The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson
Mar. 28th, 2010 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koilungfish4/3/10 - 13/3/10 - Ill
14/3/10 - 2390 words on Rick-Rack
15/3/10 - Ill
16/3/10 - 2458 words on Rick-Rack
17/3/10 - 747 words on Rick-Rack
18/3/10 - 1223 words on Rick-Rack
19/3/10 - 21/3/10 - Ill
22/3/10 - 28/3/10 - Holiday
Title - The Space Vampires
Author - Colin Wilson
ISBN - 0-586-04333-0
Given that I had just handed said bee a copy of Daemon World, I suppose I deserved what I got.
The plot could be described as concerning a spaceship captain who finds a derelict alien spacecraft containing a number of human-looking aliens in suspended animation, which turn out to be less than suspended. Some of them escape and start eating people. Sort of. Except that this covers less than a third of the book. A large chunk of the first half is an insipid police procedural with minor pretensions to science fiction. An even bigger chunk of the book is spent lolling around by a lake in Sweden, talking about bizarre sex energy theories and ripping off M. R. James.
There is no plane upon which this is a good book. The spelling and grammar are without noticeable errors, but that is the standard for a published novel, not a sign of quality. The editing is less than stellar. At one point, during a discussion loosely involving sex, the following sentence appears:
At another point in the book, Carlsen is given orders by a mission controller who is apparently taking orders from the "Prime Minister of the United European States". Neither this person nor this political body are ever mentioned again. Carlsen henceforth answers to the Space Minister who answers to the British Prime Minister. Apparently when the book switched from SF to police procedural, Carlsen switched jobs. This matter is exacerbated at the end, when the British Prime Minister decides to hush up the whole matter, despite the alien spacecraft still hanging in orbit and the odd references throughout the book to the possibility of the Americans or someone else getting hold of it, and that he is obviously not the highest authority around. Apparently the rest of the world doesn't matter.
The continuity is likewise shot to pieces. At one point a character is mentioned as being in New York when there is no reason for him to be there, nor is there any way he could have gotten there and back in the time given. Nor is any explanation given for how he ends up in England the next day, and the whole thing is never talked about.
The aliens spend a good portion of the book body-swapping off-screen. Exactly how who ended up in which body, and how and why which bystander ended up dead, makes little to no sense. At one point someone seems to have died for no good reason. The whole thing is beyond confusing.
The jewel in the continuity error crown is the dates. On page 3 it is mentioned that the discovery of the Stranger is the "greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century" ... yet on page 4 there is reference to the "Ganymede disaster of 2113". This could be considered a minor mistake by Mr Wilson except that on page 83 Geijerstam is mentioned as having been born in 1987 and now being aged 93, thereby setting events in 2080 ... which disagrees with the epilogue which specifically dates the events to 2076. Apparently neither Mr Wilson nor his editor were any good at mathematics.
The characters are not worth mentioning. There are a large number of them, some spending more time on-screen that others. The reader spends all their time looking through the eyes of Captain Olaf Carlsen, a man with no apparent day job nor responsibilities. He zips around London and Sweden accompanied by another character or two. What can one say about them? There are only three characters in the book - Man, Woman and Alien. Most of them are Men. All of them are Caucasian. None of them are interesting. The Men are distinguished largely by their hair and noses. The Women are blank screens onto which Mr Wilson projects his views on sex. The Aliens are utterly indistinguishable from one another.
The plot, as mentioned, cannot decide which genre it is. We start with a bit of space exploration, which goes down the tubes rapidly as massive unprofessionalism strikes. Invasive, destructive exploration of the alien derelict is made without any form of testing or preparation beforehand. Aliens whose vital states are unknown are exposed to hard vacuum and, for some reason, suffer no ill effects despite it later being revealed they are inhabiting normal human bodies.
The unprofessionalism continues when Carlsen, for no good reason, casually brings a journalist into the government building where the aliens are stored. The security guard allows this for no good reason. Carlsen then takes the journalist into the laboratory where the aliens are kept - staffed by precisely one person, who sees no problem with any of this - and allows the journalist to examine the aliens up close and personally.
This cannot be understated. Carlsen and a government researcher stand by as an unauthorised journalist not only views the aliens - who are being kept in ludicrously unsecured, unsterilised containers which may actually be some sort of filing cabinet - but also handles one of them in an obviously sexual manner. Concepts of sterility, cross-contamination, preservation, any form of biological integrity, of any form of scientific integrity, go directly out of the window here, never to be seen again. Atop that, neither man sees anything amiss with the situation at all.
Shortly after this, the alien - affronted at being nearly raped by said journalist whilst Carlsen blithely wanders out of the room - escapes, and the genre shifts to police procedural. There is a rapid flurry of corpses and policemen, none of which accomplishes anything in terms of the plot. Then another character turns up and Carlsen jaunts off to Sweden.
