Space Vampires and Metaphysicians

Michael Blowhard offers this short post on the English author Colin Wilson. Michael links to this Guardian piece on the 50th anniversary of Wilson's debut.

I have been a fan of Wilson for many years. He is an odd duck to say the least. His early career was probably best defined as a sort of poor man's Sartre and author of the treatise The Outsider. Later, he probably became best known for writing books on true crimes and the occult.

However, it is his fiction that always hooked me. A weird combination of occult, sci fi, sex and murder, interspersed with bits and pieces of philosophy. A prime example of fiction of this sort would be the provacatively titled Sex Diary of a Metaphysician, which is, as many of his books are, sadly out of print. Perhaps his most famous novel, if one could call it that, is The Space Vampires, which became the source of the Tobe Hooper movie, Lifeforce. A fun sci fi film that features copious nudity by actress Mathilda May (IMDB lists her character as Space Girl). The movie also features Steve Railsback, Peter Firth and Patrick Stewart.