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How Did Anne Rice Describe the Origin of Vampires?

Anne Rice was an American author who rose to fame for her novel series, The Vampire Chronicles. Her series started with the Interview with the Vampire, which was published in 1976. The book eventually became a feature film that starred big names like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Kirsten Dunst. But did you know that vampires had a different origin story, according to her? 

In her most recent book, Anne Rice changed the origin story of vampires. She wrote that vampires weren’t actually supernatural creatures but instead were created by aliens in the lost city of Atlantis.

Who was Anne Rice?

Howard Allen O’Brien was born on October 4, 1941, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was named after her father, Howard O’Brien, but hated the name so much she changed it to Anne in the first grade. Rice was raised Catholic and attended a parochial school before moving to Richardson, Texas, in 1958. She became an atheist when her mother died due to complications of alcoholism.

Rice attended the Texas Women’s University and North Texas State College. After marrying  Stan Rice, they moved to California, where she earned her degree in Political Science at San Francisco College. She also earned her master’s degree in Creative Writing from the same college. Throughout her life, Rice had different jobs across different industries. She worked as a waitress, a cook, and even an insurance claims examiner before she finally pursued a career in writing. (Source: Biography)

Rice focused on erotica and vampire novels. Her debut novel Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976. It was an expansion of a short story she wrote previously. It eventually became a bestseller and built a cult following.

After a few years, Rice wrote the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, focusing on the characters in the Sleeping Beauty universe but with a twist of erotica. She wrote the trilogy under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure.

After completing the trilogy, Rice returned to the gothic horror genre with follow-up novels connected to Interview with the vampire. She published books such as The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, and The Vampire Armand.

While writing about vampires, Rice also began writing about witches, creating the series Lives of the Mayfair Witches, with titles The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos. And by the mid-2000s, Rice explored writing about religion after returning to Christianity. The famed author published Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt in 2005, followed by Angel Time in 2009 and Of Love and Evil in 2010.

Rice remained a notable author, winning the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, an award given to living artists for superior achievement in an entire career which has substantially influenced the horror genre. Rice passed away relatively recently due to complications of a stroke. (Source: The Famous People)

Were Vampires Creations of Aliens?

In 2016, Rice set out to change how her audience viewed vampires. Rice wrote the Vampire Chronicles’ origins to the ancient bloodthirsty spirit Amel, whose spirit lived in the Egyptian queen Akasha’s blood before Lestat claimed her power. Their origin was described as that vampires were born out of other vampires turning them with their bite. But in her novel Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Rice adds an unusual twist to the vampires’ origin story.


In her 2016 novel, Rice reveals that Amel wasn’t originally a spirit. He was the founder of Atlantis, a coastal city with unbelievably advanced technology created 10,000 years ago. Rice writes that Amel was abducted by aliens called Bravennans, modified, and sent to Earth. But Amel soon rebels against the aliens, resulting in the destruction of Atlantis and him suddenly transforming into a spirit, bonding with Atlantean technology and becoming the essence of what we know as a vampire. (Source: Gizmodo)

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