Vampires are the imaginary numbers of modern literature
After a bad beginning, I spent the flight home from Colorado reading Barry Mazur’s Imagining Numbers, which looks at how we might best conceive of imaginary numbers, those uncomfortable gremlins that occur when you start looking for the square root of negative numbers.
The book was only okay. It tried to be history lesson, philosophical study and math review all at once, and in its scattershot approach never quite achieved its stated thesis.
But one benefit of a mediocre book is that one’s mind is free to wander. Over the course of reading Mazur’s book, I decided:
To paint a giant number line on my daughter’s playroom wall. Addition and subtraction make a lot more sense with some geometry behind them, and Mazur’s description of numbers as verbs rather than nouns is revelatory.
The sense of needing “permission” to do something is generally an indication of an unasked question: “What would happen if I did take the square root of a negative number,” or “What if my protagonist could hear the voice-over narration?” (c.f. Stranger Than Fiction)
Vampires are the imaginary numbers of modern literature.
This last point merits further elaboration.
Vampires do not exist. That is, they do not exist in the same way you or I do. You’ve never met an undead blood-sucker, and neither have I. Yet we can both agree on quite a few characteristics of these non-existent beings:
- They drink blood.
- They avoid sunlight.
- They’re strong.
- They are undead and undying, except by special procedures.
This checklist is by no means complete: different writers may choose to add or subtract abilities. Shape-shifting and hypnosis were once pretty common traits that have all but disappeared from the modern vampire. Likewise, flight and coffin-sleeping seem to be on the wane.
In films, books and television, you can find urban vampires, feral vampires and even white-trash varieties. Yet the sense of “vampire-ness” seems fairly fixed. Here’s a test: grab a random teenager and ask him how to kill a vampire. Then ask him how to change a tire. I suspect the more complete answer will involve a wooden stake.
So how are vampires the imaginary numbers of modern literature?
Neither vampires nor imaginary numbers exist, yet we treat them like they do, simply because it suits our purposes. Imaginary numbers let us posit hypothetical mathematical scenarios; vampires let us imagine hypothetical human scenarios. Want an addiction analogy? Vampires. Epidemic? Vampires. Alienation? Vampires. Need to have your protagonist exist both now and two hundred years in the past? Just make him a vampire.
Modern literature has substituted vampires into every conceivable genre. And I don’t think it’s any accident that our bitey friends have become the go-to supernatural beings. Werewolves are only part-time monsters. Ghosts lack a consistent mythology. Vampires, well, they’re just like us.
But different. They’re imaginary numbers, who can’t be reduced beyond their glamorous other-ness.
I haven’t written a vampire movie yet, but the key word is “yet.” I came close last year, and it’s almost a given that I will at some point. It’s like a screenwriter’s rite of passage. And when I do, I intend to invoke some serious calculus on that shit.
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August 28th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
You got me all fired up. I’m gonna go differentiate some equations!
August 28th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
my favorite reading for flights is short story collections. you can come and go from them without much trouble. t.c. boyle’s latest “red of tooth and claw” was a good one. the larry mcmurty edited “still wild” was also a great airport/airplane collection. vampires are an interesting literary concept. there are so many ways to deal with it. and, if traditional vampire lore and rules don’t suit you all you have to do is have one of the vampires say “that’s an old legend, but it’s not true” and there you are. . .
August 28th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
First of all, I can’t imagine boarding a flight without my 24 DVDs (that’s the show 24; I don’t bring that many DVDs with me when I fly). Nothing like watching Kiefer kick some ass to relax you on a cross-country trip. Anyway, concerning imaginary numbers: I like your vampire analogy. When Mr. Talbot started teaching imaginary numbers in Algebra II during my jr. year of high school, I didn’t exactly grasp the concept. To be creative, I put an “imaginary” number on an exam, which looked suspiciously like something out of the Russian alphabet, and I called it Frederick. Funny, right? Alas, Mr. Talbot didn’t think so. He gave me a C-, but only because I promised to take AP French (which has served me extremely well out here in Los Angeles) instead of his Trig class. And now I’m going to write a movie about a vampire…named Frederick.
August 28th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
I used to be a nuclear engineer. I don’t like imaginary numbers. My least favorite thing about them is the little “i” that represents them.
I think vampires would be a lot less popular if whenever you wrote about them you had to use a little “i”.
August 28th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
So would it be “iVampire” …. Apple might be interested in that concept.
August 28th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I considered “vampire comedy” to be the lowest form of humor, yet I agreed to write one last year. It was actually kind of fun.
August 28th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
The funny thing about Vampire films is, I don’t think there’s ever been a truly great one. Some really good ones, but not one that defines the genre. For example, Silence of the Lambs pretty much defines the serial killer genre, Close Encounters the Alien visitation story, Star Wars — space opera. These movies so completley fulfill the potential of the genre that any movie that follows is instantly compared to it, and usually doesn’t measure up. The original Dracula I suppose defined the vampire genre at one time, but it isn’t very good.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
NICE post – I like it!
