I'm hearing that our favorite author, Brian Lumley, is being written about in the new Entertainment Weekly magazine. Here is my source: http://www.wgal.com/entertainment/20258515/detail.html?treets=lan&tid=2651698608813&tml=lan_ent&tmi=lan_ent_1_12150108032009&ts=H

 

In effect what is says is that Lumley is compared to Bram Stoker since he hasn't pussified vampires. Its a pretty good article and I think that I'm going to go out an buy the new edition.

Great article! Thanks for the heads up. need to grab myself a copy of that issue as well...

Read it and couldn't say it any better. Brian's vampires rule!!!

yepp, excellent article... I do blame Anne Rice for beginning the end of the evil vamp... want 'em back... :cool:

I agree with all of you guys (and ladys). I really liked this article and figured that it is about time the media gave The Master the recognition he deserves. Now if we could only get that movie going while the vampire iron is hot...

 

HINT!!!

Well done for finding such a great article, thanks for sharing.

WoW if anyone has any extra copies please tell me!

WoW if anyone has any extra copies please tell me!

 

OK, boys and girls, gather 'round. Uncle Scott is going to tell you a scary story, one that will make fans of "True Blood" and the Twilight series quake in their boots.

 

Once upon a time, there was a vampire named Dracula. He was a bloodthirsty ghoul who had been a military man while alive, and was the very incarnation of evil and depravity after death. He lived in a castle with three equally bloodthirsty wives, feasting upon peasants and travelers as he wished. He journeyed to London with a plan to take over the world and turn it into a vampire's playhouse.

 

Scared yet? Well, for those of you for whom "True Blood" and the "Twilight" sagas are the be-all and end-all of the vampire world, the creature I'm describing is the father of the books you love. If it wasn't for Vlad Dracula, created by Bram Stoker in 1897 and played in movies by everyone from Bela Lugosi to Leslie Nielsen, Edward Cullen and the rest of today's impeccably coiffed vampires would not exist. He is not a nice man. He is not a tortured soul who's just looking for the right girl to understand him. He's not in agony over his compulsion to drink human blood. In fact, he revels in it.

 

He is, in short and once again, evil.

 

So how did the Dark Prince, the shapeshifting master of all things dark and scurrying, whose human aide de camp, Renfield, feasted on bugs and small creatures in order to take their life force, become the wimpy, moody, whiny, overly romanticized dweebs that pass for vampires in modern fiction?

 

It would be easy to blame Anne Rice. In "Interview With The Vampire," she brought forth the vampire as a sex symbol. Certainly there had always been a strong undercurrent of sexuality with vampires. The placing of the vampire's lips upon the neck of the negligee-clad female victim would have been stricken by censors had it not been framed as a monstrous attack, a violation if you will, of the virginal heroine. But Rice created vampires who actually had sex. Lots of it. And they argued, played politics, bemoaned their fates and took on all manner of other qualities that had by and large not been part of the popular vampire mythos.

 

She followed "Interview" with a series of books that got progressively more silly, obtuse and navel-gazingly dull. Readers of Frank Herbert will recognize this phenomenon from the later "Dune" novels, when the old man seemed to write on one plot for a hundred pages, then get distracted by a shiny new plot and decide to go chase it for a while.

 

In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, several of the most prominent writers of modern vampire fiction are asked a set of questions about both their work and their opinions of the vampire mythos. I found a comment by Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" books, to be particularly telling.

 

When asked why vampires were appealing, she said, "It's a way to be very scared and sensual and have violent passions and still be safe. You're sitting in your favorite chair, with hot cocoa, and when you close the book, your world is still there. You're safe."

 

That's it, isn't it? In a culture where reality TV stars act out our daydreams for us, Michael Bay movies blow things up for the little boy in all of us (yes, lots of women have inner little boys, too), Food Network and Travel Channel hosts eat our gourmet meals for us, we've become addicted to our cocoons. We want our evil in packages we can understand and maybe even sympathize with a bit.

