What If Count Dracula Had Defeated van Helsing?  

(well, for one thing, he would have turned Queen Victoria into a vampire and married her, becoming Prince Consort of England)

Enter a British author named Kim Newman. He wrote a book a few years ago (Anno Dracula) that was based on the premise stated above. Vampirism of a watered-down kind (whores sold their blood rather than their bodies, but didn't die of it) spread all over Europe, most of the upper classes and many of the lower (but not so much the middle) becoming vampires -- one had to be turned by drinking the vampire's blood at the same time as being blood-sucked by the vampire, otherwise one was just a victim who would either die or recover, depending on how much blood was drained out. It became safe for other vampires who had been in hiding to come out (Lord Ruthven, Varney the Vampire, Karnstein, etc.). Anyway, this was a fun book, and a real tour-de-force of an 'alternative history' science fiction type.

The Bloody Red Baron

Just released (Avon paperback): the definitive alternative history of World War One! God, what fun this is, even while being a serious novel with some real characterizations, a good plot, and some true moral points. Dracula was defeated in the previous book by a revolution, so he has gone over the to German side (and vampirized the Kaiser). It has many of the real people of that time in it, most of them vampires--Kaiser Wilhelm, Field Marshall Haig, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill (described after glutting on a blood meal as having fingers as red and plump as uncooked sausages), Goering, Hindenberg, Pershing, Mata Hari, and so on. Whether vampire or not, the shitheads who wasted a whole generation of European men are still shitheads (and this is one of the virtues of the book). There is a scene, stolen out of Dr. Strangelove, where the evil Caleb Croft tries to strangle the hero in the Back-lines HQ, and Haig snaps "Stop that, you two. I'll have no fighting in here. There's a war on, you know." There are all sorts of indirect references like this in the book that add to its gameful approach. It also pretends that nearly every fictional character you ever heard of was a real person: on the English side you have Mycroft Holmes, Dr. Moreau, Herbert West, Dr. Jekyll and others; on the German, Dr.Mabuse, Count Orlok (Nosferatu), Dracula, Caligari and others; America is represented by Edgar Allan Poe, who had been turned into a vampire, even before Dracula came to England and spread the 'condition' around, by Ligeia or Ulalume or somebody. [Pre-Dracula vampires are referred to as 'Elders', and most of them are WEIRD.] Poe, having been exiled for a time in the Prague ghetto (as a non-combatant alien, he was being punished by internment among the Jews, who resisted being turned into vampires for religious scruples, and were forbidden in turn to become vampires because Dracula passed laws to protect the Aryan blood line), is now commissioned by the Germans to write an inspirational book about the great deeds of the flying aces led by the Red Baron, and is made privy to the secrets of the chateau where Professor Ten Brincken experiments in mixing the blood lines of different kinds of vampires (some are indifferent to crucifixes and garlic, others can stand sunlight, and a few, like Dracula himself, are able to shape-change). Richthofen and other famous German aces of the time are genetically modified so that they can transform themselves into flying terrors without having to depend on airplanes. Wow!

Just the descriptions of what they look like when transformed are incredible. Do you remember the Gary Oldman version of Bram Stoker's Dracula on film, where he changed appearances in very bizarre ways? This is that to an extreme. Immelmann, for example, another famous German ace, turns into a flying whale, with machine guns strapped to his chest. The Red Baron himself has a 30-foot wingspan and is covered with red fur to protect against the cold without a flying suit, plus foot-long bat ears that serve as radar.

There is a nice (!) interlude, when the hero is shot down in No-Mans-Land and has to get back behind the allied lines; here you have a take-off on Reginald Hill's incredible book No Man's Land where there is a whole tribe of deserters and scavengers living in the pits and leading the anarchic life, damn all your civilized generals sending us to hell, we will create our own hell and try to survive in this place (between the trenches) -- this gang of ghouls is led by Mellors, Lady Chatterley's lover, seconded by Sgt. Svejk (Schweik?).

Against this dastardly crew you have the Diogenes Club's elite unit of Royal Flying Corps pilots (all vampires, all well-known flying aces of the period in real history). The corps also has such famous members as Biggles and Bertie Wooster (and his buddies Fink-Nottle and so on). Danny Dravot, of the Man Who Would Be King, is the personal vampire attendant of the hero. The apish 'Monk' Mayfair, of the Doc Savage group, is an aide to General Pershing. Bulldog Drummond appears as a jingoist of the worst sort. The two-bit actor Bela from the town of Lugos poses as the Count (who is safely holed up in Berlin with the vampire Kaiser) to draw the Allied Forces into a trap attack, and comes to a noble end stabbed to death by the silver bayonets of the British soldiers who capture him after the great Zeppelin 'Attila' is destroyed (Commander Robur playing the Captain Nemo-like organ all the way to the final disaster, with the gas bags blowing up like crazy after the American ace Allard sacrifices himself by diving his Sopwith into the monstrous machine and shooting off his Verey flare gun into the burgeoning hydrogen gas).

[Even with the magic of Hollywood special effects, I don't think these scenes could ever be done convincingly--in cartoons, sure, otherwise, forget it. But this is surely a book for the imagination if there ever was one better; the word-picture effects have hardly been surpassed.]

Do you think this book sounds silly? Yeah, well. But it's great fun spotting all the references to fictional characters (pulp and otherwise--even the detective Dr. Thorndyke is referred to), and as I said above it does have a good plot and some serious moral observations about decent humanity, whether 'warm' (human) or vampire -- and yes, even some of the vampires show true humanity.

In spite of the moral plot, this book (and its predecessor) has some very gruesome, fearful, and stomach-turning scenes. You really have to be a fan of Grand Guignol to enjoy it. I think the whole point of Grand Guignol was that you shouldn't take it seriously, and it is actually funny. But some folks don't think that way, so if you don't find humor in the futile attempts of the bureaucrats to bring Dr. Kevorkian to book, for example, don't read this book.