August 28th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Best way to view imaginary numbers: they’re like money, in that they have no value except as a means to something else. If you have a $100 bill, it’s simply a piece of paper that can’t provide shelter or feed you, but you can use it to purchase things that can. Likewise, the imaginary number “i” is, by itself, useless in any real-world applications, but if you can get an “i” squared, it is equal to -1, which has “real” applications.
That is why imaginary numbers are useful, but as I finish writing this, I realize that I’m probably way off the mark on why you wrote this post.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hang on, imaginary numbers don’t exist? What makes you so sure that all the so-called ‘real’ numbers exist?
What about -3 ? Is there such a number? Or the square-root of two ?
As has often been noted “God made the whole (natural) numbers. The others were man-made.”
Oh – and to the Nuclear Engineer above who hates the ‘i’ symbol – you should have been an electronics engineer instead. We use ‘j’ instead.
Mac. (PS: Another part of the vampire mythology that seems to be disappearing is using silver to kill them. I’m sure Buffy would have had an easier job using a silver-edged blade instead of trying to drive a rapidly-blunting wooden stake through a chest cavity)
August 29th, 2006 at 2:37 am
Or… Vampires of modern literature are the imaginary metaphor for the very real fears of a society too inhibited by taboo to explicitly confront them. Or they were. Now they’re just an excuse for kate beckinsale to wear latex.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:32 am
We need a new monster. I’m thinking zombies could still be reinvigorated (heh), but if we can get thousands of websites chattering about that snake movie why can’t we get them to collaborate in a new mythic monster? Or have all the monster categories already been staked out, with every conceivable recreation just a new riff on an old tune? Is it possible to create a new monster that’s not just a reworked vampire/zombie/werewolf/alien/slasher/serial killer/demon? And not just create one, but create one that can be evolved and explored by others?
August 29th, 2006 at 5:52 am
I’m not sure how well a number line will help in math education: in one study, kids who were taught arithmetic with actual objects tested worse than those that were introduced to numbers symbolically. The reason, the researchers suggested, was that each layer of abstraction makes math more difficult: thought numbers, talking about numbers, oranges and apples. I think a number line is another kind of abstraction.
A friend of mine wanted there to be a movie where a character says, “You know all that stuff you’ve seen in the movies about vampires? Well it’s ALL true!” I guess you could put us in the “sick of seeing vampires reinvented” camp. Consider that a formal request. =-)
August 29th, 2006 at 6:50 am
How about a sort of reverse on the “Rapture” movie, where definitive proof is found that God never existed and the very people that claimed religion is the only thing keeping us from killing each other start…well, killing each other. Former evangelical zealots now released from any sort of heavenly morality or promise of eternal reward turn into homicidal zealots. Driven mad by existential despair, almost overnight they turn our world into a Mad Max/Escape from New York nightmare. A ragtag bunch of atheists and buddhists are holed up in a skyscraper trying to fight off thousands of priests, pastors, shamans, etc. Slowly a leader emerges from our group of heroes, but will he be able to convert the religiots over to peaceful nihilism?
August 29th, 2006 at 7:21 am
I think people expect much from a vampire movie..because we all assume we know something about them and all the fascination about them never seems to fade away over time (just like our fascination with superheroes). Since there has already been numerous movies of such theme, I suppose a new vampire movie would probably require new ideas and a strong plot..?
I would love to watch a vampire movie that has more character development..because it seems to be lacking in many movies that share a similar theme (not neccesarily about vampires, but those with a similar supernatural character).
Just a suggestion..=)
August 29th, 2006 at 7:48 am
“…the very people that claimed religion is the only thing keeping us from killing each other start…well, killing each other”
Doug, I’m sorry but I think this is happening right now!
August 29th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Mazur’s description of numbers as verbs rather than nouns is revelatory.
I one the sandbox.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Vampires sleeping in Klein bottles, fourth dimensional beings….
A much bigger crock than imaginary numbers is zero. What a load of bollocks. 0 is a direction, just like infinity. (Hence, you should not be able to add, or subtract by it, but division is fair in a limit, sequence, or series.)
Crazy math dorks.
August 29th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
If only we could take all these dizzying intellects and channel them for the greater good.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
What’s a “number line”?
August 29th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Do garlic necklaces work against imaginary numbers too? That and a couple of chomps off the ol’ necklace might ward off any imaginary bloodsuckers. Blood okay, halitosis no f’en bloody way. Something about a cross too. For vamps, it’s a matter of convenience. You know, I did remember a female classmate dropping a large clove on a math teacher’s desk once, but I thought it was all in a vain hope that consumption by the math whiz would turn off her crush on him for good. What do I know? It takes different types to make the world, right?
