New magazine features brand new original vampire fiction from favourite UK authors
The BBCi website has launched a new online Vampire magazine this month, announcing it as “the definitive guide to bloodsuckers.”
Ann Kelly, executive producer of the BBCi Cult website, said: “We were interested in trying to get modern fiction on the website. And to display some things that wouldn’t normally fit into the Cult website structures, where you’ll have a brand orientated Doctor Who section and Buffy section for example. We thought vampires would be a good idea because we know our audience is interested in them.
“The whole magazine is based around the short fiction. We approached some good writers – Michael Marshall Smith, Kim Newman, Graham Masterton and Brian Stableford – and some good artists from 2000AD – Frazer Irving, Simon Davis, Charlie Adlard and Daryl Joyce – and put the thing together. Along with the text versions of the stories, every one has an audio version too. Two of them are read by Jamie Bamber who plays Apollo in the new Battlestar Galactica.”
There’s also classic literature from Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a new Doctor Who tale and the latest instalment in the Ghosts of Albion online series. Visitors to the site can watch two new documentaries: Interview with the Vampire featuring modern day vampire fans, and The History of Vampires presented by Sir Christopher Frayling.
“Frayling is a noted film critic and academic, who produced a series of programmes about the birth of horror back in the early 90’s,” said Kelly. “He talks about the history of the vampire, taking you through from where the vampire myth came from to where he thinks it’s going now. And the Interview with the Vampire documentary is with the people from the Dracula Society and the London Vampire Connection and a couple of others, talking about what interests them in the vampire mythos. So you’ve got quite a few people in the contact lenses and the teeth. It’s quite funny in places but I don’t think I’ve been mean to anybody. I certainly didn’t portray them as a bunch of nutters.”
And if all that isn’t enough, “One thing is completely new and never been done before on the BBC,” Kelly revealed. “You can download all the stories into your Palmpilot etc and take them away and read them on the bus or the tube. The magazine is being presented in so many formats, you’d have to be a very unusual person indeed not to get something out of it.”
It’s nice to see the genres getting the attention they deserve, especially on a website that covers such a huge range of content as the BBCi’s. The reason? Ann Kelly is fan, bless her. “I think of the audience as being quite like myself in some ways and I certainly read a lot of science fiction,” she said. “It’s generally perceived that people don’t sit down and read, but personally I like to get to a website and find there’s absolutely masses of content. Then I know that I can keep coming back to the site for days and days and not run out of things to read. I’m not into seeing one picture and a single line of text.”
So what are you waiting for? Go check out the Vampire Magazine, or for more general topics the BBC Cult site.ource: