I, Vampire

The Benaroya Chronicles #2

by Jody Scott

After seven hundred years, Glamorous vampire Sterling O’Blivion has begun to think the joy is going out of life. Then she meets Virginia Woolf in the ladies’ room of a dance studio in Chicago. But Woolf is really Benaroya, a dolphin-like alien anthropologist here to learn all there is to know about humanity and to fight the good fight against the evil, slave-trading Sajorians. Sterling falls madly in love with Benaroya. It’s just the sort of romp an aging vampire needs—but first, to defeat the Sajorians, they have to sell millions of Famous Men’s Sperm Kits to every woman on Earth.
Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon

Genres: Fiction, Vampires, Science Fiction, Horror, LGBT, Science Fiction Fantasy, Queer

212 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1977

About the author

"What a wild, original and outrageously funny writer she is." ​-TimeOut

Jody Scott (Jan 13, 1923- Dec 24, 2007 ) was an award-winning American writer whose novels garnered extensive critical and peer acclaim though most of her works remained unpublished during her lifetime. Scott was a satirist who employed speculative and mainstream fiction to critique society and question the nature of reality. Her scifi series The Benaroya Chronicles (consisting of the novels Passing for Human, I, Vampire and Devil-May-Care) became cult classics of feminist satire in the 1980's and were widely praised for their hilarity and originality.

In Berkeley CA partnered with George Leite to publish the influential beat-generation Circle Magazine and to run daliels bookstore, and with whom she also co-authored the novel cure it with honey, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, before settling in Seattle WA in the 1960's. There she lived the remainder of her life and produced the bulk of her oeuvre.

Scott died of heart failure in 2007.
Her papers are housed at the Eaton Archive at the University of California at Riverside, which is the largest speculative fiction archive in the U.S.

This page is managed by her literary executor and spouse.

Reviews

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, for a vampire novel, this is pretty wild. Luckily, vampires in this world don't sulk, obsess about what they are wearing, or (aack) play baseball. Vampires are fairly normal except that they live for a really long time and occasionally have to drink some blood.

When it comes down to it, this novel is only vaguely about vampires. The main character, Sterling O'Blivion happens to be one and has lived 900 years but that just makes her the logical choice to oversee the psychic evolution of the human race (or face extermination by the Rysemians). She and her Rysemian lover, in the body of Virginia Woolf, head up a company to sell a Famous Men's Sperm Kit, which is intended to spur this evolution (although I still have no idea why or how). They also run into a rival alien race who just wants to capture humans to ship them off as food/slaves/curiosities.

Really, the plot itself or why things happen doesn't matter so much. Like lots of science fiction, there is lots of blah blah technical details which sounds good but whether they make sense doesn't really matter so much. The writing is hilarious and witty. There are lots of funny images, like rows of cloned Nixon's being used as servants (although they are the old model and are being gradually updated to the new Reagan models).

The places it goes keeps being totally unexpected and intriguing. Even the second to last chapter, the shift leaves you rethinking everything that has come before. Pretty original stuff. If you are expecting either a vampire novel or a sci-fi novel, this isn't it. It has bits of both but lots more.

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish it. The book starts well enough with an exciting backstory, but the rest of it is so all over the place that I couldn’t really get my footing in what little plot there was. I wanted this to be so many things and it just wasn’t any of them. The writing isn’t BAD necessarily, it for sure had some great lines, but it wasn’t for me.

[bobbygw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unjustly neglected for years, ‘I, Vampire’ by Jody Scott is an exuberantly clever and wildly iconoclastic feminist and SF take on vampires in fiction. If you thirst for something really witty, quirky, with bags of brains – and not much blood – you'll do no better than this wonderful novel.

Sterling O’Blivion is a bright, phenomenally well-read and irreverent 700 year old vampire. Now living in Chicago, she’s a bored instructor of a dance studio. But soon she’s on a madcap adventure spree, falling in love with a rejuvenated Virginia Woolf, dealing with Mr Spock (the Baby and Child Care one), and negotiating with multiple aliens up to no good.

Rave reviewed when first published by The Women’s Press in 1986 and since out of print, good, super cheap second hand copies – starting at a penny/cent! – are easily available online.

Praised and loved by such SF mavericks as Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel Delaney and Barry N. Malzberg, why not satisfy your ungodly fictional cravings with something madcap, radically different and deliciously feminist?

[A version of this review was originally published on For Books' Sake website, as part of their book gift guide for Xmas 2014: http://forbookssake.net/2014/12/10/ch....]