This is where the book goes barking mad.
One part of the Swedish section of the book is a long, pointless reference/homage/rip-off of M. R. James' Count Magnus, a story which does not deserve to be within a mile of this wretched book. For some reason, although what I cannot discern, Mr Wilson feels it apposite to have James' Count Magnus referenced as a historical character, and as an associate of the aliens [which, when the aliens explain what they've been up to later, neither makes sense nor fits with the timeline]. The purpose of this is beyond me; all it seems to accomplish is to irritate anyone who knows and likes James' works.
The rest of the Swedish section is devoted to constructing a bizarre and sexist theory about life-energy [a core concept of the book, although never explained in any sensible way] and male and female sexuality. This begins with the introduction of Geijerstam, a man in his nineties with a harem of pretty young women. Apparently he is able to siphon off a little of their life energy each day, which keeps him young. What they get out of this is never explained.
It is implied that Geijerstam is sleeping with all eight or ten of these young women, since sex is the primary method of life-energy transfer in this book. This sets up the continuing theme, which Mr Wilson states most concisely in the quote above: that all women are masochists who want to be forced into sexual submission by men, and that all men are sadists who desire to sexually dominate women. At one point a woman who does not want to sleep with Carlsen ends up doing so because he "wills" her into doing so. He does this with no guilt over cheating on his wife - despite looking at her picture beside the bed - and the whole matter treats his psychically dominating Bengtsson is treated as the natural order of male and female sexuality.
At another point there is mention of "the normal feminine desire to surrender". This is during a dubious scene in which Carlsen psychically and physically abuses a woman to get a piece of information out of her, on the grounds that she wants him to because she is a masochist. This involves a nasty party where Carlsen essentially psychically rapes this woman, which causes her to orgasm. The other character in the room merely comments that he didn't realise it was possible for a woman to climax whilst standing up. That this woman has had her home invaded by two strangers who have proceeded to slap her and pull her clothes off whilst demanding she tell them something she has little reason to know about, and has every reason to be terrified witless, is not something Mr Wilson seems to have thought of. Apparently since she is a masochist - and she's a masochist because she's an unmarried woman who therefor lacks penis in her life - this makes it okay to hurt her for whatever reason.
The overlap is implied to be exact - feminine equals masochism equals submission, masculine equals sadism equals domination. Women produce life energy when they become aroused, men drain it from them by dominating them during sex, which makes them strong and virile [equated at one point with a carnivore devouring another living creature], and then chose to maybe give some back. Women who aren't getting laid are apparently weak and listless due to a lack of penis in their lives. Apparently there is no possible variation on this - there are no gay people, no dominant masochists, no submissive sadists, no non-masochistic submissives, no dominant females, no submissive men, and above all no sexual equality.
I have here the option of continuing to rant about why this is a loathsome theory, and why Mr Wilson casually treating it as the whole and indisputable truth is doubly so, or skip on the rage, teeth-grinding, tension headache, bruised knuckles and dents in the walls. I opt for the latter and leave the former as an exercise to the reader, and shall simply comment that at one point it is observed that women and men are "basically different" because women enjoy taking baths.
The only use I can think of for this book is to commit suicide by drinking game. The rules are simple: every time the characters have a drink, you have a drink too. You will be drunk by page 50 and dead before you reach the wretched deus ex machina that ends the book. For some reason the characters are incapable of going ten pages without a drink - usually whisky - although in the earlier parts the booze flows more freely, sometimes as frequently as one drink every five pages. One has to wonder if the total lack of logic in the book is not due to the characters being monumentally drunk for the whole course of events.
All in all, this book is a hideous mess. It is founded on a disturbingly sexist view of human sexuality, can't decide what genre it is, contains not a whit of logical thought or scientific professionalism, fails completely as a view of the future, steals material from a far better story, features female characters whose sole purpose is to be sex objects and male characters whose sole purpose is to drink, aliens whose actions cannot be made sense of in any interpretation of events, more alcohol, and absolutely no entertainment or edification value.
Do not read this book.
This book is:
* - deranged
* - sexist
* - awful
This book is not:
* - a good example of anything
* - sure what genre it is
* - to be read
14/3/10 - 2390 words on Rick-Rack
15/3/10 - Ill
16/3/10 - 2458 words on Rick-Rack
17/3/10 - 747 words on Rick-Rack
18/3/10 - 1223 words on Rick-Rack
19/3/10 - 21/3/10 - Ill
22/3/10 - 28/3/10 - Holiday
Author - Colin Wilson
ISBN - 0-586-04333-0
"When [a woman] falls in love, it's because she wants to know a man - to get inside his skin, become a part of him. I suppose masochism's a distorted form of the same thing - the desire to be absorbed, to give oneself completely and entirely. On the other hand, I suppose most men just want to possess a girl - to feel they've conquered her. So they never notice that what they really want to do is absorb her ... "The Space Vampires is a disaster in the written word. This book was loaned to me by a bee who will remain nameless, with words to the effect of "Read this. It's awful!".
