From Abraxas 14
- 3 Articles by V.R.
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- 'Metamorphosis of the Vampire'
- reviewed by Vaughan Robertson
Metamorphosis of the Vampire is an interesting, and I feel, important work in the Wilson canon. I cannot really see why it has remained unpublished thus far: Wilson has had equally as long and equally as sexually driven fiction issued before this!
It is well-written, unlike its designated precursor, The Space Vampires, which read in places as though it had been collated in the same way as I once used to mark student’s essays: by throwing them down the stairs, gathering them up and assigning a score according to where they had become positioned in the pile. But RT Whitcombe’s brilliant comment regarding Wilson’s earlier sex novels still remains pertinent here: "the strange combination of tractarian seriousness and quick-fuck sex which is the staple diet of his novels." [The Sexual World of Colin Wilson, The Journal of Sex, Volume 1 Number 10, 1977, p 19].
Metamorphosis then kept up this reader’s interest through its 800-odd typo-riven manuscript pages and despite several Wilsonian traits - sometimes annoying - such as the underlined words that he - Wilson - deems important; his chronic hyperbolic infatuation with the words ‘the most...’ as in ‘the most fascinating’, ‘the most remarkable’ et al; the too predominant stress on his by now all too well-known ideas of the primacy of the will/positive thinking/deep inner voyaging being the crux, perception being a meaning-giving faculty, the inadequacy of mankind per se at the present time and his/her true status as a god (never goddess!), all the many grades and/or levels of being and consciousness, the key historical influence of the novel and imagination in the change in man’s thought-patterns, the Romantic disillusionment of the 18-19th centuries etc. etc.; and the hugely wide-ranging and somewhat confusing names and races and planets and towns and invented words stemming from his attempt to build an alternative mythology a la Lovecraft/Tolkien but which are in dire need of a glossary and or a map; the role of the still largely passive yet somehow eternal woman, in spite of a putative sharing of life-forces blah blah blah: all now rather hoary notions - given their importance and plausibility - for any serious student of Wilson’s plethora of work.
Wilson has the happy knack of maintaining a story’s momentum, given his somewhat stock characters. Here - among others - K1 and his ilk remind me of Ben [Obi Wan] Kenobi/Alec Guiness in Star Wars: this is not the first time I’ve made reference to such a parallel, check out my thesis]. Furthermore the number of serendipities whereby incredibly lucky things happen for and to Richard Carlsen, the main protagonist: eg. he finds Carlo the vampire Piano Teacher early on just like that, even though he has lost him in a vast apartment building - and of course the rooms he finds Carlo in belongs to someone else Carlsen knows who happens to be a vampire too. And then Carlsen arrives in Heshmar-Fudo (!) on the one day of the year that there is a sexual match-up where he performs carnal callisthenics and so on. But, more importantly, he expands on earlier touchstones and even introduces a few new elements just when we are beginning to muse - towards the end - that we are in for yet another of those bathetic denouement that have become something of a hallmark in Wilson’s fiction. (More than this, there is a hell of a lot less talk from a Wilson hero here and a lot more action: exercise, mountain climbing, cave dwelling, flying, swimming, tree climbing, fleeing, than anyone else he’s introduced us to!)
So we read in a more methodological fashion about sex as a facilitator of expanded vistas of consciousness as propounded in God of the Labyrinth. The sexual act, not always consummated here in the form we generally think of, is presented as a mutual interchange of life-forces and psychic energy as first encountered in The Space Vampires. We get a huge panoramic Pilgrim’s Progress through the galaxies - escorted by one Kreiski the Vampire - concerning the significances of sex overall for varying and various beings. We meet robots, demi-gods and observe Carlsen’s initiation into the concomitant rites, orgies and bodily transmutations. As Bruce Forsyth once said - in one of England’s more banal TV programmes: ‘Didn’t he do well’. Because of course Carlsen always comes out a-head, garners increasingly more incredible prowess, if you will excuse the atrocious play on words. But, granted that there is a lot of sexual activity here and that some of it is a little gratuitous, as for example the early scene describing Carlsen’s early sexual escapades with his own cousin which seems almost too detailed, given that some of Metamorphosis is open to the inevitable accusation that it is a mere dirty-old-mannish, wish-fulfilment sexual fantasy (again the accent on pubescent females, and big breasts leap and bound everywhere!) with exploding climactic eruptions showering all and sundry throughout the text. Wilson claims that much of this is a ‘spoof’ and this is not a book about sex as such. For, of course, as in any Wilson novel of ideas (all of his fiction!) sex is merely a means to get us to touch the zenith ie. to go deep within ourselves and be positive and determined and strong-willed and ultimately - hopefully soon - become the gods we actually are if only we knew it.
Metamorphosis of the Vampire is a good old-fashioned morality tale about the good (Carlsen) fighting the bad (anyone or thing not attempting to evolve: vampires and criminals who are hell-bent on stealing personal individuality and true human potential). But now Carlsen is depicted as not being able to do it all himself, he is to have help, even ‘cheating’ in his favour (from K1 and - for the first time in Wilson’s fiction - a Galactic Controller who is no Christian God but an ubiquitous all-powerful deity heavily ‘into’ pure mathematical forms!). Mankind cannot do ‘it’ all by himself anymore - remember those early heroes! - he now needs and is happy to receive assistance. This is an interesting sidestep - I hesitate to say progression - in the Wilson agenda, yet one which seems to me, at least, as inevitable. More, man has got to get into ‘dianising’. This is the Wilson word of the week; ‘dianising’ - another term for Faculty X methinks. Again, there is no Users Guide for any of these steps toward Godhead anywhere!
Metamorphosis of the Vampire needs and has to be published. It contains so much and I have merely scratched the surface: in many ways it’s a compendium of Colin Wilson 1956-1997, rather like those boxed sets of Snakes and Ladders and Ludo and umpteen other games, and in true Wilson explanationist, systematized fashion, there’s space here for witches, astral projection, malignant spirits, sex deviates, Adam & Eve and the short history of Earth & Egypt’s true genesis and more. There’s a hell of a lot of iceberg here! Wilson has now written himself into a style that can only be called his own, beyond Voyage to Arcturus, George Lucas and Jules Verne, Lord of the Rings, Excalibur et al; all these influences and more gelled into a sort of (Big) Boy’s Own Magical Mystery Tour for serious thinkers that is not straightforward science fiction, whatever that is, nor ‘total’ fantasy!
The Philosopher is of course still there, despite a rather mixed metaphysics especially as regards bodies - both physical and astral - minds and memories, and the copious and telepathic intermingling of them, because Wilson never gives up his core concept of individuality of being (which means he could never ever be called a Post-Modernist novelist! In fact, does Carlsen the diphyllid really metamorphose or is he just Colin Wilson enjoying himself in his library?) The Visionary Mystic is still necessarily there, although curiously much of the imagery for a novel that is set in majestic future outer space is very earthbound and a little flat and anachronistic after the early fascinating postulated inventions we encounter in Carlsen’s New York; the sheer life-pulse of anything living that permeated parts of the excellent Spiderworld is missing here. Oh yes there is abundant life - much of it inchoate and malevolent - there is acute accent on colour. Yet the sensuous sheen of the Intense Vision seems to lack a little lustre in Metamorphosis. But, most importantly and most creditably, Colin Wilson is still there; truly sui generis, still challenging us to think, still patrolling and exploring the massive left field of the ball park of human consciousness where he remains the quintessential roaming outfielder, glove in hand, snatching at any wayward fly-balls, is still writing fiction that is not/is more than fiction. Read it and enjoy. Read it and ponder. Read it.