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and wonderful sci-fi story. Jody Scott writes great dialogue and engages the reader with a pacey series of bizzare events. I love the characters - enthusiastic Alien Benaroya who takes the form of Virginia Woolfe and guides aging and jaded vampire, Stirling O'blivion toward a new life of possibilities and love, beyond the pitfalls of humanity.

[Faith Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is by far the craziest story I've read this year, from an author who could never be accused of formulaic composition. If I described it as a 'cross between...', I'd have to list some many subjects your eyes would flip over. The title is inspired by I, Claudius (Robert Graves, 1934), which also inspired I, Robot (Isaac Asimov, 1950). You're about to say I, Know.

An unageing vampire's beginnings, her encounters through the melting pot of history, then breaking the surface again into dance classes, door to door sales artists, time travel, lesbian crushes, identity theft (incl. Mr Spock from Star Trek), a slamming of consumer capitalism and then the plot veers into an extraterrestrial contact fantasy and questions what humans want their place to be in the wider galactic community. There's an 'it was all a dream' red herring ending which is then overturned because that was implanted and it was not all a dream. What a riot. I think the author wrote this mainly to entertain herself, so if anyone else out there happens to bounce along with each kick of mayhem then that's good too. Pulp, crass entertainment? Possibly, but Jody Scott must have had one of the most original minds in 20th century fiction. I guess it's too late to call her up and shoot the breeze now.

Personally, I like this audacious style very much, as you've probably cottoned on to. This has a messy plot with a confused, feeble ending that doesn't resolve much at all, hence no five star rating. I can picture the writer looking for a way to introduce the alien Benaroya character from her other book. Having said that, it's also luminous fiction anarchy of the rawest kind, not taking itself too seriously in a pleasurable flinch of a book that harbours no interest in readers' opinions. You need to catch up with it because this story is going places, not the other way around.

I would say there's nothing like it (possibly Robert Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles?) but I then had a heart-stopping shock. One of the sub-plots about collecting famous people's DNA and running a business offering designer babies is an idea I thought was mine, original 2020, which I wrote up in the story 'Genealogy Club' both in print and on YouTube. I am now flabbergasted and dismayed to discover that this low-down, sneaky, conniving, cunning cow of an author not only completely stole my idea in the most underhand act of back alley plagiarism I have ever seen but was so calculating about it that she somehow managed to get it into print some 36 years earlier.

[Ginna · Rating 5 out of 5]

fabulous - a sci-fi lesbian vampire tale - what could be better?

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get it: it's just not my type of hype.

Jody Scott is an interesting author. She co-wrote a novel back in the 1950s, put out a few short pieces of science fiction (and wrote at least one book that was never published) mostly in the 1960s. Then, in the early 1980s, put out two science fiction(ish) novels that have since become cult classics, but are mostly ignored. "I, Vampire" is the second of these--I still haven't read the first--a loose sequel to her "Passing for Human." Nothing more after that, whether she couldn't find a publisher or just became distracted by other things, I don't know.

As the titles of both books would indicate, this one and probably the other) is very concerned with identity, its fluidity and way the way that it is nonetheless categorized. The main character of the book is Sterling O'Blivion, a 13th century vampire living in modern-day Chicago, where she sells dopes on the wonders of dance classes, really just ripping them off. She thinks that she has seen it all and understands the human condition to its very marrow, and longs for something else.

The first part of the book is clearly a vampire novel, with Scott explaining how vampirism works in her world (a kind of mutation that forces its bearer to consume 6 measly ounces of blood per month in order to effectively live forever.) There are rye comments on how humans hate her, though she hardly takes much, and they are certainly going to die and lose their blood in the end.

Hints, though, are thrown down early that vampirism is the least of the book's innovations--Scott has no time for John W. Campbell's assertion that the science fiction author is allowed only one major assumption, one major premise, and everything else must follow from that. Sterling mentions in passing, several times, that she created a time machine. And having witnessed humanity in its manifest form for centuries she wishes for something more--in particular, for some alien to come and save her.

Which is exactly what happens when Benaroya appears--Benaroya, the hero fo the first book, Benaroya a whale-like alien from a distant water world, who has taken the form of many humans over time, to blend in, and now looks like Virginia Woolf--whom it just so happens Sterling fell in love with, back in the 1920s.