Given that I had just handed said bee a copy of Daemon World, I suppose I deserved what I got.
The plot could be described as concerning a spaceship captain who finds a derelict alien spacecraft containing a number of human-looking aliens in suspended animation, which turn out to be less than suspended. Some of them escape and start eating people. Sort of. Except that this covers less than a third of the book. A large chunk of the first half is an insipid police procedural with minor pretensions to science fiction. An even bigger chunk of the book is spent lolling around by a lake in Sweden, talking about bizarre sex energy theories and ripping off M. R. James.
There is no plane upon which this is a good book. The spelling and grammar are without noticeable errors, but that is the standard for a published novel, not a sign of quality. The editing is less than stellar. At one point, during a discussion loosely involving sex, the following sentence appears:
"He pointed up the hill to a small granite erection."To say that this was unwise word choice is a minor understatement. Nor is this the only example, thus:
'"The documents in the cabin were printed on a material resembling thick paper impregnated with wax. 'This could provide a clue to the galaxy in which the Stranger originated.'What precisely is giving the clue? The wax? The paper? So far in the book nobody has suggested that the Stranger came from outside Earth's home galaxy. Possibly Mr Wilson meant solar system, but if that is the case, that is what he should have written.
At another point in the book, Carlsen is given orders by a mission controller who is apparently taking orders from the "Prime Minister of the United European States". Neither this person nor this political body are ever mentioned again. Carlsen henceforth answers to the Space Minister who answers to the British Prime Minister. Apparently when the book switched from SF to police procedural, Carlsen switched jobs. This matter is exacerbated at the end, when the British Prime Minister decides to hush up the whole matter, despite the alien spacecraft still hanging in orbit and the odd references throughout the book to the possibility of the Americans or someone else getting hold of it, and that he is obviously not the highest authority around. Apparently the rest of the world doesn't matter.
The continuity is likewise shot to pieces. At one point a character is mentioned as being in New York when there is no reason for him to be there, nor is there any way he could have gotten there and back in the time given. Nor is any explanation given for how he ends up in England the next day, and the whole thing is never talked about.
The aliens spend a good portion of the book body-swapping off-screen. Exactly how who ended up in which body, and how and why which bystander ended up dead, makes little to no sense. At one point someone seems to have died for no good reason. The whole thing is beyond confusing.
The jewel in the continuity error crown is the dates. On page 3 it is mentioned that the discovery of the Stranger is the "greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century" ... yet on page 4 there is reference to the "Ganymede disaster of 2113". This could be considered a minor mistake by Mr Wilson except that on page 83 Geijerstam is mentioned as having been born in 1987 and now being aged 93, thereby setting events in 2080 ... which disagrees with the epilogue which specifically dates the events to 2076. Apparently neither Mr Wilson nor his editor were any good at mathematics.
The characters are not worth mentioning. There are a large number of them, some spending more time on-screen that others. The reader spends all their time looking through the eyes of Captain Olaf Carlsen, a man with no apparent day job nor responsibilities. He zips around London and Sweden accompanied by another character or two. What can one say about them? There are only three characters in the book - Man, Woman and Alien. Most of them are Men. All of them are Caucasian. None of them are interesting. The Men are distinguished largely by their hair and noses. The Women are blank screens onto which Mr Wilson projects his views on sex. The Aliens are utterly indistinguishable from one another.
The plot, as mentioned, cannot decide which genre it is. We start with a bit of space exploration, which goes down the tubes rapidly as massive unprofessionalism strikes. Invasive, destructive exploration of the alien derelict is made without any form of testing or preparation beforehand. Aliens whose vital states are unknown are exposed to hard vacuum and, for some reason, suffer no ill effects despite it later being revealed they are inhabiting normal human bodies.
The unprofessionalism continues when Carlsen, for no good reason, casually brings a journalist into the government building where the aliens are stored. The security guard allows this for no good reason. Carlsen then takes the journalist into the laboratory where the aliens are kept - staffed by precisely one person, who sees no problem with any of this - and allows the journalist to examine the aliens up close and personally.
