It’s nearly 2 a.m., and I’m super tired but on a sugar high, so I’m going to try to actually science up these last couple books
Firstly, spoilers for Prince Lestat as well as Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis are rampant in this post.
So, since science has been dragged into these books focusing on the paranormal, I have taken it upon my highly unqualified bio undergrad student’s ass to maybe explain some of the weird pseudoscience that has been introduced, and complain about some inaccuracies presented. If you see a mistake, please let me know, and please read this with a grain of salt, I’m not super qualified.
Under the “Read More” because this got really long really fast.
Where to start.
Let’s begin with clone/son thing, since that was introduced first. At various points, Viktor is referred to as a clone and sometimes as a son. These are two different things. Clones are organisms which have a genetic code that is a complete copy of the original organism (often actual cloned organisms are referred to as daughter cells and mother cells, so there’s some food for thought too). Sons (and daughters, so let’s just go with offspring) are organisms that share only half of their genetic code with their parent. The two also come from different types of cells, those who undergo mitotic division (clone), and those who undergo meiotic division (offspring). These are, respectively, your everyday cells that do all your body needs, and your sexy-time cells. So you can see why I might be confused over this. Now, you may be saying “The term ‘son’ is used for simplicity!” But here’s where it gets confusing again. It’s implied somewhere (I can’t remember page numbers, or even if it was in PL or PLROA) that Viktor is a result of the “specimen” collected from the sexy-times, and if this is the case, then why is the term “clone” used?
Now, on to the really weird stuff.
My biggest problem with this may seem small to others, but I spent two years of my life studying the earth sciences, like the geologic time scale and stuff, and I do not care for the small little inaccuracies that could have been solved with a simple google search. I’m talking about when Kapetria mentions the ocean level rising as the ice age began. Those two things are exact opposites. This concept is also in the news a lot because of global warming. The Replimoids also arrived right at the end of the major ice age, not at the beginning.
But enough complaints, now it’s time for my theories on the unexplained parts of the science. I will admit that these are a bit of a stretch.
I’m starting out discussing “luracastria” and what it could possibly constitute of. It’s described as being a polymer (I think, I haven’t read this book in 7 months), but that’s pretty vague since polymers make up many many things, such as proteins, carbohydrates, and plastics. I think it has something to do with chloroplasts due to chloroplasts being organelles responsible for converting energy from the sun into energy used by living beings, i.e. plants. Chloroplasts can also be involved in the production of amino acids, which can be one of the building blocks of polymers. I think some sort of specialized chloroplast is responsible for it all, and I think that with the creation of vampires, this specialty organelle was almost corrupted and not recreated properly. This organelle would create amino acids that would form specialized proteins, perhaps accounting for various vampiric abilities. But this is me really reaching for possible explanations. Since the organelle was corrupted it can not handle intense exposure to the sun, resulting in an excess of energy causing an intense release of said energy in the form of heat.
That’s all I have for now since I know nothing about brain surgery and the idea of the attachment of the spirit to the physical body is currently lacking in scientific study.
Headcanon: Movies and pictures appear to the vampires like human sight used to. After all, the cameras can only display the signal they receive. This creates a sweet nostalgia for them.