Implausibility piles on implausibility and the novel is short, but it never feels overstuffed, or even forced, which is part of Scott's magic. I suppose she might owe something to the New Wave science fictionists of the 1960s, but I know to little about that movement to see. (She does namecheck Barry Malzberg.) What I see here more is a someone influenced by William Burroughs of "Naked Lunch" (and Burroughs gives a praising squib to this edition) and so it's possible to slot Scott into the genealogy of Cyber Punk, even as the the use of technology here is rudimentary; the concern in both is the limits of the human qua human. The main reason that the book remains cohesive, despite its plausibilities, is that Scott is a writer of labile imagination, able to piece these various ideas together into a whole that feels right--like Burroughs or even early William Gibson. Her writing, though, always feels more personable than either of those, almost breezy at times. Still, the book has its social issues--Sterling O'Blivion obviously indicates the inadequacies of materialism, and there are also issues of identity and sexuality which are considered.

As the story develops--spoilers for this thirty-year-old novel--it comes out that O'Blivion has some serious personal issues with which to deal--the death of her husband--even as she and the new Virginia Woolf are creating a cult. The cultish ideas are basic, rewashed New Thought: each person creates his or her own reality with their thought, could be happy if only they wanted to be, and in time could develop their psychic powers to such an extent that they could literally create reality just by thinking about it. But all that is covered with the selling of what they call the Famous Men's Sperm Kit--allowing women to choose from a colleciton of famous men to be fathers to their children.

The species of alien to which Woolf belongs, though, is in conflict with another alien species--also running commercials advertising itself--that want humans to remain in their primordial state. These aliens kidnap some of the cult members--and the story, short though it is, spirals, switching points of view from Sterling to Virginia, to cult members, to other aliens of Virginia's species. Indeed, Sterling is off stage for long stretches, including when she loses her husband and kills a couple of people.

There is war, which upsets Sterling: she had expected better from Virginia and her species, but Virginia reminds her it is just a game, and only a few people were ever meant to evolve, anyway. The weapons involved in the war are some kind of ray that forces the disguised aliens to remain in human form, and bombs to kill them. In a fit of rage, Sterling shoots Woolf, forcing her into her human body: which is anger, but also love, for the two--much to the chagrin of conventional society, have begun a lesbian affair.

All the trauma forces O'Blivion into a fugue state, in which she imagines the people of her life rearranged into different, normal roles. But Woolf frees her from that conventional hell, and they escape, with other aliens, back to Egypt, where they will built the pyramids and practice the mental techniques that Woolf wants O'blivion--and the entire human race--to learn. Easier to teach them from the start, to redo history so that the lost wisdom of the ancients is never lost in the first place.

The middle sections, not unlike Naked Lunch, get very confused and increasingly hallucinatory. The end is affecting. As a whole, I understand why people praise this book and think Scott unjustly ignored--she is. But like the Malzberg book I read earlier this year, it just doesn't affect me. Maybe it's the style, maybe it just seems dated. I don't know. But it certainly has an open, limber approach to the genre

[Daisy Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

My god. This book. Was dreadful.

I picked it up because the blurb sounded so ridiculous. I thought it might give me a few laughs. To be fair, it did, but only at how bad it was!

The plot was complete nonsense. There was absolutely no logical thread through ANY of it. The writing was diabolical - random capitalisation, context less sentences, phrases and metaphors that made absolutely no sense. The pacing was completely nonsensical - a walk to work could take a chapter, then a murder could pass by in two sentences. Despite focussing on a female/female romance, there were a bunch of homophobic slurs thrown in at the end for (seemingly) no reason. And to TOP IT ALL OFF, it ends with EVERYONE'S LEAST FAVOURITE TROPE: "And it was all a dream!".

This book wasted four days of my life. I can't understand why it's a cult classic, much less a "feminist romp" or "underrated sci-fi novel".

[Jacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was wild from start to finish, and while it’s not my kind of humor I certainly had my friends rolling with the passages I sent.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to like it, but it's too nonsesical for me.

[carlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the craziest books ive ever read, the first half is soooo fun to read. really interesting to read the satirical takes on 80s society's view of women and gay people. will definitely need to reread this at some point

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just plain silly, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if executed well. I did laugh and smile at the authors sense of humor, but the premise was just weak and wouldn't hold up. I bought the book because Virginia Woolf is on the cover and has been bitten by a Vampire. Funny right? The protagonist, Sterling, is a 700 year old Vampire, that meets and falls in love with Virginia Woolf in Paris circa 1923. She sees Woolf again 80 years later walking down the street. Woolf it seems, is actually an alien that has inhabited a body made to look like Woolf, who is on earth to figure out why "earthies" are all crazy. Bottom line, funny idea- didn't come together.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most original vampire fictions I've ever read. Science fiction, shape shifting, Virgina Woolf, & lots of dry, sharp humor. Why isn't Jody Scott more famous?

