Vampire Retro-Review: The Space Vampires

Colin Wilson's THE SPACE VAMPIRES (1976) was filmed as a disappointing movie, LIFEFORCE, but the novel provides an unusual treatment of energy-draining vampires as alien invaders. An Earth expedition in the near future discovers a vast, derelict spaceship carrying the apparently dead yet undecayed bodies of about thirty beautiful humanoids. The aliens turn out to be only in suspended animation. Escaping, they prey on and possess human victims. Throughout the book, the space vampires occupy both male and female bodies, although it’s the femme fatale vampire women we see most often. Scientists speculate that distant ancestors of these beings might have landed on Earth and engendered the human species. The book reveals an added dimension, though, for the psychic-vampire extraterrestrial invaders have counterparts -- not only human, but animal -- already dwelling on Earth as one strand in the web of terrestrial biology. In this novel, biologists have learned how to measure the life fields of organisms with "lambda meters.” The feeding of predators involves the absorption of the prey's life force. However, sexual intercourse also entails a measurable transfer of energy. One researcher displays a graphic example with a moray eel devouring an octopus Predatory behavior, "negative vampirism," aims at "total destruction of the victim.”

Sex, however, can result in “positive vampirism.” Normal sexual relations are characterized by a psychic tension in which, ideally, one partner’s life field can symbiotically reinforce the other’s. Carlsen, head of the expedition that discovers the alien ship (which is significantly labeled the Stranger), enjoys direct experience of energy exchange through sexual intercourse but later finds that his contact with the aliens has stimulated his latent vampiric qualities. As he perceives the situation, the alien predator has converted him into a vampire and infected him with "abnormal desires" along with "the power to carry them out.” Count Geijerstam, one of the novel's Van Helsing-like authorities on vampirism, insists that Carlsen has simply "become aware of the vampirism that exists in all human beings" and praises Carlsen for his ability to replenish his partner's energy as well as consume it. More than Van Helsing, however, Geijerstam inevitably reminds the reader of Dracula. Wilson's Count, like Stoker’s, lives in a castle with three beautiful women who practice vampirism (in this case, positive vampirism) under his guidance.

Despite this potentially affirmative view of vampirism as symbiotic exchange, the predatory model dominates the novel. Although vampirism has existed on Earth all along, an inescapable pattern in terrestrial ecology, kinship between human and alien is deemphasized. The invaders are framed as the threatening Other, to be expelled or exterminated. Speculation that the aliens have acted as “the secret mentors of humankind” isn’t followed up. Throughout the life-or-death struggle to prevent an alien from invading his brain and nervous system, Carlsen realizes, "They were enemies; nothing could change that.” The text associates vampirism with negative imagery such as "sexual perversion,” "a Venus flytrap closing on an insect,” "galactic criminals" and "lepers,” "a despot with limitless powers,” and the witches in "Hansel and Gretel" and THE WIZARD OF OZ. Carlsen himself sadistically vampirizes a woman who has been possessed by an extraterrestrial, “brutally draining her energy” -- at her eager request. So this rather strange and disturbing SF vampire novel portrays the nominal hero as almost as much of a predator as the invading aliens.

Little wonder that the movie falls so far short of the subtle nuances -- and weirdness -- of the book.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Searching for Extraterrestrial Life

I'm reading a book about the possibility of life as we know it (or maybe as we don't know it) on other planets in our solar system and on extrasolar worlds, THE SECRET LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE, by astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol. The author, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, has worked on multiple unmanned space exploration programs. Reflections on her own experiences in that field lend a lively, personal touch to her in-depth analysis of the subject. Published in 2023, the book contains information about discoveries nearly as up to date as a reader could hope for. This book could serve as a valuable resource for science-fiction writers.

After two introductory chapters about Earth and the origins of living organisms here, she lays out the basic conditions for life as we know it -- mainly a temperature range where liquid water exists, the presence of certain vital elements, and particular levels of gravity and atmospheric pressure. Ideal geological and meteorological conditions also contribute to the probability that life could develop and survive.

Detailed analyses of Venus and Mars explore whether living creatures, if only on the microbial level, could exist there. Other possilities are some of Jupiter's moons and Titan, a moon of Saturn, since organic molecules and liquid water have been discovered on them. More surprisingly, Cabrol proposes possible environments for organic evolution on dwarf planets and even Mercury and our moon. Later chapters plunge into more speculative discussions of life that might exist on planets of other stars. She delves into the Drake equation (how statistically likely are extrasolar biospheres, intelligence, and civilizations?) and the Fermi Paradox (if other advanced civilizations exist in the universe, where is everybody?). Of course, the problem with determining the likelihood of some of the factors involved is that we have a sample of only one, our own world. There's a chapter on the active search for life throughout the galaxy, especially the SETI project. The author also considers the broad question of the definition of life and whether artificial intelligence could qualify.

