Hero Dust- A Short History of Vampires

What if you brewed a tale that involved Lord Byron, the Shelleys, Van Helsing and a hint of Buffy?

Hero Dust, a short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is the subject of BBC Radio 7's A Short History of Vampires. Presented by Natalie Haynes, it begins by paying an homage to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Haynes talks about the importance of the slayer as well as that of the monster: without both, we do not have a story. From Grendel to Count Dracula, every monster must meet their own Beowulf and Van Helsing if we are to fulfill the tale.

A seeming perfection of the hero slayer figure is Buffy- she is a teenager who has to juggle classes, cheer-leading tryouts, dates and hangouts, all the while carrying out her function as the bane of existence for all the un-dead in Sunnydale, California. We do admire her tenacity- for that is the consistent trait of every hero slayer in the history of the horror adventure genre. But you have to ask, what about other slayers?

Read by David Horowitz, Hero Dust begins with an old man, Bram, walking into a lecture hall in an American college campus. The lecture is on the topic of the hero and the nature of heroism. Bram is not seeking knowledge on the topic, far from it. He is looking for someone- a person who would, given enough encouragement, be willing to believe what he as to tell him or her. Someone who could willingly suspend his disbelief and actually become a hero.

Bram is in the heroism business himself- he had been at it for two hundred years. He began back in 1816 at a villa in Switzerland when he worked as a gardener while observing the residents. The three residents who lived there were also experts on telling tales of the supernatural and the un-dead. They are familiar to us today in other forms: romantic poets and writers of fantastic fiction. But you would not connect them with fighting the un-dead: Lord Byron, Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Bram himself is no less famous: he is after all the famous Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, an old man who is looking for a successor to replace him. In the lecture hall he meets a young lady who reminds him Mary Godwin. He remembers her capacity for darkness and the ability to believe in the nature of evil and her ability to fight it. The young woman, Clarissa, seems interested in talking to him. So he takes her to the university cafe for a chat. Her capacity for understanding the darkness and her thirst for a life of adventure may go a long way to convince him that she may be the one.

Has Van Helsing found a successor after all?

Hero Dust is part two of A Short History of Vampires on BBC Radio 7.