
Posted by: Dave Lartigue | May 11, 2008 6:07 PM
@MRL, #49, I'll say it then.
All the Dresden files books are fucking terrible. LKH is terrible too, and so is Stephanie Meyer.
Just because you're a geek doesn't mean you have to like everything. Keep in mind this is coming from someone who willingly sought out copies of Galaxy 666, Pink Dolphin, and has an undying love for writers like Murray Leinster because they're bad (and that's being kind).
It seems people will read anything but what's good. That's why Paul Park and Barry N. Malzberg seem to go out of print immediately. Most modern readers of the genre (especially the younger ones) have no idea of all the forgotten classics that helped shape sci-fi into what it is today.
Don't get me wrong, taste is taste, and I will never tell someone they can't read a book, but to me it seems like the reading public is hellbent on finding and elevating the worst possible stuff.
Posted by: Bachalon | May 11, 2008 6:08 PM
Vampires... for some reason I could never enjoy that stuff. I can deal with Heisenberg "compensators" but anything like vampires or other critters from the fantasy genre leave me cold. I mean, humans with fangs, sucking blood but only at night, garlic in the role of kryptonite together with crosses, silver bullets and wooden stakes... It makes no sense at all.
Posted by: Dutch Delight | May 11, 2008 6:11 PM
When it comes to the Dresden Files, I can warmly recommend the audio book versions (I think they're up to number four), read by James Marsters who played Spike in Buffy. Love his voice.
Posted by: IanR | May 11, 2008 5:24 PM
It was Vampire: The Masquerade. It still exists in another incarnation, Vampire: The Requiem. I own a copy of the former, along with a few books for its extension "Victorian Age Vampire", which is excellent fun to play.
Posted by: Ted D | May 11, 2008 6:13 PM
Confession: I'm a regular Pharyngula reader, and I write "those" novels.
Yup. I was one of the first romance novelists, back in the early 90's, to write what's now called paranormal romance. To that point, my background was entirely in reading SF/fantasy. So when I found myself writing a romance novel (which came about very strangely and without any real intention on my part), I chose a werewolf hero... not the cursed kind, but a species capable of changing at will.
The book sold. I've been writing romance for 15 years, and this new incarnation of paranormal romance is just the latest and strongest of several that have cropped up over my career. I've stuck by it since the beginning, quite independent of fads, though I only recently added vampires to my repertoire.
Romance readers have always enjoyed "dark" heroes. Many of the original tropes are no longer acceptable: the fanatasy rape novels of former years are long gone, and men who disrespect women are out, too. The natural fit for the new hero is a supernatural one. He's dangerous without being a bastard, at least most of the time.
And no, I don't believe that what I write is true. I'm a closet atheist because if my readers knew, I'd lose 50% of them at least. And I do this for a living. (I read mysteries, SF, suspense and historical novels by preference.)
Posted by: anonymouswriterinNM | May 11, 2008 6:17 PM
Confession: I'm a regular Pharyngula reader, and I write "those" novels.
Yup. I was one of the first romance novelists, back in the early 90's, to write what's now called paranormal romance. To that point, my background was entirely in reading SF/fantasy. So when I found myself writing a romance novel (which came about very strangely and without any real intention on my part), I chose a werewolf hero... not the cursed kind, but a species capable of changing at will.
The book sold. I've been writing romance for 15 years, and this new incarnation of paranormal romance is just the latest and strongest of several that have cropped up over my career. I've stuck by it since the beginning, quite independent of fads, though I only recently added vampires to my repertoire.
Romance readers have always enjoyed "dark" heroes. Many of the original tropes are no longer acceptable: the fanatasy rape novels of former years are long gone, and men who disrespect women are out, too. The natural fit for the new hero is a supernatural one. He's dangerous without being a bastard, at least most of the time.
And no, I don't believe that what I write is true. I'm a closet atheist because if my readers knew, I'd lose 50% of them at least. And I do this for a living. (I read mysteries, SF, suspense and historical novels by preference.)
Posted by: sueinNM | May 11, 2008 6:18 PM
Lots of people have that perception. Joss Whedon (the creator) is an atheist, and his shows are all very secular humanisty.
In Buffy and Angel, supernatural beings are just especially problematic troublemakers to be dealt with. People who worship them are pathetic dupes and/or amoral opportunists and/or evil assholes.
In one episode, a goddess demands to be worshipped, and Buffy says "We don't bow down to gods anymore." Cool.
Posted by: Paul W. | May 11, 2008 6:18 PM
No disrespect, PZ, but screw vampire novels.
