Happy Birthday, Bram Stoker!

What would Irish writer, Bram Stoker, who was better recognized in his day for administration and assistant work in and around the theater, think of where the mythologized Vampire has come to in modern popular culture?

Google has recognized his role and contribution today with a Google Doodle acknowledging the 165th year since his birth. But Stoker never saw the first film adaptation of his work, Nosferatu (1922). And since then along with other adaptations we have seen the vampire evolve on screen and in texts in modern times from The Hunger to Buffy to True Blood and into the Twilight Saga. There is no way for a geek to avoid engaging with either Stoker's protagonist Count Dracula or any number of versions there of.

I have fond roleplaying memories of Ravenloft when our whole party found themselves, bodiless and stuck with their heads in the jars in the tower of some crazed Vampire who we never actually managed to dispose of (being just heads in jars didn't help).

So, happy birthday to you, Stoker. For your Dracula and the way the idea of him has captured the imagination of so many in the world of gothic pop culture.