The book's endnotes direct the reader to the resources the author drew upon. Her treatment of the various topics is so extensive and deep, however, even sometimes getting rather technical with discussions of organic and inorganic chemistry, that anyone wanting to use this work as background for creating alien lifeforms would hardly need to look elsewhere.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Martian Underground Ocean

An article about the huge reservoir of liquid water discovered below ground on Mars:

Oceans of Liquid Water on Mars

In the presence of H2O, life as we know it has the potential to evolve and thrive. Therefore, this revelation enhances the plausiblity of living organisms on Mars, even if only microscopic. According to data collected by the Mars rovers "it has become more and more evident that the red planet was once loaded with water. Minerals, terrain, and features such as ancient dry lake beds and deltas suggest that Mars was once pretty soggy." Maybe the obsolete belief in ancient artificial canals on the Red Planet isn't so farfetched after all, even though they would've existed so many eons ago as to leave no traces for us to find. Suppose, during the period of surface liquid water, advanced life developed -- even to the point of intelligence and a technological culture? And what if the ancient Martians didn't go extinct, but left a remnant who retreated underground and built subterranean cities, whose inhabitants are deliberately hiding from us?

Highly implausible, sure -- but impossible? That scenario could make an intriguing premise for an SF novel.

In Diane Duane's A WIZARD OF MARS, teenage wizard protagonists Kit and Nita learn of and visit a Martian civilization that existed in the unimaginably distant past. The Wikipedia overview of the novel:

A Wizard of Mars

Suppose that society had secretly survived into the present? I don't know of a published fictional work on that premise, but it wouldn't be much of a stretch from Duane's plotline.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

When It Will Change

In the March-April 2019 issue of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, an article by Jerry Oltion discusses what effect the confirmed discovery of extraterrestrial life would have on the people of Earth. His provocative answer in "E.T. Shmee-T" is "not much." Astronomers seeking evidence of life on other solar planets or around distant stars assume that if we knew we weren't alone in the universe, the "effect on human society" would be "profound." The knowledge would either humble us, inspire us, or (according to Stephen Hawking) possibly destroy us. Oltion thinks the majority of the population would simply continue their daily lives with, at most, mild interest in the discovery.

He points out, citing numerous examples (many of them new to me), that throughout most of human history, many people have believed the moon and planets to be inhabited. In 1795, astronomer William Herschel even proposed that the sun was inhabited. These beliefs had no practical effect on the life of the average person. As Oltion acknowledges, one reason why nobody cared about life on other worlds was that we had no way of reaching them. However, he doesn't think most people's lives and attitudes would change even if aliens landed on Earth, an opinion I disagree with. Granted, people's day-to-day activities would probably go on much the same as always, at least at first. But I think the long-term effects would permeate and alter our culture. As for long-distance communication proving the existence of aliens, the impact on our culture would depend on what kinds of information we received. Alien technology could significantly change life as we know it even if we're never able to meet the aliens face-to-face. What about religion? Oltion thinks the predicted philosophical and religious upheaval wouldn't materialize. If the aliens turned out to look humanoid, missionaries might try to convert them—and how would that be different, except in scale, from the missionary ventures of our own history?

The March 2019 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, coincidentally, leads with an article on the current search for extraterrestrial life. According to an estimate cited in the article, based on the data gathered by the Kepler space telescope, our galaxy should contain about 25 billion planets in the "habitable zone"—worlds where life as we know it could evolve. SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is only one of many routes to the goal of finding alien life. The next generation of telescopes may have the power to search for visual traces of chlorophyll. Spectrometer analysis may detect free oxygen in a planet's atmosphere. SETI, of course, concentrates on analyzing radio waves for signs of artificially created signals. We inhabit a big universe, as the article points out; the fact that SETI hasn't found any such signs yet doesn't mean there's nothing to find. In 2015 an investor named Yuri Milner established the Breakthrough Initiatives, an organization committed to the search for alien civilizations and extra-solar life in general, to the tune of at least 200 million dollars.

Surely if these quests were successful, the public reaction and the impact on society and culture would vary depending on the form the revelation took. There are big differences among finding evidence of extraterrestrial life, discovering signs of sapient extra-solar beings with an advanced civilization, and having firsthand contact with alien visitors. Judging from the experiences of pre-industrial Earth societies during early contacts with Europeans, wouldn't the physical advent of aliens on our planet have a "profound" effect? In support of Oltion's position, however, we do have "All Seated on the Ground," a typically witty Connie Willis novella in which aliens arrive on Earth but make no attempt to communicate their purpose, don't respond to human overtures, and basically don't do anything interesting. After a while, the public and the news media get bored with the aliens, and only scientists trying to study them continue to pay much attention to them. Read this story if you possibly can, by the way; the narrator, a journalist who's on the commission for tenuous reasons not clear even to herself, discovers how to break through the visitors' apparent indifference. It's in Willis's collection A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS. Great fun!

Oltion is skeptical of the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, on the premise of the Fermi paradox, the "Where is everybody?" question. If a civilization capable of interstellar travel exists, wouldn't they have visited us or at least come within our detection range by now? This argument doesn't convince me. I can easily think of several plausible reasons why we wouldn't have been contacted by such a civilization, the most obvious being that it hasn't yet had time, or possibly sufficient motivation, to reach our cosmic neighborhood on the outskirts of the Milky Way.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt