464 · Reviews Reviews · 465 JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS Meehan, Paul. The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014. 236 pp. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-7864-7487-5. $39.95. The publication of Dracula by Bram Stoker in 1897 helped provide the foundation for many of the elements of the vampire as conceived through the lens of Gothic horror that would be associated with the creature for years to come. This includes the conception of the vampire as an undead creature that rises from the grave at sundown in order to drain the blood of the living, as well as the vampire’s possession of fantastic strength and supernatural powers of the mind. As Paul Meehan observes, over the centuries the vampire has evolved, changing forms through “a rationalizing/secularizing process” (1) and has metamorphosed into new, technological mutations more in keeping with our scientific age” (1), while also noting that “despite their occult pedigree the literary vampire … has always embodied an element of science fiction” (2). Meehan explores “the metamorphosis of the vampire from religious and magical beings into creatures of science fiction” (3) through a consideration of five themes in vampire literature and film: plague and disease, psychic vampires, vampires as extraterrestrial beings, their connection to mad scientists, and the vampire in response to human technology. Meehan’s study is largely a compilation and summary of vampire literature and film arranged around various themes. The author does not engage in much analysis or argumentation to substantiate his thesis. Instead, his thesis is briefly stated at the beginning, literature and films are cited around themes believed to support the main contention of the volume, and the basic ideas are restated in the epilogue. Chapter One, “The Scientific Origins of the Vampire Myth,” considers the beginnings of the vampire in eighteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe. Some scholars now argue that belief in vampires began as a way of explaining certain phenomena like plagues, diseases, epidemics, and unexplained deaths. Meehan considers how contemporary scientific understanding sheds light on natural processes that were interpreted as supernatural and vampiric in times past. For example, bloating of the body, blood on the mouth, and the appearance of hair and nails growing after death were features that were interpreted as signs of the vampire, but through forensic science we now understand these as part of the natural process of bodily decay. Science can also help us understand how illness and plague may have fueled the origins of the vampire. This includes genetic blood disorders like porphyria, conditions like anemia, and infectious diseases like the Black Plague, rabies, and syphilis. Meehan discusses other phenomena that may have played a part in the origin of the vampire, including the slowing of the body’s vital functions in catalepsy where death was wrongly assumed, premature burial of seemingly bodies, without the same capacity for imagination and openness, cannot. She says, “When two agents engage as prostheses, functionality necessitates a rapport—an emotional, physical, psychological, and mental connection between the bodies—that is not possible in cases where an inanimate object is affixed to one’s body” (116). A nonliving prosthesis may attempt to fill a gap, in other words, but a living one adds something more. In the last section, Brent Walter Cline takes a different approach and focuses on the mind, insinuating that the body, even in its healthiest form, can be an impairment, introducing “embodiment-as-disabled” and reminding us that “Impairment is a real, physical fact” (132-33). Reading these ideas through Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker and Greg Bear’s Blood Music, Cline encourages a reconsideration of the body’s relationship to the concept of personhood and how that concept is defined. Christy Tidwell calls for similar redefinitions in her essay, “‘Everything is Always Changing’: Autism, Normalcy, and Progress in Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark and Nancy Fuller’s ‘Movement’,” in which she says, “Even more significantly than asking readers to redefine normalcy, Moon and Fulda also ask readers to reevaluate normalcy” (162). This statement encompasses the underlying claim of the collection, which urges a consideration of new parameters for established concepts but also why we need such concepts and what they actively do. In the last essay, “Life without Hope? Huntington’s Disease and Genetic Futurity,” Gerry Canavan considers two texts that include one character who chooses to be cured of disability and one who does not, providing a basis for comparison and considering how the idea of the “cure” implies the existence of a problem, of a deficiency getting in the way of normality. This collection complicates an implication formerly taken for granted. The essays in this collection provide insight for any reader interested in the spectrum of disability and the relationship between identity and the body. Though many of the individual essays defend the combination of these fields, they do not read as repetitive. Instead, rethinking the strengths of sf and DS in each essay sustains a persistent conversation between the authors, who agree on many facets of the pairing but all bring their own complications and nuances to the table. I found it helpful that each author privileged his or her own particular concerns in redefining or reconsidering the importance of sf and DS. The collection overall is an enjoyable read, easily accessible to scholars of both sf and DS. Because of the price, it might be best as a library purchase rather than an individual investment. Many of the essays easily stand alone and could appeal to teachers for use in the classroom. The collection provides not only new and insightful ways of looking at disability, but also a helpful language through which to talk about it. LAURA R. KREMMEL Vol. 29, No. 3, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Copyright © 2018, International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.