[Peter Cashwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a very high tolerance for the capricious, but here I'm afraid I found my tolerance exceeded, probably because the caprice didn't just extend to the book's tone or its concepts, but to its structure, its themes. It wasn't decorated whimsically; I think it was BUILT whimsically.

It's capricious in terms of point of view, starting as a first-person account of vampire Sterling O'Blivion's travails in selling dance lessons and getting recruited into a sperm-selling enterprise with Utopian ideals. Then it jumps to the POV of a minor player (limited 3rd), then that of a DIFFERENT minor player (limited 3rd), then a letter from Sterling to the other main character, Benaroya, then a bit from Benaroya's POV (3rd), then back to Sterling's POV (3rd person)... I just never found a way to look at the story. Had there been a strong, singular viewpoint, the whimsical elements of the plot might not have thrown me so hard.

And yes, the plot is pretty capricious, not to mention full of tropes. Sterling is a vampire, but it seems to affect her not at all, except in terms of lifespan. She goes out in daylight and appears to have no particular powers or supernatural tendencies; she just needs six ounces of blood per month. That leads to one off-camera assault on a victim, and that's pretty much it. She is also some kind of physicist who has invented time travel, which makes for a few visits to past and future, but has no major effect on the plot. There are aliens who can occupy human bodies, which is how Benaroya ends up looking like Virginia Woolf. And there are other aliens--evil ones--who capture and enslave (and maybe even eat) humans on the regular. In the end, though, none of it seems to lead anywhere. Woolf keeps telling Sterling that humans create their own reality; perhaps the readers were expected to create their own story.

Even the genre is a matter of whimsy. It's supernatural (vampires), but it shifts to science fiction (alien fish-women and time travel), sometimes to social satire (improving the lives of women through eugenic sperm sampling), and theoretically to romance (vampire falls in love with alien fish-woman in Virginia Woolf's body). But none of the genres are ever fully embraced. As refreshing as it is to see a lesbian love story (though I'm sure it was even more refreshing in 1984, when this book was released), I never really felt the passion that was supposed to motivate Sterling. Apart from the physical beauty of Woolf, which is undeniable, what is it that makes her lovable? And what is it about Sterling that's so attractive to this mysterious fish-woman?

I kept expecting things to click, because as I said, I can handle a bunch of whimsy, but with every chapter, instead of being delighted by the improbable new developments--Look, a guide to conning lonely men into dancing lessons! Hey, an underwater assault on evil alien headquarters! Ooo, a camping trip to the Olympic Peninsula!--I found that each non sequitur left me more and more disconnected from the plot and characters. As a result, it took me twelve days to finish this book, which is only 207 pages long. That should tell you how stymied I felt.

I'm glad to have finally read it; I just wish the process had been more enjoyable.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

2½. You must read (the vastly superior) "Passing for Human" in order to understand this novel, its sequel. "Passing" is a masterpiece of vitriolic (yet hilarious) cynicism and pessimistic sociological insight -- all in the guise of a science fiction novel. This sequel, while stranger and more outlandish, is indisbutably and depressingly weak in comparison and not all that strong on its own. Is there anything else out there by Jody Scott? I don't believe much more of her work was published. "I, Vampire" is not a bad book -- I just didn't expect something so neutered. I should have known better, as Barry Malzberg wrote the introduction to "Passing" and boring old Theodore Sturgeon wrote the introduction to this one and the difference in the two books parallels the differences of those authors and their works.

[SpentCello · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was better than the previous book in the series (Passing For Human) but still left a lot to be desired. You definitely don't need to read the other book first; this explains any potentially confusing concepts and is quite a separate story. I have pretty much all the same complaints for this as the last book (inconsistent telepathy, blaming 'stupid humans' to point out obvious social issues, poorly constructed alien races, etc.), however, the writing style was much better and I enjoyed the parts with Sterling generally. The plot was quite shakily constructed and repetitive, with some very faulty world mechanics underpinning it all. But some of the satire was very apt and funny (although heavily concentrated towards the start of the book). A definite improvement on Passing For Human but still not particularly enjoyable.

[Don Kyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily the strangest book I have ever read. There are passages in here that are pure genius; Jody Scott's criticism of the modern world and capitalism is still so biting 40 years later. But there also passages that don't make any sense at all.

This book is not about vampires. It has a vampire, but it ain't about her. It's more about the world humanity has created, and trying to break out of the reality and cycles we force upon ourselves. And it's kinda about a lesbian romance involving a vampire and an alien? Which if that was more of a focus, I would've enjoyed the book far better.

Yeah, just a strange book. Well paced, and moments of genius, but somewhat poisoned by moments of incomprehension. A hidden gem to be sure.

