POSTSCRIPT

 

When I was writing the third and fourth parts of Tyrant’s Stars, I began to develop a new interest in D’s world. Up until then, it was a topic I’d only given halfhearted consideration, but I started to want to really flesh out what the world had been like when vampires ruled the human race. The vampires—or the Nobility—first appeared as a force greater than humanity after the nuclear war. The story line of the D series jumps forward ten thousand years from that point, omitting much about how the Nobility had controlled the human race. Not that it was boring or anything; I just hadn’t given it much thought. (Laughs) A nuclear war brought about the vampires’ sudden rise to power, and in those days, it seemed like such an exchange might occur at any time between the US and the Soviet Union. The difference between then and now is like night and day; the nuclear weapons remain, but we believe no such war will take place. At the time, I’d probably have had the vampires take control after the human race, nearly wiped out by nuclear war, is saved by the secretly developed technology and magical power of the vampires, to whom the radiation is no more than a light shower. But in return, the humans would have had to allow the vampires to feed on them.

At present, the Frontier inhabited by the humans is divided into northern, southern, eastern, and western sectors, each with assorted feudal lords or controllers. Count Magnus Lee, who appears in the first novel, is one such person. In the ten thousand years leading up to the decline of the Nobility as a race, there were a few vampire rulers that even the humans lauded, the most praised among them being Lord Greylancer of the northern Frontier and Baron Mayerling of the western Frontier. The former I used in the most recent Japanese volume of the D series, Nightmare Village, while the latter appears in the third book, Demon Deathchase. Now, I’ve taken both of them and thrown them back into the world of the past. That is the crux of the Another Vampire Hunter: The Noble Greylancer series that I’ve just started writing in Japan. Set in the thousands of years when the Nobility were locked in heated battle with the intergalactic invaders known as the Outer Space Beings (OSB), it vividly depicts the lives of humans and Nobles on the Frontier. No plans have been made to translate it yet, but I hope those of you who understand Japanese will read it in its original form. As the author, I can highly recommend it.

Although the vampires are ageless and immortal, they aren’t indestructible. They have numerous lethal weaknesses, such as sunlight, running water, wooden stakes, and so on. Naturally, the Nobility would think of measures to guard against these things, and the humans would undoubtedly conceive of ways around those safeguards. Surely there would be individuals willing to lead rebel armies equipped with those new weapons. And while the rebels might be ruthlessly crushed, there still might be some Nobles who couldn’t help but be moved by their courage and humanity. These are the kind that can be found in Tyrant’s Stars. And although this has turned into a plug for my new series, I have faith that you’ve found Tyrant’s Stars quite interesting. I hope you enjoyed it.

-

February 21, 2011

While watching Dracula: Prince of Darkness

Hideyuki Kikuchi