 

Joss Whedon bears part of the blame, I'm sad to say. He gave us Angel, the vampire with a soul, and that was fine. Even at his most Buffy-sotted, he was still a serious bad-mother-buttkicker who could rip heads off with the best of them. But then he took James Marsters' Spike, the most deliciously evil, cunning, cruel and heartless vampire imaginable and turned him into a noble, tortured, self-sacrificing hero. You could almost hear the pens hitting the notebooks and keyboards starting to clack away. Certainly if Spike can become a hero, any lowdown bloodsucking fiend can turn into a lovely boy who regularly saves busloads of orphans and drinks only donated blood.

 

Also in the EW article, Anne Rice comments. She's gone on to write Christ-themed books, giving a whole legion of readers a case of stripped mental transmissions, but she knows the big checks still come in from the vampire books.

 

When asked what vampire cliché should be retired, she said, "The vampire bullying helpless humans. It's always the same. The vampires gleefully depend on helpless bikers and smash them to pieces. I think a self-respecting immortal isn't going to bully humans endlessly."

 

First off, Anne, can you point me to the helpless bikers? Most of the ones I know could probably handle a vampire or two without even getting off their Harleys.

 

Second, it's not bullying. It's feeding. To a vampire of the Dracula mold, we humans are somewhere between food source and plaything. We don't rank highly enough on Vlad's scale to be worthy of bullying.

 

Why are we so afraid of the traditional vampire? Why must he be made (pardon the pun) toothless? Are we as a society so soaked in the real evil of the world around us that we can't take any more from our fiction? Or are we just afraid we might not be quite as appalled as we think we should be?

 

May I offer an alternative to those of you who are going to toss your cookies if you see one more lovelorn vamp making his mascara run as he sobs over the quiet, bookish girl he can never truly be with because, gosh darn it, he's no longer human? Pick up a little book titled "Necroscope" by British author Brian Lumley. It concerns Harry Keogh, a fellow who can speak to the dead and who the dead, on occasion, will rise up to defend. It's a ripping good yarn, and the beginning of what becomes the Vamphyri series. The Vamphyri of Lumley's books are vampires, but they are nothing like the ones you know.

 

Not only are Vamphyri incapable of love, honor or anything approaching socially redeeming behavior, they delight in being the antithesis of all that is good and virtuous. I won't go into some of their more grotesque doings, but suffice it to say you'll look at everything from home building to haute cuisine through new eyes after a few books.

 

Lumley is not afraid to create characters that are aggressively, proudly, powerfully evil. He writes with obvious relish of battles between Vamphyri, where their human pawns commit acts of savagery and horror at the behest and under the control of their masters. He's also not afraid to make the women just as tough as the men. Some of the most dangerous creatures in the books are females. Sexy? You betcha. But only once.

 

The series goes on in various forms for 13 novels, and the story is every bit as strong at the end as at the beginning. And don't feel bad when you find yourself starting to root for certain ones among the Vamphyri. The way Lumley writes them, the way he brings them to un-life, you really won't be able to help yourself.

WoW if anyone has any extra copies please tell me!

 

I picked up one, but sadly the Entertainment Weekly article concentrated on Emo-pires (Emo vampires) that have been created, not good ones like Mr. Lumley's. The link I put up in the origional post was where they were talking about the Wamphri. I really don't know why people have fallen in love with a rehashed Romeo and Juliet, but they have. Since vampires are currently hot right now, along with making books into movies I'm really hoping that we can push this to be made. I know that it will blow people's minds and will also be interesting for guys since its an alternative to these whiny bitches that women keep dragging us to go see on dates. (Just joking since I know that not all women have bad taste enough to like movies like these and we are lucky enough to have some female fans in here.)

Good save necrosage!

ok i have got two comments, first... sdkdmd if you were an element you'd have to be wind =) however i fully agree...

 

and sage, emo-vamps suck! (lol!!) but no they are not even remotely Vampires!

 

as far as twilight goes... if you look up a creature in myths that sparkle in the medows... you will find that it is not a vampire.. the truth is that the only creature you will find is a fairy!

 

and that my friends is what Edward is...(ya i said it!)

sdkdmd was just quoting a bit from the article so you could read it, he didn't actually write that.