August 29th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Do garlic necklaces work on imaginary numbers too? That and a couple of chomps off the ol’ neck-charm might just ward off any bloodsuckers lurking out there. Blood yes, halitosis no f’en bloody way. Something about a cross in there as well. For vamps, like bad car burglars, it’s a matter of convenience. You know, I do remember a female classmate dropping off a large clove on a math teacher’s desk once, but I thought that was in some vain hope that consumption by the math whiz would turn off her crush on him for good. Forbidden love? What do I know? It takes different types to make the world, right?
August 29th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Pondering what would work (in a movie) to convince the religious that god never existed, I came up with: an event (asteroid, factory disaster, alien rays, whatever) causes every currently developing embryo (regardless of species) to stop developing one step before the last step (you remember how we have gills, tail, etc., while in the womb). So all over the world animals are being born in this one previous state. And, of course, human women eventually start giving birth to monkeys. This proves definitively that evolution happens, contradicting all religious creation myths, leading to the events I posted earlier.
Sorry to distract from the discussion of imaginary numbers, but had to get this written down somewhere.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Who says God didn’t create evolution?
August 29th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Blood suckers can’t go into the sun light and they have to watch which coffin they sleep in for fear of a vamp killer disturbing their sleep, but other than that, there’s not a lot to be worried about … Blade aside.
They’re the undead, the immortal … yatta yatta yatta. It doesn’t conjure much from the audience in the way of empathy and relating to the struggles of the vamp. We need a vamp we can get behind – the people’s vamp. Someone we can relate with and root on to victory.
So first we need to strip the immortal status. He too must die, but for obvious reasons, he should live longer than us. Let’s say a nice healthy life of 300 years. A vamp mid-life crises is good material, so why not give him the age of 150 years?
Now we assume that he has to kill people, but other movies have proven that you can subsist on rats and rabbits and the like, so it can be done.
A vegetarian vamp. Sure, it’s tough to build at this point – but let’s think V-8 here: he wakes in the morning to prepare a blender full of vegetables and fish blood. He’s exercising – watching his figure – trying to take good care of himself.
Then he’s off to his office job selling insurance. He genuinely cares about the mortals, they live far to short a life not to plan for the future. And his boss loves the guy – he does complex mathematical calculations to determine insurance risks – but he’s a good guy and fudges the numbers a bit to keep the rates low for the disenfranchised.
He needs an adversary. Let’s make him a young stud – something like 96 years old – a Nazi officer who was bitten by a vamp posing as a female French spy during the blitzkrieg of 42. Aftwards he’s recruited into the order of evil vamps – a terrorist cell that developed shortly after the war.
The theme? Average every day Joe vamp is called into action to defeat the world domination plans of the evil Nazi vampires.
But how does he defeat the beefy Nazi vamps?
I don’t know but it has something to do with invisible numbers:-)
August 30th, 2006 at 9:19 am
You mentioned that recent vampire literature (I know, I know) has subtracted traits such as shape shifting and hypnosis. I suppose this is part of the trend to make them more realistic – “what would they be like if they really existed?”
Of course, making something like vampires “more” realistic is kind of stupid, right? I mean, if you’re going to write about vampires, hell, make them VAMPIRES. Nothing you do is going to make them more realistic…right? Unless you take away the whole “drinking blood, living forever, sunlight kills them” thing. If you did that, they’d be accountants. Oooh, vampire accountants…
August 31st, 2006 at 1:57 am
I’ve never quite understood this fascination with vampires; they’ve always seemed a bit pitiful to me. They can be killed by water, light, vegetables and wood; and are terrified of any two random objects arranged in a cross – like window frames, for example.
Seems to me, if your average vampire could live through a day (oops, not a day; a night) without killing himself it would be a miracle.
By the way, I’ve met two people who were convinced they were vampires. I actually believe them, they were fairly useless as human beings.
August 31st, 2006 at 8:34 am
Great post, John, a good kick in the bum. I’ve been kicking around some vampire ideas for a while now, trying to find my unique angle. Time to get out the ol’ yellow pad and start a scratchin’. Keep on bloggin’
September 5th, 2006 at 11:36 am
That completely baffled me, but it was very refreshing. It expanded my mind much like that trip to Nimbim in Australia. Don’t ask.
September 6th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Why is 6 afraid of 7?
Because 7 8 9.
Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.
September 8th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
I thought all this Vampire stuff was ridiculous and overused. And then- when I least expected it, and when I least WANTED it- I got inspired. Here is the first part. (The link is to a “porn” blog, sort of, kind of, but get over it!)
September 9th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
What, no picture of The Count from Sesame Street for illustration?
September 18th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Great blog, John.
Here’s a new vampire for you. An Iraq war veteran now vampire private detective investigates an outbreak of nymphomania at a nuclear weapons plant. And it got published! Plus the sequel comes out next year.
The Nymphos of Rocky Flats (March 06) X-Rated Bloodsuckers (March 07) Rayo HarperCollins
July 27th, 2007 at 1:08 am
intresting piece i am currently writing a series about vampires and found what you put quite usefull for a characters monologue. cheers
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:50 am
When two vampires multiply, do they make a real person?