Physicists get all the fun. Jennifer Ouellette has announced a book I’ll definitely be buying: The Physics of the Buffyverse(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). How could I not? It will go on the shelf next to my copy of The Physics of Superheroes(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll).
So, where’s The Biology of Superheroes? The creators of superheroes trample all over the principles of physiology and genetics as thoroughly as they do those of physics, so there’s got to be a story in there somewhere.
You’ve obviously never read “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”. It takes care of some of Superman’s biology.
Obviously, a vampire is an infective extrusion from a parallel dimension into our own, the connection being made by water molecules. Killing a vampire disrupts the interdimensional bonds, causing all of the water in the vampire’s body to abruptly snap into the parallel universe.
Hence, stake+vamp=dust.
QED
I think I too will have to get the book. It looks like way too much fun.
MoSWoK.
Owlmirror: and obviously the reason it has to be a wooden stake is because the parasitic extrusion gets fatally confused about which bits of organic matter are actually part of it.
Now we just need to figure out garlic, sunlight and holy stuff. Oh, and the mirror thing.
We think too much.
I don’t know how you get the links in for books, but if there’s any way to add amazon.ca and/or chapters.ca, I would have much appreciation.
Write such a book. At least contact a publisher and see if they’re interested. You may think I’m jesting, but that’s what Rob DeSalle (of AMNH) did and he got a nice advance (& probably good royalties) for “The Science of Jurassic Park” (which, not surprisingly for Rob, was mostly biology).
And I suppose your interest in Buffy’s, uh, “biology” is purely academic?
Oh, and speaking of “Science of”, there’s The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.
Note especially… SESSION 4: Terrors of the Deep
Does anyone really buy those books? I’m a completely ridiculous geek, but I can’t even look at those books in the bookstores, ’cause I know that superheroes exist in a physics-less universe…
Is there anything really useful in books like that?
Yes, I second the suggestion. Write a query and find an agent. Then do the book.
There are two biology of Star Trek books. They just came in for me yesterday. :-)
I want the biology of the Gilmore Girls universe explained to me. They eat, and eat, and eat. Fries, burgers, pie, danishes, takeout, pizza, and more fries. They sneer at people who exercise as non-human. And they are rail-thin. Please, please explain that for me.
Yes! Physics of Superheroes uses the freaky errors in comic books to illustrate actual, good physics — it’s not like it’s endorsing heat rays coming out of eyeballs or using super-speed to reverse time.
I’m a big fan of PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES, and personally would buy a PZ Myers book on the biology of *any* pop culture tie-in. Incidentally, I did bring in some biology in Chapter 1 of the Buffyverse book — because it’s actually pretty fascinating stuff — but I barely scratched the surface. It’d take a real biologist to do the topic justice…
And what about the biology of pirates? :)
I want to know about the shape-changing teeth bit. Do vampires have retractable teeth-within-teeth that they stick out when they go all growly?
There’s The Physics of Star Trek, too.
Wolfa, for Amazon at least, try clicking the link, then changing the first part of the URL to http://www.amazon.co.ca while keeping the rest of the link as is.
Beg pardon, that should be amazon.ca
No, no, no!
Everybody know that vampires are a lost subspecies of human being, soon to be resurrected to by modern pharmaceuticals to run the world corporations, the Republican Party and the Roman Catholic Church.
Remember kid: no matter how unscientific comic books are, they will always be light years ahead of the Discovery Institute.
I’m not sure, but couldn’t the six million dollar man be a story of biological superheroes?
I mean, Steve Austin, a cyborg.. That’s the stuff of biological wet dreams!
Clearly, no one self-markets like the philosophers, who have put out “The Philosophy of ____” for almost any pop culture reference you can think of. I personally own or have read the Matrix and Philosophy (both volumes), Star Trek and Philosophy, Buffy and Philosophy, The Simpsons and Philosophy, Harry Potter and Philosophy, “Aristotle would have loved Oprah”, and the Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.
(Full disclosure: BA in philosophy)
But I agree, Dr. M, that you would make an excellent addition to the corpus of the science of pop-culture books.
Y’all need to check out this paper on Vampire Population Ecology.
There are some other such books out there:
Lawrence M. Krauss: The Physics of Star Trek
Athena Andreadis: To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek
Jeanne Cavelos: The Science of Star Wars
Jack Cohen is a biologist who has written about Discworld, and
Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life
(the paperback was retitled “What Does a Martian Look Like?: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life”). So you’ll have competition. But someone thinks there’s a market out there.
