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.

Vampire as Alien: Tanith Lee's Vampires

Renowned fantasy author Tanith Lee has written numerous vampire stories, taking different approaches to the myth in each work. To mention only a few: Her short work "Red as Blood," one of the best fairy tale retellings I've ever read, presents Snow White as a hereditary vampire and her stepmother, the queen, as a white witch trying to save the kingdom from the young princess's unnatural appetite. Lee's twisted Gothic romance DARK DANCE (1992), first novel in the Scarabae trilogy, centers on a woman victimized by a family from a blood-drinking species. The hyper-sexual hero, a parody of the dark, Byronic vampire aristocrat, wants her only as a breeding vessel. "Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Feu" portrays a very different kind of love story set in a world where a tribe of winged vampires besieges a castle, and every facet of the inhabitants' lives is shaped by fear of the monsters. The captured and imprisoned vampire, although apparently intelligent, can't speak, and he looks and acts so inhuman as to be more like an exotic animal than a person. Yet a serving maid in the castle becomes fascinated by him, helps him escape, and runs away with him She sees him through the lens of the courtly love romances she has heard, while he thinks of her as a sort of pet.

Lee creates another kind of alien vampire in the science fiction novel SABELLA OR THE BLOOD STONE (1980). (Warning: Major spoilers.) The narrator grows up thinking herself human but aberrant. As a Terran child living on an Earth-colonized world, Nova Mars, she stumbles onto ruins left by the original inhabitants. Her vampiric behavior dates from her discovery of a red jewel in the ruins. After years of drinking blood and sometimes killing, she meets a man she cannot and does not need to kill. Jace, brother of one of her victims, reveals to Sabella that she is actually an alien who, years in the past, took over the dying child Sabella's body and memories. Yet, because all the girl's thoughts and feelings live in this new form, the vampire, in a sense, is also truly Sabella. Jace reassures her that, while neither alien nor human, she is in some way both. Thanks to him, she learns to live without killing and to accept her past without self-destructive guilt. Jace reveals that he, too, found the ruins in childhood and became absorbed into an alien being. He alone can safely nourish her, for they evolved that relationship in their former life as members of the extinct species. Sabella speculates on how this relationship might have worked in the ancient past, when Nova Mars was an inhabited but dying planet: "Of the little water and little food there was, one would eat and drink, and when he was strong, the other would take from him the vital element which food and drink had made -- his blood....A system that requires a careful pairing, a creation of partners, who could permit in love what could never be permitted in hate or greed." Learning this symbiotic relationship, learning to share in love rather than seize in greed, Sabella avoids succumbing to despair.

Her solution to the quandary of being a bloodsucking monster depends on her union with Jace, the one living person who can serve as her symbiont. Also, their relationship requires her to let Jace dominate her, at least temporarily, until with his help she will learn "a discipline beyond myself." This male dominance isn't meant to be permanent, though. By way of balance, Sabella foresees a future in which she will decide when and where to procreate the children who will revive their species. She also conceives an ecological vision of a new era when her offspring may revitalize, even resurrect the desert planet. She grows into one of many fictional vampires who discover the value of symbiosis rather than destruction of their prey.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Shattered Glass

Elaine Bergstrom's richly detailed "vampire as alien" series begins with SHATTERED GLASS (1989), first published although not first in its internal chronology. In this novel and its prequels and sequels, she creates vampires of extraterrestrial origin but with such long-term residence on Earth that they consider this planet their home. Though clearly superior to Homo sapiens, most of them respect humanity. Like other more or less benign fictional vampires, Bergstrom's vampire clan, the Austras, balance their predation with service to the host species. The Austras contribute to humanity's long-term welfare through the products of their genius under the cover of their corporation, AustraGlass, whose creations in stained glass have adorned human architecture since the Middle Ages. Just as their empathic connection to their donors compensates for the blood they drink, their contributions to human culture balance (if not atone for) the killings some of them have committed over the centuries. Their weaknesses -- particularly their reproductive difficulties -- offset their superhuman powers. Not only do they take blood from human prey (as well as lower animals), they also need the human race to revitalize their gene pool. Austra females usually die in childbirth, typically producing twins or triplets. After her vampire nature is awakened by blood-sharing with Stephen Austra, Helen, the human-alien hybrid of SHATTERED GLASS, offers the promise of birth without inevitable sacrifice of the mother.

Stephen's twin, Charles, unlike his brother, feeds on pain and terror instead of the positive emotions that constitute the Austras' more usual nourishment. Charles yearns for death. Because these vampires' instinct for self-preservation makes them practically incapable of taking their own lives, Charles goes on a murderous rampage in the city where Stephen has settled, hoping to get his brother to kill him in the vampiric equivalent of "suicide by cop." Not surprisingly, to attract Stephen's attention he threatens Helen and her family.

Bergstrom's very sensual vampires exert an irresistible magnetism over human beings, especially when the vampires crave blood. Also, because they possess telepathy, they can shape their behavior to satisfy the human partner's inmost desires. Beyond sexual union, the Austras use telepathy to satisfy the human yearning to know the Other. For the reader, they fulfill in fantasy the otherwise unattainable wish to plumb the depths of another's mind. While drinking a human donor's blood (and sometimes even without blood-sharing), the vampire can share his or her memories with the donor in a reenactment so vivid it seems actually to be happening. Other novels in the series move backward in history or forward to Stephen and Helen's married life and the birth of their children, concluding with a book set in the near future, BEYOND SUNDOWN. Some short stories about the Austras have also been published, such as "The Ghost of St. Mark's" in THE TIME OF THE VAMPIRES, an anthology of historical vampire fiction, and "Ebb Tide" in the anthology VAMPIRES: DRACULA AND THE UNDEAD LEGIONS. I'm honored to mention that the latter, an outtake from SHATTERED GLASS, was originally published in the first issue of my fanzine, THE VAMPIRE'S CRYPT, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. You can find links to information about the zine (all issues are available free on DropBox) on my website:

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Margaret L. Carter