Fred Saberhagen did it first.

Fred Saberhagen did it first.
Before Anne Rice and Interview with a Vampire, long before Elizabeth Koskova’s The Historian, there was Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape. Published in 1975 (A year before Rice’s novel) Saberhagen, who died this past summer, was among the first in the wave of writers chronicling (in book after book after book) good guy vampires.
I’m sure it was an original idea when he thought of it.

I finally read it recently. It could be a lot worse.

Clearly Saberhagen is having fun with Stoker’s writing. When all is said and done, Stoker is a mediocre writer, and his plot has holes the size of Romania in it, which Saberhagen exploits. The chief plot hole is his ignorance of blood type. When Van Helsing performs blood transfusions, he does so completely ignoring blood typology, despite the fact that this was emerging medical knowledge in the late 19th century that the character would have been abreast of. Saberhagen’s conclusion? Van Helsing was a superstitious dolt who killed Lucy through his ignorance, while Dracula was trying to save her. His transformation of her into the “bloofer lady” was a last ditch effort to save her life.

Another plot hole in the original: If it has taken centuries for Dracula to figure out how to get from Transylvania to England, how much of a threat could he really be?

And after all the care Van Helsing takes to make sure that Lucy’s dead body remains dead, how is it that Dracula is dispatched with a Bowie knife? Obviously, he was faking.

The framing device of the novel is that Dracula is offering this revision to the great-great grandson of Jonathon and Mina. At times, though, he apparently reads directly from well known account, to offer his version of events. It’s a strange effect. Basically, we’re reading one novel which is critically commenting on another. I find that kind of thing fun, novelist as critic, but, well, Saberhagen was no John Gardner. It ends with an opening for a sequel (Mina is about to be reborn as the undead), and I gather Mr. Saberhagen wrote many more.

As a revisionist work, it reflects the revisionist spirit of the mid 1970’s, the era of the Eagles, Disco, and EST—a bloodless era, if you will, in popular culture. Interesting that the revision avoids any thoughtful examination of the racial paradigm that Dracula represents (i.e., the ancient aristocracy coming back to feed off the blood of the Bourgeoisie .


More on Bionic Woman

I’m starting to like Michelle Ryan. The wittiest thing they have done with her is to allow her
(in episode 5) to “affect” an accent similar to the actress’s natural speaking voice. The problem is that it is unlikely that the character Jaime Sommers would be able to do this, and now her affected American accent sounds flat by comparison.
I think the director wanted to make a statement that it’s Michelle Ryan’s series, not Katie Sackhoff’s.

I gather that three more episodes are completed. Then, who knows? It’s not a ratings winner, and with the writer’s strike begun, there may be long layover. I doubt NBC will let it die just yet.