As a biologist who obviously loves life I cannot believe you do not spend more of your time outdoors enjoying what you first described in this post. Miles and miles using your quadriceps - skiing, biking, walking, running... steadily increasing your heart capacity, thereby, and hopefully, your longevity... thinking of your potential grandkids - all the while and in the moment, breathing in that fresh air, listening to those wonderful birds, sunshine beating down on your face along with the rain, wind, mosquitoes, and whatever else mother nature throws out in rural Minnesota.
Its just that you and Hitch seem to have a lot in common aside from astronomical brain function - you both seem bent on letting your bodies go to hell while simultaneously sending the message about how this life is all that there is. (a message that I happen to rather agree with)
So no disrespect at all intended here, and use of the word "hell" is strictly as a metaphor. I appreciate what you and other posters write everyday. This just makes me curious. I surely don't expect you to look like Arnold or anything. Seems as tho this would be a very important factor in your life, if not one of "thee" most important things.
Posted by: Bob Vogel | May 11, 2008 6:20 PM
@Dutch #56
You want vampires that make sense? Read "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. He's got hard-SF vampires. It's also a first contact story that explores the reasons for consciousness. (Ans: not much use and a pretty bad idea, really). I enthusiastically recommend it.
Posted by: Julie K | May 11, 2008 6:22 PM
Health nuts can be so annoying.
Posted by: Steve_C | May 11, 2008 6:23 PM
all the while and in the moment, breathing in that fresh air, listening to those wonderful birds, sunshine beating down on your face along with the rain, wind, mosquitoes, and whatever else mother nature throws out in rural Minnesota.
I imagine the severe lack of cephalopods in Minnesota is partly to blame.
Posted by: Julie K | May 11, 2008 6:28 PM
An example of the breadth of this craze: Twilight is becoming a movie. Link to the trailer below.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=33429578
Posted by: Sangy | May 11, 2008 6:34 PM
Steve_C #63
Health nuts can be so annoying.
Agreed. And as an antidote I recommend the novella "The Healthy Dead" by Steven Erikson. It is a fantasy about a city fixated on health and priding itself on how fit and healthy its corpses are. The book has a warning at the front warning lifestyle fascists away.
Oh yeah, and I can be found inside reading while the sun is shining, birds are chirping, and baby squirrels frolicking.
Posted by: Julie K | May 11, 2008 6:34 PM
The closest I've come to this genre, other than the classics (Dracula, Carmilla, etc) is Sunshine by Robin McKinley, which spends an awful lot of its time talking about baking. Vampires definitely have glamour in it, but underneath they really aren't pleasant.
Posted by: Dave Godfrey | May 11, 2008 6:35 PM
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
will tell you all you need to know, and more, about the current romance genre, including paranormal, and even tell you what REALLY sucks, what just kinda sucks, and what is awesome. Those bitches are FUNNY.
Posted by: Bourgeois Nerd | May 11, 2008 6:43 PM
The insane popularity of vampire fiction certainly is no surprise to me, as I review fantasy and science fiction online professionally, and find my mailbox bombarded with an endless stream of paranormal romances and paranormal investigator novels every single month. The Butcher stuff is great; the copycats, not so much. It's sadly homogenizing the SF/fantasy racks in bookstores, making it harder for the truly distinctive and innovative books to stand out and find an audience. And while I would append Sturgeon's Law to Wagner's Law (90% of everything is merely mediocre), those books tend to be law abiding citizens in that regard.
Posted by: Thomas M. Wagner | May 11, 2008 7:00 PM
@ 52
Ha. If Hamilton thinks she's fooling anybody that her books are anything more than horror porn liberally sprinkled over role playing game plots, she needs a stronger buff on her sanity check. I've suspected for years that the people she credits as her "writers' group" are actually the gamers whose characterizations she plunders.
Props to #44 for the GRRM shout-out. I see nobody else has pimped the currently-running CBS series Moonlight, which is basically Forever Night with less moping and more humanity. If you're fans of the genre, or if you just want to watch Sophia Myles be intelligent and fetching on a weekly basis, tune in.
Of course, most of these vampire stories stylishly dodge the monstrousness of being a blood-drinking walking corpse. The vampires are basically occult superheroes, or in another sense, a dark, sometimes sensual expression of our desire to transcend our mortal limitations. When the transhuman singularity really takes off and biomorphism is commonplace, you KNOW vampirism is going to be one of the first big fashion waves.
Posted by: Stephen Couchman | May 11, 2008 7:03 PM
"What was the vampire RPG that was so popular in the mid-90s?"
