30 Days of Night by Steve Niles
A great story idea is simple and is striking. It is the kind of idea that, once you hear it, you go, “Of course!”
Haven’t read the comic, haven’t seen the movie, but this is an example of a great idea for a story: vampires move into a town in Northern Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, where the midwinter sun does not rise for 30 days. The setting of bitter cold and endless snow, the isolation, lends itself immediately to the horrific mood. Vampires shun the sun. Why not go to where there is no sun? Of course!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Days_of_Night
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809740239/video/3035434
On the other hand, the sun is over the horizon for 30 days in midsummer, but maybe the vampires can migrate like the swallows of Capistrano to the Antarctic .
In unpublished or unfinished stories of mine, I have had similar ideas (which I do not mind mentioning, because if you write it up and sell it, it still will be a different story than if I sell it): for example, the colony of vampires who live at the bottom of the Marianas Trench need not worry about the sun any more than they need fret about drowning. Sea water is not running water. The space vampires find that the umbra of the Earth does not extend any farther than the orbit of the moon. Outer Space is not all dark and night-time like: the sun is always up. Not until you get out around Neptune and Pluto (which is STILL a planet, dammit!) would the vampire-killing properties be reduced (assuming that sacred magic works by an inverse-square law).
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
