- Hardcover: 214 pages
- Publisher: Random House (Mar 1976)
- ISBN-10: 0394400933
- ISBN-13: 978-0394400938
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,395,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Author of a great encyclopedia of crime and expert of the supernatural and occult Colin Wilson writes his first science fiction novel. The beginning is traditional, with a huge desert spaceship, a flyng cathedral founded in the asteroidal zone, but soon the story become creepy with ominous tones. Walking bodies, horrible disappereances of persons, cruel murders, and a anxious hunt to a creature (only one?) who kills all along england.The solution will be spatial and vampiristic at the same time!
0 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have yet to read this book but I have a copy and I will give it a chance soon. Will come back then.
They made a film of this book and it was dire, absolutely dreadful. Apart from on thing and that was the vampire who when we first see her is in the nude and absolutely georgous. But that is the only good thing about this film.
They made a film of this book and it was dire, absolutely dreadful. Apart from on thing and that was the vampire who when we first see her is in the nude and absolutely georgous. But that is the only good thing about this film.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Deeper and darker...
3 Sep 2002
Format:Hardcover
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...
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Surprising and engaging little gem
1 April 2008
Format:Paperback
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...
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Movie actually compares well...unfortunately
7 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
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