Last month we focused on a huge Mega-Trend we've been living in for a while -- Trendlessness.

During the last 3 years or so, we have seen the death and re-emergence of the Vampire Novel. At every convention I attend, I seem to be assigned to do a Vampire panel. In the e-publishing world, there is a veritable torrent of Vampire Romance novels being published, and a growing number of Vampire novels that include almost every other genre, from the traditional venue of the Vampire, Horror, all the way to The Vampire As Good Guy, like Saint Germain.

Now that would seem to constitute a very real trend -- the movement of The Vampire from paper to e-publishing. Still, we have the perennial favorite Vampires continuing on paper -- the Anne Rice Horror vampire saga flourishes, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's more strictly Historical Vampire novels are still selling well.

Come Twilight is another entry in the Saint Germain legends. We are finally made privy to the making and fate of the Vampire mentioned only in passing in other novels, Csimenae. This is a woman Saint Germain made into a Vampire so she could survive to protect her son, the rightful heir to the leadership of a small town in what we know as Spain today -- at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the year 620 AD.

In that era, the Moslems were invading Spain, and the Christians were struggling to keep a toehold. The countries we know as Spain and Portugal did not exist. There were colonies of other ethnicities vying for possession of the peninsula. It was a time of change -- very like what we live in today if you consider the online world to be a peninsula.

Csimenae is the one vampire Saint Germain has made that he survived to regret making. Other children of his have met fates that tore his unbeating heart to shreds, and we have wept at his sadness as he could not. This one turned into the kind of Evil Vampire we read about only in Horror novels. And Saint Germain knows he has failed.

When he made Csimenae, he had not tasted her blood, and did not during the making. As a result, she has no connection with her Native Earth, and thus cannot use the trick of filling her shoes with it to walk in the sun. And she may never learn to feed on love. She seeks only blood, lots of it.

Remember that Saint Germain can be considered to have been made a Vampire as part of an Initiatory Ritual in Sacred Space. He came to maturity as a Vampire in an Egyptian Temple as a Priest. He has never passed that on, but with Csimenae he has given less than ever of the spiritual aspect of his Immortality.

So how can a growing popularity of vampire novels be part of a trend of Trendlessness?

Have you noticed that the longer running Vampire Series have a vampire hero (or 2) who don't change? Yet the rule for the writing of good fiction is that the Hero must grow and change as a result of the events of the story -- or it's not a story at all.

Yarbro's series is so successful because Saint Germain is the same person, no matter what millennium we find him in. He doesn't really learn. He acquires skills and facts, but he doesn't grow spiritually. He keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over (although Csimenae is unique among the mistakes we've seen!).

Of course, he also repeats his successes over and over and thus survives where other Vampires have perished.

By writing of an unchanging Hero throughout the millennia, Yarbro has focused on how it is that humanity and civilization never really change, even as her Hero never really changes. "The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same" is a Theme that always works.

I think Yarbro has picked up the underlying trend of Trendlessness and used it as a fine Mirror for us to Observe ourselves in.

Last month, we discussed Edgar Pangborn's International Fantasy Award Winning novel, A Mirror For Observers. Find copies on www.simegen.com/marketplace/keybooks/  on the sf/f page.

That novel was published in 1954 -- and I feel that Yarbro's work portrays Saint Germain in a very similar light to Pangborn's Martian Observer Elmis, the hero of Mirror.

Consider Saint Germain in conjunction with the new Gene Roddenberry TV Series, Andromeda.

Like the Darkover Saga continuing after the author's death, we have a TV series being continued based on notes and unproduced work by the Creator of Star Trek.

Ostensibly, Andromeda is not Star Trek or even in the Star Trek Universe.

But look closer, and contrast-compare it to Babylon 5. I've been watching the Sci-Fi Channel reruns of Babylon 5 a few times a week while doing other things. And I try not to miss Andromeda. I got hooked on the first episode but lately I've begun to find even greater depths in this show. And it fits perfectly into the trend of Trendlessness, so it might be successful.

The one thing that all the early Star Trek fans gnashed their creative teeth over with that show was the Roddenberry insistence on the anthology format. That is the TV show format that allows shows to be aired in random order and make as much sense to someone seeing their first episode as to a veteran watcher. In other words, at the End of each episode, the writer must return the Situation to what it was at the Beginning.

All sf/f was relegated to that format during the 1960's and through the 1980's. But with Dallas and then Babylon 5 we saw what sf/f can do with a story-arc (or soap-opera) approach to plotting.

The Roddenberry franchise held out until 2000, but Andromeda is a story-arc show. And that gives it the power to tell stories as complex and psychologically deep as any novel.

The premise of Andromeda is that an Idealized peaceful interstellar civilization crumbles into Interstellar War. During that war, one of the most powerful warships is caught at the Event Horizon of a Black Hole, and three hundred years later is pulled out by a salvage crew who finds only the Captain has survived.

The ragtag crew of the salvage vessel joins the Captain's campaign to restore the old Civilization to its Glory. Already we have seen two time-travel stories that bring the Past Civilization into direct action with the Present, so this is a story told in two major time-zones, very like a Vampire Novel.

And we see a major theme emerging, demonstrating time and again that The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same. Human or Alien Nature remains unchanged by 300 years of fragmentation and interstellar skirmishing.

In other words, the Greatest of all Mega-Trends is that Human Nature Does Not Change.

Now, is this just a literary device to try to make the story comprehensible to readers/viewers?

Well, it is a theme that few readers would disbelieve, so if you have an incredible story to tell, using this theme helps readers believe at least some of it.

But what if it's true? What if Human Nature can't change -- which could be why the Public is now so fascinated with Vampires? What would that mean to those on the Initiatory Path? On the other hand, what if Human Nature can change, but we just haven't done it yet?

What if this slackwater Millennium Trendlessness is actually the first opportunity in centuries for invoked spiritual energy to manifest without being swamped out by some vast megatrend driving the Group Mind?

Will we see that invocation of spiritual energy first in our Fiction? Can fiction actually affect the direction of things now that things aren't moving so fast and all in one direction? Does the Internet and the E-world make a difference?

Star Trek portrayed a future in which Human Nature would change. Pangborn showed us aliens who had staked the survival of their species on Humanity's ability to change. The sf/f-E-Romance field is showing us people in love using the power of love to change whole worlds.

Seven Days did an episode where Frank Parker becomes the Pope right after the Pope has wished forlornly to "push just one pebble all the way up that mountain" (i.e. to save one soul completely). And we see the Pope save that soul.

Have you read any e-books? If not, at least watch Andromeda. I think we'll have much to learn from that series, especially when considered in light of A Mirror For Observers.