Bigfoot: The Malodorousness
http://www.brunching.com/vampirefaqk.html
Posted by: Rey Fox | May 11, 2008 7:11 PM
I wonder if the werewolf genre will be as big as the vampire one some day. Seems like I trip over a new one of those every time I look at the paperback section at a store. Years ago, I had figured if I were to ever write a novel, it would be about shape-shifting animal people of some sort, but that seems to be awfully saturated these days too. *shrug* Oh well, I couldn't ever write a novel anyway. I can't come up with enough new creative material.
Posted by: Rey Fox | May 11, 2008 7:14 PM
Now if that isn't a the plot of a (probably mediocre) novel already, it surely will be soon.
Posted by: Ted D | May 11, 2008 7:19 PM
Bachalon @ # 55: ... an undying love for writers like Murray Leinster because they're bad...
I dare you (or anybody) to find a better premonition of Teh Internetz than "A Logic Named Joe" (1946).
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 11, 2008 7:27 PM
These things come in waves. A few years ago, if you were paying attention, they were all knights and highlanders. Before that they were all Indian... er... Native American... and before that it was ranchers.
One if the interesting things with romance novels is the large number of humor romance novels.... and yes, you get some pretty interesting humor vampire romance novels. Back about a decade ago there was a specific line of humor romance novels (called: A Wink and a Kiss).
I'm not surprised we're seeing an increase in vampire romance... we're seeing it again on TV... loads of stories with vampires, fallen angels, redeemed demons and so on. It seems the more messed up a culture is (usually due to economic chaos and loss of personal freedom) the more interested in the supernatural (including gods)
Posted by: dorid | May 11, 2008 7:27 PM
Ha. No health nut here. Just asking a question I figured would be obvious to just about anyone who has the ability to observe. Richard and Sam appear to take great care of themselves and live the very message they are trying to get across by just looking at them. How can this not be relevant if you are trying to convince people? Thought you guys loved a bit of controversy as well as reality. I see this as reality in your face. I'm no hardbody. I am the exact same age as PZ. But I know I could kick his ass hiking up the side of a mountain, or riding a century on a bike. My brother, who's also an atheist and is 10 years my senior, is currently hiking the Appalacian Trail, from its southern terminus to Maine.
My point? I admire and devour everything PZ writes, but in my mind, my brother actually lives it in thought, word, and deed. Words barely cut the surface with most people. Words coupled with lifestyle speak much louder and hold more weight in my mind.
Posted by: Bob Vogel` | May 11, 2008 7:30 PM
Rey, I think the werewolves and other mythical beings will continue to grow. I think they appeal as heroes in romances now because they can be the strong "alpha" types and not come across as a raging arsehole (which you wouldn't be able to pull off with a normal male).
SueinNM, I'm sorry you can't really be yourself with fans. It's sad to me sometimes that you can't pick up a piece of escapist fiction without being hit over the head with Christian messages. I have a definite list of authors I avoid for this reason.
If anyone is interested in the paranormal romance genre I recommend J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books (vampires) and for kick-ass heroines, Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series (valkyries, werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts...). Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunters are also very popular and enjoyable.
Posted by: Unstable Isotope | May 11, 2008 7:35 PM
Are you gonna take that lying down, PZ! Grab a protein bar and head for the nearest mountain!
Posted by: Rey Fox | May 11, 2008 7:41 PM
What you don't realize is that those weren't always vampire novels. They used to be perfectly ordinary romance and mystery novels, westerns, chick-lit... even hard SF. But then, late at night, the vampire novels snuck over from the horror section and bit them. And now they are doomed to spend eternity as goth-wannabe genre fluff. Tragic.
Posted by: Evan | May 11, 2008 7:41 PM
If there were ever the perfect advertisement for junk food, caffeine and the companionship of a fast computer, this would be pretty damn close.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | May 11, 2008 7:41 PM
With as many SF readers as have made themselves known in this thread, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler. It's a good novel with the Butler twists and an account--based in fictional part on evolutionary biology--of the origin and future of vampires. Recommended as a health-giving antidote to Wal-Mart vampire softcore.
Posted by: Voracious | May 11, 2008 7:43 PM
I read two vampire/werewolf writers -- Hamilton, and the lighter, funny and complicated books of Charlaine Harris. (I was blown away by "Interview With a Vampire" when it was new -- now, not so much.)
I cannot believe that none of you have mentioned three of the fascinating features of these novels, besides the sex and violence.
One of these is their complexity. Harris' and Hamilton's worlds are woven like a bosun's rope, threads binding together across three, five, or all the books. Hamilton is beginning to annoy me with how slowly the plot advances, but generally keeping track of all the characters and their interactions keeps me interested.
Another is the humour. Harris' books in particular have an unusual and charming vein of humour that keeps me engaged. But those are minor beside the single, shared, anchoring premise of their books.</