Suzy McKee Charnas - Vampire Tapestry
My science fiction and fantasy publisher, Tor Books, published THE RUBY TEAR instead. The hero of that book, Ivo von Cragga, has some of the limitations of the traditional vampire, and a disreputable career as a broker of fine antiques and other items sold off by refugees from the Bosnian war. He has more than a dash of Harry Lime in him, in other words, a touch of the scoundrel, and the gallantry of another age. I found him delightful company, but he was never the hit that Dr. Weyland was and is.
In what ways is Weyland different from say Dracula or the more typical vampire?
First, he's not a revived human corpse from some previous (or even our) era but a naturally evolved creature who lives very very long and continues, very slowly, to evolve so that he can remain effective as a predator of humanity. He is not human; he just mimics us to more effectively stalk us and live hidden among us. From this basic difference much else follows: he doesn't have problems with crossing water or being touched by sunlight or scorched by holy water or any of the rest of it (all that rubbish arose out of the heavy stamp that the Catholic Church put on the vampire concept very early on, turning vampirism into a consequence of flouting God by suicide, or the accursed result of making a personal deal with the Evil One). Cut loose from all that, my guy is free to pursue his furtive, predatory life with a supple imaginativeness that I found very interesting.
Second, he can't create other vampires and is himself a self-created species of one; which condemns him to a breath-taking degree of loneliness, at least when he's at a stage that allows him to feel such a feeling (normally, he's no more aware of being lonely than a tiger would be). I think this makes him a very appealing, romantic, outsider-figure. And it frees me from having to construct yet another deeply tiresome "secret vampire society" that so much vampire fiction revolves around. This usually involves a lurid, theatrical setting for lots of dreary in-fighting among various bored and boring blood-suckers, and endless, usually deeply fake-feeling dithering about relations with the big bad "Master Vampire" who "sired" our hero. You end up with something like the mafia -- very feudal, loaded with sado-masochistic leather, violence, and dominance-play, and
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