Bob
P.S. The UK Amazon link is just to be contrary.
Don’t forget this paper that was published, “The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.”
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/
You might want to check this article on the Biology of B movie monsters
(http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/) not too much on the internals but just on their scale.
Speaking of Jack Cohen and Discworld, I can really recommend the “Science of Discworld” books. They cover all the usual bizarre objections that Creationist come out with. I find myself constantly referring back to the examples they use.
The vampire population ecology paper is interesting. However, it seems from each season of Buffy that she stakes/burns/beheads/otherwise dusts dozens of vamps a year.
Garlic must have a component whose chemical bonds can disrupt vampire metabolism. Some of those funky sulpher compounds can do very strange things in just ordinary human beings; a reasonable inference is that the weird mix of earthly and extradimensional in a vampire’s body is vulnerable to certain chemicals. A useful testing regime would be to capture some vampires and paint their skin with purified concentrations of these chemicals (and various mixtures of these chemicals) to find out what’s going on. It could be quite useful in controlling the vampire problem if it turns out that a 70/30 mix of allicin and allyl methyl sulfide will act as a universal solvent on vampires, for example.
Sunlight and the mirror issue are no doubt related effects resulting from photons interacting with the interdimensional nexuses. Vampires therefore don’t show up in mirrors because of a quantum entanglement polarization resulting in the photons being induced to move as though they were phase-conjugated after interacting with the vampire body. However, a sufficiently high flux of high-energy photons will overload the nexuses, causing spontaneous dimensional failure+heat.
Hence, sunlight+vamp=burnination.
And finally, regarding holy stuff, well, you may have read some theologians who state that the divine presence is an invasion of the natural world by the supernatural world. This obviously implies that gods and angels, like devils and demons, are the result of interdimensional intrusion, but perhaps from a different dimension. Holy items are therefore also loci of interdimensional intrusion. Because they are of a different polarity or vibrational rate from the vampire interdimensional intrusion, when they come into contact with the vampire some of the vampire’s water-bound dimensional intrusions collapse (leaving dust), and some interact in a way that yields heat energy.
Hence, vamp+cross(or holy water)=also burnination
One possible implication is that a vamp could be killed by blessing the water within it. There may be time issues involved which would render this less useful than a stake to the heart, but I’m sure that this could be easily tested with a captured vampire and a cooperative priest or shaman.
Another possible implication of this is that if an angel were to come into full contact with a vampire, the vamp (or angel, or both) would explode with an earth-shattering kaboom. This too ought to be verified with some field tests, and has some exciting possible uses.
Therefore we are mad!
The vampire population ecology paper is interesting. However, it seems from each season of Buffy that she stakes/burns/beheads/otherwise dusts dozens of vamps a year.
Something like 155,000 people die every day; if only 1/10 of 1 percent become vampires, Buffy and crew would need to kill 155/day to keep up.
And I think we can all see that 1/10 of 1 percent is a low figure for vampirization.
Well, it isn’t quite the Biology of Superheros, but how about the Biology of B-Movie Monsters. http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/
Yeah, but 155,000 people don’t die every day in Sunnydale.
Now, why do vampires require blood to live? I guess their digestive systems can’t tear up the proteins in muscle meat, but they require a high-iron low-fiber diet.
I wonder what Ouelette has to say about the possibilities of a universe with nothing but shrimp? That always piqued my curiousity…
A universe with nothing but shrimp, eh? I think I know where to find a portal to there! Maison Kam Fung, one of the best Chinese restaurants in Montreal, at least for the dim sum. So many shrimp today it looked liked they had a portal to that shrimp-verse. Also lots of cephalopods, so maybe somewhere else …
For all your vampire and zombie biology and behavioral needs, you only have to investigate the FVZA (Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency).
Another promising field of study is the relationship between vampires and optical fibre. Clearly, vampires can be seen through looking glasses – otherwise Van Helsing would not be able to see Count Dracula. But they cannot be seen through mirrors. But, what if we were to construct a device out of optical fibre that would bend the light from a vampire by pi?
Clearly, this is not reflection – but is it genuine refraction?
Surely the fibre optics community would be eternally endebted to whomever solved this riddle :-)
– JS