I read _Dracula_ afterwards, and I think this perspective is 100% correct, and perhaps the single largest theme from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ which has been thrown out by successors.
(For fellow Gene Wolfe fans: I was reading up on this topic earlier because of "Suzanne Delage", where I interpret (https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage) as an inversion of _Dracula_ - in "Suzanne Delage", the protagonist & his allies are defeated by Dracula due to a lack of coordination/technology, in contrast to the successful protagonists of _Dracula_.)
A lot of vampire fiction includes themes about technology vs the supernatural, Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. The focus (not so much in Ann Rice books) can be more on more action oriented technology (trains and gadgets) rather than the modern weapons of a detective though. Weird steam-punk gun gadgets (even in a modern setting like Dusk to Dawn) are a common and lazy example of these. I think a wacky invention is a shorthand to the audience for "technology".
A modern Dracula with detective themes could use a "hacker" to put together the kind of digital trail that a modern police officer would follow, so we understand that checking a person's Facebook page is modern and high tech.
It’s really Dracula vs Modernity. There’s nothing in the blog post that justifies the usage of the “Catholic” epithet. London is the seat of Anglican faith after all and using type writers and records are secular endeavors.
> Bram Stoker died in April 1912: wonder what he might have made of the spectacle of Progress known as World War One, the applications of all that beloved industry, the rational pursuit of rational ends with well-engineered (hence, rational) means, the wholesale destruction of quaint rural culture and peoples, the royal connections by blood among the crowned heads of so many of the contending parties, to say little or nothing of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
This reminds me of Heinrich Böll's At the Bridge (An der Brücke), published 1949. Its protagonist makes his own attempt to efface the legibility to technological modernity of his beloved, but as Böll had briefly worked as a statistician before turning to writing, the author was surely aware of the futility, or at least the limits, of his character's effort!
Thank you for introducing me to "Suzanne Delage," I am a Gene Wolfe fan but was unaware of this story until now. I found your interpretation incredibly convincing, too.
The author thinks that Helsing & company killed Dracula... and that is certainly the narrator's desperate belief. But as Fred Saberhagen pointed out in his more modern telling of the tale, Van Helsing himself maintains Dracula must be staked, decapitated and have his mouth stuffed with garlic to perish. And yet, despite this and despite knowing that Dracula can turn himself to mist, the heroes are content with victory when, in the shadows of sunset, they stab and cut Dracula with steel knives and he turns to "dust".
Fun article though, even with that small "mistake". :)
In the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula is eventually killed, but at what cost? Harker must eventually drive a stake through his beloved Lucy. Dracula is a virus, not a man.
Slightly OT but Dracula is not the only monster that has no chance in the modern world.
The "Quiet Place" movies make me laugh because if those creatures ever really came to Earth we'd have them under control in about 5 minutes.
Too many monsters? Rig up a battery-powered AM radio with a motion detector and a stick of dynamite. Toss 1000 of these things out in a field somewhere. Monsters go boom.
Every human now wears an electronic fob around their neck that emits a loud sound of the proper pitch to drive the monsters crazy.
We'd have those Quiet Place monsters driving Ubers for us and cleaning our bathrooms.
Same with all those zombie scenarios. Quite conveniently, each and every film or series starts with patient zero, skips the part where the whole world order, society and whatnot collapses, and starts with our heros trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
World War Z, the book that is, is the only instance that tried to explain how the collapse occured. I'd expect it to take a lot more than 5 minutes, a lot of my optimism around pandemic control died during Covid, but the full collapse that always happens as soon as zombies show up just won't happen.
> Poor Dracula, he never had a chance – not against the double-reinforced power of a Catholic Modernity.
To be fair, he hoarded wealth, drank blood, and sought eternal life. If I were in a room with Dracula and his enemies, and you told me to point at the Catholics, I'd be a bit stumped.
On a related note, when I re-watch shows from the 1990's or even early 2000's it's amazing how many problems would be solved with a simple cell phone call or text message. Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a much shorter show if the gang could just text instead of wondering where the others were or if they knew some key fact.
Star Trek was well aware of that problem. They often encountered "ion storms", or landing parties got conked on the head and their communicators taken, or other ways of disabling communications.