OH.....:confused:..... Still sounded good

What can I say (to not dig too big of a hole for myself)? haha. You, specifically, were on my mind when I put in the exeption. I know some people that read romance novels, and they read the Twilight books and liked them. I haven't read them, but I don't really know if I want to, or not. The last decent vampire movie that I saw that I liked was 30 Days of Night. If you haven't heard, they are actually going to be making a sequel to that one soon. Why not do another movie where vampires are bad since they are blood suckers and not fluffy bunnies? Then again, there was "Bunnicula," that that was different. It was a kid's book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnicula

 

I think that it would be pretty difficult to hide if you were sparkling. How could you possibly hide that during school hours? Why would you even be in school if you were undead????

yeah sage you almost had a mad silver to deal with:eek:

sdkdmd was just quoting a bit from the article so you could read it, he didn't actually write that.

 

Does this mean I'm not the wind anymore:(

I'd never want to get Silver angry with me. Something tells me that I'd regret that quite a bit.

 

sdkdmd, maybe not the wind, just a breeze... lol Sorry to take the wind out of your sails!

I'd never want to get Silver angry with me. Something tells me that I'd regret that quite a bit.

 

sdkdmd, maybe not the wind, just a breeze... lol Sorry to take the wind out of your sails!

 

Yeah. That little statement under her name. It's not there for nothing.

Hee hee hee!

lol! that was the highlight of my day!

I (on the probability of losing any sort of credability i may have had) enjoyed the twilight saga. Albeit the mushy bits were a hard read the concept is pretty good....

Strife - I never thought of it like that before...you are indeed right Edward is a fairie!!

I also liked the Anne Rice books. lestat was a awesome bad vamp!

I liked the Vampire Chronicles as well from Anne Rice i'm not to sure if anyone ever read the Vampire Diaries those were good books...

 

Brian Lumley writes unique about unique vampires as does everyone else...

I've read the first few books by Rice, and I have to say that I found them confusing. I say that because her vampires seemd to thave vastly different powers, histories, and attitudes from one book to the next. If you're going to write a sequel to your book the very least that you can do is to read your own work and follow what you've already set up. I can't say too much for Twilight since I've never read the books or seen the movie. I'm sick of these creatures that kill people to live feeling as if they are missunderstood and, somehow, always have bottled/bagged blood somewhere in their house. Just because they drink a red liquid doesn't make them vampires. The way that they act is more like love sick, suicidal, moody teenagers with their hormones raging. THAT is why I'm calling them Emo-pires. Emotional vampires. How in the world can vampires SPARKLE?!? Do you know that the author of Twilight didn't even know anything about vampires and while writing the books wouldn't let her own husband read them because she was emberassed by them. I actually gave The Vampire Diaries a chance, seeing as to how the books were supposed to be written years before Twilight, but just seeing the hero emo-pire pull out a DIARY made me actually GROAN! Just imagine, a Doogie Howser emo-pire, but without the tabletop pc. Can you imagine just how many of those diaries he will have laying around in a few decades? What happens if someone finds them and the truth is learned by someone that shouldn't? Not to mention, a magic ring that keeps them from turning to dust in the sun? PLEASE!

 

Thanks, but I'll stick with making the creatures evil. Its like saying that you're going to write about a loveable snake, crocodile, and mosquito.

 

I'm not saying that you guys are wrong. They may be good books and movies. I'm just shareing my opinions.

You are entitled to an opinion 'Sage just like the rest of us.

 

I enjoyed some of Anne Rice's books but not all by any means. I LOVE vampire stories and don't mind the emopire's too much to be honest, especially for a bit of light reading that can be quite funny (whether it's meant to be or not is a different matter!) but I whole heartedly agree they're not a patch on Brian's Wamphyri and are not at all scary in any way.

 

They really are huge right now though and are not going to go away, so we'd all better get used to them. I found it hillarious that yesterday when I went into my local Waterstones, there was right next to the horror section a "Paranormal Romance Horror" section - and guess what it contained? Yup, it was stacked with books on emopires! So I guess that the book sellers are aware that they're not real horror at least!