Kim Newman's Anno Dracula (Novel) – Crossover Fiction in the Garb of an Alternate History

Abstract

Kim Newman’s approach towards creating a world of parallel incidents and histories in his 1992 novel – “Anno Dracula,” the first in its series – by the same name, is an interesting case of a Crossover fiction, creating a rather remarkable junction for characters from the real and fictional realms.Newman’s treatment of a league of the most popular form of mythical creatures studied across the literary world – Vampires, in their interactions with “normal” human beings who chose not to transform into the former type, creates a zone of curiosity among the readers regarding the clash of these two parallel universes which have remained distinctly separate until now. With a generous abundance of real and fictional characters in the plot, the author carves a new dimension out of completely unknown territories, where the deadly “Jack the Ripper” of the late nineteenth century encounters the spy from “Diogenes Club” (introduced by Arthur Conan Doyle in his “Sherlock Holmes” crime fiction series) who tracks him down through his endeavours of “ripping” apart “Vampire prostitutes.”Whether it is Count Dracula’s marriage to Queen Victoria, or Dr. Jekyll and Inspector G. Lestrade assisting the investigations of the mysterious “Jack the Ripper,” the brilliance shown by Newman as he describes incidents which draw heavily from the world around, and collide them with people, human beings, and some times, non-human entities from tales and story books, opens up innumerable possibilities of what could have happened if a parallel world existed, or may just exist, without our knowledge. When true incidents with genuine political, personal or other such motives are expressed in the words of characters that live within the confine of pages of fiction and history, the perspective and outlook towards the reality around us changes considerably, to allow many such avenues to open up, and be explored, that very few may have imagined plausible.