[Mar · Rating 2 out of 5]

(content warnings: body shaming, homophobia, gun violence)

Do NOT read this for a good story, or good worldbuilding, or good pacing. or a good romance. or good LGBT representation. DO read this if you want to experience the most batshit combination of unrelated and mostly unresolved plot points ever written.

it has its moments, but mostly it's just... swinging wildly over the line between "fun bad" and "just bad" like a goddamn pendulum.

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vampires, aliens, lesbians, and a critique of consumer capitalism. This book has everything.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

worth reading for the weirdness but i found it hard to concentrate on and not as funny as i think it was trying to be

[Andrew Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew there was a reason why the videos of Juno Birch playing The Sims unnerve me so much.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

camp doris lessing

[Nairne Holtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This queer cult classic teeters between ridiculous and brilliant. It’s a lesbian love story between the ultimate outsiders: Sterling O’Blivion, a beautiful seven-hundred-year-old vampire who despairs over the shallowness of 1980s Today People, and Benaroya, an anthropologist alien, who is inhabiting the body of Virginia Woolf during her mission to make ‘Earthies’ psychically evolve. The kooky plot, which includes a scheme to sell the sperm of famous men and has fight scenes that involve mermaids, careens all over the place. For that reason, I recommend readers not focus on the plot and enjoy the book for what it is—a trippy gender and genre bending spoof. Scott mixes motifs from Westerns, sci fi, noir, and lesbian pulps to create a satire that misses the mark as a big picture critique of human society but kills it when she zeroes in on smaller targets, such as genre fiction itself, insurance companies, and familial homophobia. Witness the opening scene when Sterling O’Blivion is kicked out of the family estate for the little matter of her vampirism.
“ ‘Get out!’ Papa thundered.
‘And go where? And do what?’ I howled.
“You are not our daughter. You are a limb of Satan,” screamed my fat, pretty little mama.
…Snow had begun to fly, and torches blazed, but my parents were adamant about not letting me back into the house. …Something was tragically wrong with me; something that terrified others, but was minor, natural, and even quite pleasant as far as I was concerned.’
While I, Vampire, doesn’t quite live up to its fun premise, it is a deliciously weird read.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a little bit better than its prequel. Sterling O'Blivion, who has the most ridiculous and awesome name I've encountered since Hiro Protagonist, is actually a pretty fun character and I enjoyed riding around in her head. Had the novel been entirely about her adventures as a 700-year-old vampire dealing with the crazy nonsense that is the 80s, I probably would have loved it - and I did indeed adore the first few chapters. However, the "good" space aliens from the previous book rear their ugly heads and send the plot off into a series of frustrating episodes and utter rubbish. The Sperm of the Month Club idea could be a fun basis for a story, and yet it's just kinda thrown in, played with, and forgotten. Further, much of the middle of the book is spent outside of Sterling's head on random stuff I didn't much care about. And the end is forced into a actionish climax that doesn't really work to resolve things very well. On the plus side, the novel does discuss issues of gender and sexuality fairly explicitly, and there were a lot of points I like. It was nice to see a fairly nuanced and considered discussion of these issues in an 80s sci-fi novel. I just wish that the book had been about Sterling, as the title promises, rather than a mishmash of random crap. Over all, for the sake of the thesis I'm working on I'm glad I read this, but otherwise there are much better vampire novels out there.

[M Bonet · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting premise with undertones of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett--a vampire meets an alien (who takes on the shape of Virginia Wolf) and then finds herself conscripted into an interstellar plan to save mankind from its own evil nature--the story unfortunately veers into wackiness without purpose, loses the plot half-way through, and winds up reading like some odd self-help book about shaping your own reality.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would actually like to give this book 3.5 stars. Science fiction needs a smart reader. I loved how it was written. Scott's language is super fun, but I wanted the book to go somewhere else with the plot. I was a little disappointed in the end, but that may just be me not getting it. There was a lot of talk about the law of attraction in this book. I liked the message.

[Fishface · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to describe this book because there are so many wonderful things going on in it at once. A vampire alive since medieval times, teaching dance in Chicago, falls in love with a fish from another planet. That's just for starters. Oh, just read it!

[John collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just picked it up at a thrift store because it looked funny. I made it to the end. Weird enough to keep me reading. Back cover blurb by Theodore Sturgeon!

[Esther_a · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when I was eleven or so, and I mainly remember it as my introduction to the concept of homosexuality.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I, Vampire (The Women's Press Science Fiction Series) by Jody Scott (1986)