The Empire of Fear - Softcover

Brian M. Stableford

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330308742 ISBN 13: 9780330308748

Publisher: Pan Books, 1990

Synopsis

An intelligent and exciting historical adventure, in which "an aristocracy of vampires as immortal overlords hold whole continents in sanguinary thrall." 520 pages.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

ic vampire fiction."
THE KIRKUS REVIEWS
Since the sixteentj century, England has been a land ruled by the Undead. Vampires rule with terror and the darkly-seductive promise of life eternal for the lucky few. Edmund Cordery, member of the cabal pledged to penetrate the mysteries of the vampires and destroy them, strike the first blow. But it will fall to his son. Noell, to carry on the crusade of human against inhuman. And it will fall to those who come after Noell to keep the struggle alive for over three centuries--from England to Malta to modern-day America, where destiny will decide finally whether the forces of horror or humanity will hold sway over all....

From Kirkus Reviews:

Alternative-history vampire science/fantasy by Stableford (The Third Millennium, 1985), a novelist with degrees in biology and sociology. Stableford details the sociobiology of vampires with a fineness that puts top vampirist Anne Rice in the shade as a cultural chronicler. His story largely is laid three centuries ago in England when the civilized world, led out of the Dark Ages by the rise of vampires, is governed by an aristocracy of vampires who rule by fear. Vampires seemingly cannot love or feel pain; females are barren, and males have a low sex drive. They feed on--and draw their number from--common men. But how do the vampires reproduce from the commoners? This question haunts Edmund Cordery, courtier to Richard the Lion-Hearted (a vampire, of course), who has just devised a microscope that reveals the small world of microbes that he thinks can help overthrow vampire rule if the spermatic base of vampirism can be found. When Edmund kills a lady vampire by purposefully inoculating himself with the black plague before she drinks his blood, his son Neil--a budding social revolutionary- -flees England, seeking the microbial code. Neil knows vampires don't pass on their ``emortality'' by magic--it's something to do with their blood. He joins a pirate band and goes to Africa, fabled homeland of vampires, and in the wonderfully described Uruba tribe finds himself in vampire paradise where the biology of vampirism is at last revealed. An asteroid ages ago struck here, carrying on it ``the breath of life''--emortality microbes, which are now carried in vampire semen, which in turn must be applied to an open wound to be effective.... After the huge vampire battle of the Spanish Armada, the story leaps three centuries ahead for a brief look into modern worldwide emortality as analyzed by microbiologist Michael Southerne, who has Cordery's Syndrome (he must die, never emortal, because his blood resists vampire microbes). Terrific vampire fiction, with well-humanized puppet characters. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0330308742
• ISBN 13: 9780330308748
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 520