That also disabled the transporter, which is a convenient way to get into stories, but also makes it easy to get out of stories.
Somebody somewhere must have done a PhD thesis on the way that cell phones have changed storytelling in TV and movies. I'd actually kinda like to read that.
It's really interesting to me how precisely you can date modern tv shows.
- Do computers exist? Does everyone have a computer? Is the idea of searching the web a novel thing?
- Do they have cell phones? Are they smartphones?
- And now the new one, are they mentioning LLMs in some way?
Like one thing that really dates The Expanse imo is the complete lack of AI technology in the books/movies. It was probably an artistic choice, but it's completely unbelievable now in a way that wasn't a problem 4 years ago.
along the same line of applying modern day to older shows, I recently re-watched Stargate Atlantis. I found it amusing that with all of the futuristic tech, McKay still carried around a bulky laptop. Even the original Star Trek minimized the computer to a hand held device. The prop team kind of failed in SG:Atlantis on this one to me. How much easier would their off world adventures been with a tablet or other smaller futuristic compute device?
What about shows set in USA with heroes who are vulnerable to gunfire? There’s a good half hour in Buffy the Vampire Slayer where a vampire lays in wait for Buffy, with a rifle loaded and ready. The show didn’t end on that episode. At least one of Buffy’s friends knew what could be done with computers, and researched floor plans and “ancient lore” online.
Can writers plot a story in any given milieu? Yes. Sometimes they do seem lazy.
Along the lines of villains skirting identity-providing technocratic modernity, my head canon for Walking Boss Godfrey in Cool Hand Luke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34284609
None of the things mentioned in tracking Dracula were particularly modern even then. We have receipts and travel documents from thousands of years ago, silly article is silly.
"Railway timetables, telegraphs, phonographs, typewriters, invoices, bills of lading, double-entry bookkeeping: these are the instruments by which Dracula’s pursuers draw their net around him."
This was a fun read. Merging a few quotes to provide the gist of the article for discussion: "Dracula’s own powers – superhuman strength, the control of local weather, the ability to summon and direct brute creatures – cannot match the powers of his Enemy. And that Enemy is not Dr. Van Helsing or Jonathan Harker or any of the other people who chase him, but rather technocratic modernity itself […]
"Our heroes’ long pursuit of Dracula is largely a matter of tracing the written records of everything Dracula does in England. Note also that the enemies of Dracula coordinate their plan of action with reference to the sequence of events that they have recorded using typewriters and phonographs. (Dracula is the first novel featuring voice memos.) […]
"[And modernity reigns not just in England: even in eastern Europe the pursuers are greatly aided by Mina’s knowledge of when the trains run — and by telegraphs they receive from London. Railway timetables, telegraphs, phonographs, typewriters, invoices, bills of lading, double-entry bookkeeping: these are the instruments by which Dracula’s pursuers draw their net around him."
I get that your post was well-intentioned! But on HN, please don't post comments that are just a summary of the article or paste bits from it. The thread doesn't need to repeat the article—users can find it easily enough.
This might make more sense if you remember that the purpose of HN threads is curious conversation. When you have an interesting conversation with friends or colleagues, the idea is not to repeat things that have already been said, but to add your own thoughts, reflections, experiences.
If you look at the other top-level comments that have been posted to this thread so far, they all have the flavor of what I'm talking about:
[+] [-] gwern|2 years ago|reply
I read _Dracula_ afterwards, and I think this perspective is 100% correct, and perhaps the single largest theme from Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ which has been thrown out by successors.
(For fellow Gene Wolfe fans: I was reading up on this topic earlier because of "Suzanne Delage", where I interpret (https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage) as an inversion of _Dracula_ - in "Suzanne Delage", the protagonist & his allies are defeated by Dracula due to a lack of coordination/technology, in contrast to the successful protagonists of _Dracula_.)
[+] [-] wisty|2 years ago|reply
A modern Dracula with detective themes could use a "hacker" to put together the kind of digital trail that a modern police officer would follow, so we understand that checking a person's Facebook page is modern and high tech.
