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In Amazon's top 20 bestsellers in science fiction and fantasy, there are six books about vampires (including three in the top five), six books about sword and sorcery fantasy (two in the top ten), two books about witches, two related books about Roswell aliens (a variant of hard sci-fi apparently), two books about magic, and one hard sci-fi epic. The remaining book is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, considered detective tales, but make it onto the Amazon science fiction and fantasy list.
This unscientific mini-survey reflects a change in the zeitgeist.
In the heyday of monster movies, the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Japanese monster, Godzilla, was recognized as a manifestation of our fears of nuclear annihilation. Godzilla was unstoppably destructive and razed most of Tokyo to the ground (repeatedly, in sequels.) Godzilla was our nightmares become real.
At the same time science fiction was the most optimistic of genres, introducing us to worlds in which anything and everything was possible.
In the 21st century, our nightmares have changed. Why vampires? Vampires serve different functions as a repository of anxiety. On the most personal level, vampires reflect a deep-seated anxiety over supplying and receiving sufficient emotional nurturance. Parents often experience their needy children as insatiable; children often experience helicopter parents, who cannot tolerate separation-differentiation, as sucking the life out of their youthful bodies for the support of the older, waning parent. The fantasy of relationships as vampire-prey experiences, which has its roots in the parent-child experience, is a common feature of modern relationship anomie.
Consider a recent article in Slate magazine. The imbalance on college campuses between successful young women and the relative paucity of successful young men (a result of long term trends de-emphasizing typically masculine work versus typically feminine pursuits) means that the sexual marketplace has shifted. Women are easier to find for casual sex, leaving young men and women in trouble.
Sex Is Cheap: Why young men have the upper hand in bed, even when they're failing in life.
Jill, a 20-year-old college student from Texas, is one of the many young women who finds herself confronting the sexual market's realities. Startlingly attractive and an all-star, she patiently endures her boyfriend's hemming and hawing about their future. If she were operating within a collegiate sexual economy that wasn't oversupplied with women, men would compete for her and she would easily secure a long-term commitment. Meanwhile, Michelle, a 20-year-old from Colorado, said she is in the same boat: "I had an ex-boyfriend of mine who said that he didn't know if he was ever going to get married because, he said, there's always going to be someone better." If this is the end of men, someone really ought to let them know.
And yet while young men's failures in life are not penalizing them in the bedroom, their sexual success may, ironically, be hindering their drive to achieve in life. Don't forget Freud: Civilization is built on blocked, redirected, and channeled sexual impulse, because men will work for sex. Today's young men, however, seldom have to. As the authors of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality put it, "Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy." They're right. But then try getting men to do anything.
A woman who is anxious and desirous of emotional sustenance, which is withheld, can easily see herself and be seen as a Vampire. While the man who takes what is most precious from her with nothing in return can easily see himself, and be seen as, a Vampire. Further, the lack of depth to sexual relationships, casual sex without commitment or emotional connection, forces both into a Zombie state. After all, what is a Zombie but a hollowed-out person who can no longer do anything productive?
In addition, the dearth of traditional hard science fiction on Amazon's list reflects the current pessimism arising from an accelerating pace of change that has us feeling as if we are living in a science fiction novel. In reaction, the ability to transport oneself to other worlds where men are men and wield swords in mano-a-mano conflict, and where damsels are distressed (or alternately, powerful independent spirits, desirable and beautiful) offers a ready wish fulfillment for those who are burdened by too much reality.
[On other levels, there is a Vampire connection with the current arrangements between work and play and love having become destabilized. Also, the changes taking place in the economy, as globalization grows, means that the traditional, post-war arrangements are changing in unpredictable ways. (See Walter Russell Meade's discussion of Blue State Dems Turn on State, Local Workers.) We have workers feeling drained by the demands of their work and the diminution of sustenance (or wages). The Zombie thread: We dread our foreign competitors as faceless hordes who threaten to overwhelm us. Not to mention the spiritually dead young men and women who couple and share physical intimacy without ever sharing emotional intimacy. These are topics for another post.]
A commenter to a slightly different version of this post at ShrinkWrapped.com, suggested an alternative dynamic for the change in the genre from sci-fi to vampires. Read this Karen Myers comment for a different perspective on the subject.