This cannot be understated. Carlsen and a government researcher stand by as an unauthorised journalist not only views the aliens - who are being kept in ludicrously unsecured, unsterilised containers which may actually be some sort of filing cabinet - but also handles one of them in an obviously sexual manner. Concepts of sterility, cross-contamination, preservation, any form of biological integrity, of any form of scientific integrity, go directly out of the window here, never to be seen again. Atop that, neither man sees anything amiss with the situation at all.
Shortly after this, the alien - affronted at being nearly raped by said journalist whilst Carlsen blithely wanders out of the room - escapes, and the genre shifts to police procedural. There is a rapid flurry of corpses and policemen, none of which accomplishes anything in terms of the plot. Then another character turns up and Carlsen jaunts off to Sweden.
This is where the book goes barking mad.
One part of the Swedish section of the book is a long, pointless reference/homage/rip-off of M. R. James' Count Magnus, a story which does not deserve to be within a mile of this wretched book. For some reason, although what I cannot discern, Mr Wilson feels it apposite to have James' Count Magnus referenced as a historical character, and as an associate of the aliens [which, when the aliens explain what they've been up to later, neither makes sense nor fits with the timeline]. The purpose of this is beyond me; all it seems to accomplish is to irritate anyone who knows and likes James' works.
The rest of the Swedish section is devoted to constructing a bizarre and sexist theory about life-energy [a core concept of the book, although never explained in any sensible way] and male and female sexuality. This begins with the introduction of Geijerstam, a man in his nineties with a harem of pretty young women. Apparently he is able to siphon off a little of their life energy each day, which keeps him young. What they get out of this is never explained.
It is implied that Geijerstam is sleeping with all eight or ten of these young women, since sex is the primary method of life-energy transfer in this book. This sets up the continuing theme, which Mr Wilson states most concisely in the quote above: that all women are masochists who want to be forced into sexual submission by men, and that all men are sadists who desire to sexually dominate women. At one point a woman who does not want to sleep with Carlsen ends up doing so because he "wills" her into doing so. He does this with no guilt over cheating on his wife - despite looking at her picture beside the bed - and the whole matter treats his psychically dominating Bengtsson is treated as the natural order of male and female sexuality.
At another point there is mention of "the normal feminine desire to surrender". This is during a dubious scene in which Carlsen psychically and physically abuses a woman to get a piece of information out of her, on the grounds that she wants him to because she is a masochist. This involves a nasty party where Carlsen essentially psychically rapes this woman, which causes her to orgasm. The other character in the room merely comments that he didn't realise it was possible for a woman to climax whilst standing up. That this woman has had her home invaded by two strangers who have proceeded to slap her and pull her clothes off whilst demanding she tell them something she has little reason to know about, and has every reason to be terrified witless, is not something Mr Wilson seems to have thought of. Apparently since she is a masochist - and she's a masochist because she's an unmarried woman who therefor lacks penis in her life - this makes it okay to hurt her for whatever reason.
The overlap is implied to be exact - feminine equals masochism equals submission, masculine equals sadism equals domination. Women produce life energy when they become aroused, men drain it from them by dominating them during sex, which makes them strong and virile [equated at one point with a carnivore devouring another living creature], and then chose to maybe give some back. Women who aren't getting laid are apparently weak and listless due to a lack of penis in their lives. Apparently there is no possible variation on this - there are no gay people, no dominant masochists, no submissive sadists, no non-masochistic submissives, no dominant females, no submissive men, and above all no sexual equality.
I have here the option of continuing to rant about why this is a loathsome theory, and why Mr Wilson casually treating it as the whole and indisputable truth is doubly so, or skip on the rage, teeth-grinding, tension headache, bruised knuckles and dents in the walls. I opt for the latter and leave the former as an exercise to the reader, and shall simply comment that at one point it is observed that women and men are "basically different" because women enjoy taking baths.
The only use I can think of for this book is to commit suicide by drinking game. The rules are simple: every time the characters have a drink, you have a drink too. You will be drunk by page 50 and dead before you reach the wretched deus ex machina that ends the book. For some reason the characters are incapable of going ten pages without a drink - usually whisky - although in the earlier parts the booze flows more freely, sometimes as frequently as one drink every five pages. One has to wonder if the total lack of logic in the book is not due to the characters being monumentally drunk for the whole course of events.
All in all, this book is a hideous mess. It is founded on a disturbingly sexist view of human sexuality, can't decide what genre it is, contains not a whit of logical thought or scientific professionalism, fails completely as a view of the future, steals material from a far better story, features female characters whose sole purpose is to be sex objects and male characters whose sole purpose is to drink, aliens whose actions cannot be made sense of in any interpretation of events, more alcohol, and absolutely no entertainment or edification value.
Do not read this book.
This book is:
* - deranged
* - sexist
* - awful
This book is not:
* - a good example of anything
* - sure what genre it is
* - to be read
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 12:14 pm (UTC)