Predating the Predators (short story)

Predating the Predators
Main character(s):	Imogen Tantry, Lloyd Doihara
Featuring:	Bernice Summerfield
Main setting:	Murigen, June 2609
Key crew
Writer:	Philip Purser-Hallard
Release details
Printed in:	The Vampire Curse
← Previous	Possum Kingdom

Predating the Predators was the third and final story in the Bernice Summerfield anthology The Vampire Curse. It was written by Philip Purser-Hallard. Characters from this story would reappear in the Faction Paradox short stories A Hundred Words from a Civil War, De Umbris Idearum, and Unification Theory.

Summary of the publisher

An aged Professor Summerfield is forced to confront the equally bloody past of a fellow attendee at the predictably ill-fated First Interdisciplinary Conference on Vampirology.

Characters

• Bernice Summerfield
• Imogen Tantry
• Luke Duke
• Antonio Finlay
• Lloyd Doihara
• Gonzo
• Stassy Leustassavil
• Olena
• Emanuel Valeriani
• Shabbir
• Tomek Yatson
• Stephen Cicero
• Krisztina-Judit Németh
• Fujio McHorowitz
• Mep'to

References

• Lloyd mentions the Mim.
• Yesodi come from Kether.
• The Blood Citadel of Alukah has architecture with similarities to "everything from Osirian to Daemonic".

Notes

• Imogen and her sister Marina take their names from Shakespeare's plays Cymbeline and Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Imogen's later title Beatrix II comes from Much Ado About Nothing. The walking tree in Burnum Plaza is a reference to Birnam Wood in Macbeth.
• The starship Serene Diameter takes its name from the ships used by the eponymous count in the novel Dracula: the Demeter, and the Czarina Catherine. The name Meinir Doihara also echoes 'Mina Harker', the married name of Jonathan Harker's fiancée Mina Murray from the same novel.
• The planet Murigen is named after the Celtic goddess Morrigan, and its three suns Nemhain, Fea, and Macha are the aspects of Morrigan from Celtic myth. Similarly, Lugh is Cuchulainn's sun, despite Cuchulainn being Lugh's son in myth.
• The aquatic Lavellan species is named for the la-mhalan of Scottish folklore.
• The 'Lithian question' is a reference to James Blish’s 1958 novel A Case of Conscience, which also features a Jesuit encountering a secular alien race.
• Luke Duke's name comes from the Father Ted episode "A Christmassy Ted".
• The word "alukah", meaning a vampiric shapeshifter, comes from the Book of Proverbs, though it's sometimes translated as "horse leech". "Ekimmu" comes from Sumerian mythology.

Continuity

• Imogen notes that Bernice resembles the President. (AUDIO: The Final Amendment)
• The planet Entruria is the homeworld of the Entrustine Horde. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved...)
• Bernice says that she has fought demons, (PROSE: The Infernal Nexus) zombies, (PROSE: White Darkness, AUDIO: Beyond the Sea) and witches; (PROSE: The Squire's Crystal) eaten pizza with God, (PROSE: The Also People) played cricket with Sherlock Holmes, (PROSE: Happy Endings) been to Hell, (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) witnessed the fall of the dinosaurs, (AUDIO: The Adolescence of Time) met Oscar Wilde, (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) and encountered vampires several times earlier. (PROSE: Blood Harvest, The Badblood Diaries, Possum Kingdom)
• Vlad III of Wallachia isn't a vampire. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• Krisztina-Judit Németh was previously seen in PROSE: Of the City of the Saved....
• Alukahite culture influenced Earth's early vampire myths. (TV: State of Decay; PROSE: The Book of the War)

External links

• Predating the Predators (novella) at the Faction Paradox wiki