[+] [-] jackjeff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply
> Bram Stoker died in April 1912: wonder what he might have made of the spectacle of Progress known as World War One, the applications of all that beloved industry, the rational pursuit of rational ends with well-engineered (hence, rational) means, the wholesale destruction of quaint rural culture and peoples, the royal connections by blood among the crowned heads of so many of the contending parties, to say little or nothing of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
This reminds me of Heinrich Böll's At the Bridge (An der Brücke), published 1949. Its protagonist makes his own attempt to efface the legibility to technological modernity of his beloved, but as Böll had briefly worked as a statistician before turning to writing, the author was surely aware of the futility, or at least the limits, of his character's effort!
[+] [-] nagonago|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exolymph|2 years ago|reply
I didn't realize Dracula lore was among your many sidelines :P
[+] [-] autio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runeofdoom|2 years ago|reply
Fun article though, even with that small "mistake". :)
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echtroipolemos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillAdams|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigzero|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|2 years ago|reply
The "Quiet Place" movies make me laugh because if those creatures ever really came to Earth we'd have them under control in about 5 minutes.
Too many monsters? Rig up a battery-powered AM radio with a motion detector and a stick of dynamite. Toss 1000 of these things out in a field somewhere. Monsters go boom.
Every human now wears an electronic fob around their neck that emits a loud sound of the proper pitch to drive the monsters crazy.
We'd have those Quiet Place monsters driving Ubers for us and cleaning our bathrooms.
[+] [-] hef19898|2 years ago|reply
World War Z, the book that is, is the only instance that tried to explain how the collapse occured. I'd expect it to take a lot more than 5 minutes, a lot of my optimism around pandemic control died during Covid, but the full collapse that always happens as soon as zombies show up just won't happen.
[+] [-] twic|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIG36gncSxs&t=33s
[+] [-] mrkeen|2 years ago|reply
To be fair, he hoarded wealth, drank blood, and sought eternal life. If I were in a room with Dracula and his enemies, and you told me to point at the Catholics, I'd be a bit stumped.
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply
Das Kapital was 1867; The Time Machine, 1895. They sure loved their vore in the 19th century!
[+] [-] kevinmhickey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfengel|2 years ago|reply
That also disabled the transporter, which is a convenient way to get into stories, but also makes it easy to get out of stories.
Somebody somewhere must have done a PhD thesis on the way that cell phones have changed storytelling in TV and movies. I'd actually kinda like to read that.
A quick Google turns up:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254345825_Mobile_Ph...
[+] [-] RheingoldRiver|2 years ago|reply
- Do computers exist? Does everyone have a computer? Is the idea of searching the web a novel thing? - Do they have cell phones? Are they smartphones? - And now the new one, are they mentioning LLMs in some way?
Like one thing that really dates The Expanse imo is the complete lack of AI technology in the books/movies. It was probably an artistic choice, but it's completely unbelievable now in a way that wasn't a problem 4 years ago.
[+] [-] kej|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cardiffspaceman|2 years ago|reply
Can writers plot a story in any given milieu? Yes. Sometimes they do seem lazy.
[+] [-] Animats|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAuH6FDhgw
[+] [-] dist-epoch|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiroiushi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhbadger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnw21cam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zabzonk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackeyacky|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|2 years ago|reply
None of those were particularly modern?
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] psnehanshu|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pvg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _upoi|2 years ago|reply
"Our heroes’ long pursuit of Dracula is largely a matter of tracing the written records of everything Dracula does in England. Note also that the enemies of Dracula coordinate their plan of action with reference to the sequence of events that they have recorded using typewriters and phonographs. (Dracula is the first novel featuring voice memos.) […]
"[And modernity reigns not just in England: even in eastern Europe the pursuers are greatly aided by Mina’s knowledge of when the trains run — and by telegraphs they receive from London. Railway timetables, telegraphs, phonographs, typewriters, invoices, bills of lading, double-entry bookkeeping: these are the instruments by which Dracula’s pursuers draw their net around him."
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
This might make more sense if you remember that the purpose of HN threads is curious conversation. When you have an interesting conversation with friends or colleagues, the idea is not to repeat things that have already been said, but to add your own thoughts, reflections, experiences.
If you look at the other top-level comments that have been posted to this thread so far, they all have the flavor of what I'm talking about:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529274
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529003
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528984
For example, they all contain some unexpected or unpredictable element—something we can be surprised by and learn from.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]