Book Review: DRACULA UNBOUND By Brian Aldiss *** out of *****

Following on his hugely successful and tremendously entertaining novel Frankenstein Unbound, which combined time-travel with a post-modernist revision of Mary Shelley's life and her most famous novel, Brian Aldiss dips into the same well with Dracula Unbound, his attempt to do something similar with Bram Stoker's Gothic masterpiece.

Alas, the second time is not the charm. Where Frankenstein Unbound was fast-paced, coherent, and thought-provoking, Dracula Unbound is slow, meandering, and intellectually lukewarm.

The plot (from the publisher's blurb): In the barren dust of the far future, the sun leaks energy in a darkening sky and the only remaining humans are imprisoned by spectral, bloodthirsty beings. Back in the brilliant Utah sunlight of 1999, two ancient graves yield evidence that a species of human coexisted with the dinosaurs . . . Linking these scenarios is impetuous inventor Joe Bodenland (the protagonist of Frankenstein Unbound), who has just created a machine that manipulates time to dispose of hazardous waste . . .

Where's Dracula, you ask? Well, without revealing too much, let's just say that Bodenland manages to go back in time, meet Bram Stoker, and together they hunt down the vampiric creature that will later inspire Stoker to revise his masterpiece.

As is obvious from the synopsis, the plot is confusing and confused, and Aldiss, never a writer to dwell on characters' motivations and psychology, is at his worst here, with characters that are mere sketches, and dialogue that is woefully artificial.

And unlike in Frankenstein Unbound, where he treated the source material and its author with reverence, here, Aldiss foregoes the tone and mood of the original novel, and seems intent on ridiculing Stoker, portraying him as a staunchly conservative, syphilitic hypocrite, who is always eager to do battle for "God and Country" at the drop of a pin. Aldiss, who has a penchant for psycho-sexualizing his stories at the expense of quality, misses the mark here, and his portrayal of Stoker is nothing less than offensive, especially since in his afterword he mentions relying for his research on two highly-contested biographies: A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker by Harry Ludlum, and The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker by Daniel Farson *.

But all could have been forgiven if the story had been compelling. But it isn't, and fans of Stoker and his novel will be disappointed by what Aldiss does with and to them.

Still, the novel is high on imagination, even if it is low on craft, and it is an interesting misfire by a singular author.

* For a more balanced analysis of the novel Dracula, and the life of Bram Stoker, check out Elizabeth Miller's brilliant essay, Coitus Interruptus: Sex, Bram Stoker, and Dracula, available here.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2022.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. He is also the host of The Dark Fantastic Podcast. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @DFantasticPodcast