Customer Reviews

The Space Vampires

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Gaining cult status fame from the film based upon it (Lifeforce), Space Vampires goes far beyond the screenplay giving rhyme and reason to the alien lifestealers and their actions.

The surviving astronaut is a far more intelligent character and makes a good psychologist and detective - trying to understand what has befallen him and what is yet to follow. He travels Europe researching vampiric legend, is tempted by the heady thrill of sadomastic domination, and eventually confronts an extraterrestrial being with luciferian traits. Like fallen angels, the energy vampires seek to regain their former state of glory, a classic case of the end justifying the means.

The book's ending is far more satisfying than the film's despite the latter's fun Hammer-horror feel, great Mancini score, and Mathilda May's glorious body. Enough to stir even the most space-frozen soulstealer to acts of volcanic passion...

Loved the campy horror movie from the 80s...who knew it was based on such a dark and well written story. This is a surprising little gem of a novel...quickly read and "absorbed" if you will...gives a much more believable backstory that the movie ever attempted. A nice find after all these years...give it a try and be pleasantly rewarded...

In the middle 21st century, when man can reach the edge of the solar system in a few months, a group of astronauts discovers a huge spaceship - a derelict. Led by Olaf Carlsen, the astronauts brave the ship's cavernous interior and discover that it contains human beings who appear to be dead. Taking several back to Earth, Carlsen soon realizes that the humans are actually alien vampires - beings who suck the life forces out of their victims, and even possess some humans as well. Teaming up with Dr. Hans Fallada, a criminologist with an interest in the science behind vampires, Carlsen hunts an escaped vampire across England, struggling to uncover the truth before the rest of their kind can be brought to Earth by oblivious atronauts.

I've always wondered what sort of fame "Vampires" if it hadn't been adapted by Hollywood for the horrible movie "Lifeforce". I think people flock to the book because they're fascinated by the idea of life-sucking aliens, and figure that the book must be way-better than the movie. Viewers must have thought that Tobe Hooper simply junked a perfectly acceptable plotline that would have worked just fine on the screen. The problem is that the book is as weak as the movie, just for different reasons - many of them are painfully obvious. The writing is pedestrian, and some plot points are just clumsy. (The alien vampire is brought to life by an unwitting reporter brought to the spacelab by Carlsen; the reporter is the son of an old romantic interest - a plot point that seems unnecessary and is never explored again. It's a minor problem, but typical of the story.) Worse, Wilson goes out of his way to take the edge out of his edgy premise. Vampires? Perfectly rational - if aberrant - outgrowths of natural phenomenon. Contemporary science of the era of the story can not only detect the presence of life forces, but quantify it as well. Fallada and Carlsen are surprisingly calm in light of the threat of space vampires. Once the vampires escape their earthly confinement, Fallada & Carlsen jet off to Europe in search of a reclusive expert on vampires - the epidemic of life-sucking zombies not only fails to materialize, but the threat remains missing as well. When Carlsen finally corners the space vampire, he gets easy answers to his questions about the origin of the space vampires - there's no emotion, no tension. It's almost as if the book had been robbed of its own life forces.

No one would know about this book if it wasn't for the 80's scif-fi horror flick 'Lifeforce' (starring the very beautiful and very naked Mathilda May) which was based on this novel.

As always, the book is better than the movie, and if you are a big fan of the movie, as I am, (most straight men should be), then I highly recommend the book it was based off of. The most intriguing element for me is the scientific explanation of vampires, and examples of vampiristic creatures such as the moray eel. The origins of these creatures are not explored at any great length, but the detailed scientific elements make the story believable. The explanations of vampires in this book remind me of H.G. Wells' 'First Men in the Moon' when Cavort is explaining the scientific basis of cavorite to Mr. Bedford.

This is also a short book and an easy read. There's nothing too groundbreaking here, so I won't give it five stars, but it is still an enjoyable read. Anytime I meet people who are fans of science-fiction, I always point them to 'Space Vampires'.

In the year 2100, astronauts lead by Captain Carlsen investigate a bizarre spaceship that resembles a European castle of old stories while exploring space. They look inside to find that it's like something out of a Dracula story even with weird paintings made from a space substance, Carlsen and the crew discover large dead Octupus-like creatures and lots of semi-nude humanoid beings preserved in special coffins as they decide to bring a few which is two females and one male back to Earth in London for research. However they do wake up and escape as they are vampire-like alien beings that drain energy out of humans to get power including inhabiting the bodies of sex-murder victims including possibly the Prime-Minister, a professor of criminology and real-life vampirism known as Falleda with a inspector named Caine join up with Carlsen on trying to find out a way of how to destroy these intergalactic soul-suckers or else humanity might be contamined.

Intelligent and lovecraftian work of Sci-fi and horror fiction melded nicely by acclaimed author Colison Wilson. This one gives readers a unique and very refreshing approach on the vampire legend as these creatures have visited Earth before to create maps for humans mainly the greeks and even create the legends of vampires, succubi and other monsters of lore. But the core of this novel is that vampirism does exist as we are all vampires who drain energy from other things and the creatures here aren't like your father's vampires told in Bram Stoker or Ann Rice, these creatures have no fangs and suck only energy/youth/lifeforces out of beings instead.

It's a story about discover and what if there was other life out there beyond our world, it is also a philosphil tale about what could be evolution's true link. The 1985 movie "Lifeforce" was excellent but very loose adaptation that goes more for sex, gore, zombies and that sort of thing but not close as this book though.

If your looking for a very original and refreshing story about aliens and vampirism, i recommend reading this book.

I liked this book! Interesting characters, strong ideas and a bit of sex.

The one thing that really bugged me was the author's extremely repetitive usage of the form "__ said:" (Carlsen said:, Fallada said:, etc. I wish I could search the book to see how many said:s there are!)

Still, it is a lot more interesting than the movie Lifeforce, which I also like.

Time to have a whiskey!

This is one of the books which I read countless times as a child between the ages of 8 and 12. I have no idea where I picked it up or what I found so fascinating about it. It shares its special category with several of the more normal children's books as well as other equally puzzling obsessions like Legend of the Seventh Virgin by Victoria Holt.

I no longer own my original copy of the book-- probably got rid of it in a fit of shame somewhere around college, and so I was delighted when I saw a copy second hand. Even so many years later, I could probably write the opening chapters from memory-- up to and including the point where the aliens are brought back to earth. The book, read as an adult, is an odd pastiche of many things-- space-faring vampires, weird science that points to latent vampirism in all life forms, an explicit sex-vampirism link, and some half interesting notions of justice and rehabilitation. The first 70 or so pages are genuinely gripping and still pretty interesting. Unfortunately, after they meet Fallada and once the characters start exploring his backstory for more than illumination of the nature of the aliens, the pace of the book starts to drop. By the time that they end up at the Sekret Lair of Count Geijerstam and his benevolent vampirism, the book is fully mired in a soft porn S&M philosophy mush pie. Midway through the book it seems clear to me that Wilson was much more interested in his ideas than he was interested in his plot or, possibly, his readers.

Wilson himself is an interesting character, as a little bit of research proves. He was one of writers most identified with the Angry Young Men and he started his career doing philosophy/lit crit with a special interest in the role of the outsider. (Somewhere out there, I'm sure that there is someone smarter than me who is horrified that I heard about Wilson as a result of reading The Space Vampires, but there you go.) After that point, he apparently got more and more involved in mysticism and different states of consciousness and started with the first footsteps on the path that would lead him towards writing sexy supernatural supermarket potboilers.

There is apparently also a film based on this book, which I can (somewhat thankfully) say that I haven't seen. Amusingly, on a Colin Wilson fan website, there is also an outline for Space Vampires 2 which gives you some idea what the problem was in the second half of the first installment. (I'll add the link in the comments to this post.)

I'm not sure that I could recommend this to someone who doesn't have the same shared history with the novel. It might make an interesting digression for a reader interested in the vampire in all its forms. Probably one of the best things about the book is the meaning that Wilson attempts to beat out of the myth. It probably also has some reasonable kitsch value, if you like that sort of thing.

I just finished reading this novel and I was mostly disappointed; the movie was a vast improvement over this book. The characters were under-developed and bland, the so-called vampires were never really menacing - the Earth was never in any real danger. For what it was and the time frame from which it came - it was good but would never have adapted for the big screen as it was. Many called the book "sexy" - yes, in a Victorian, chaste sort of way.

I just could not "feel" for any of the characters - live or die - who cared?

If you are considering buying this book - remember, it is not a novelization of the movie but an almost completely different story.

Oh man, written in the 70's, this was pure crap! The whole story is centered around Freudianism, masochim/sadism and some mumbojumbo about "lifeforce". Why anyone would consider this entertaining is beyond me!

The other reviews can tell you about the so-called plot...

Although Wilson is certainly capable of great writing, this is not an example of his best work. Written primarily to entertain the masses. A good chuckle, if nothing else.