February 19, 2012

Wilson, Colin

Tagged: Author | Critic

(1931-    ) UK writer of speculative works best known for his first book, The Outsider (1956) (in which he gave graphic expression to the brilliant autodidactism, the erratic system-building mentality, and the voracity for new mental sensations that would mark the very numerous titles he would produce over the next several decades, many of them of indirect interest to sf and fantasy writers and readers), for his numerous books on crime, notably A Criminal History of Mankind (1984) and Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection (1989), and for his investigations of the paranormal, of which the most important are The Occult (1971), Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal, and the Supernatural (1978), Poltergeist! (1981) and Beyond the Occult (1988). Sf and scientific critics have not generally responded with much warmth to Wilson's later nonfiction, perhaps because his eagerness to penetrate the barriers of "orthodox" science has led him into assumptions about and formulations of the nature of consciousness that seem to lurch dangerously far into the realms of Pseudoscience; that is, the science he uses as underpinning for his sf is often not generally accepted as such. A further difficulty is that, as his total oeuvre has grown, it has become harder to work out which texts are deeply considered, which are blarney, and which are potboilers. Nevertheless, his sf is of considerable interest.

Some of his fiction contains relatively minor fantastic elements. The Gerard Sorme series – Ritual in the Dark (1960), Man Without a Shadow: The Diary of an Existentialist (1963; vt The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme 1963 US and 1968) and The God of the Labyrinth (1970; vt The Hedonists 1971) – opens realistically, but the second volume is borderline fantasy and the third fantasy proper, featuring friendly possession by the spirit of a bygone libertine. The Black Room (1971) is a Technothriller whose central gimmick is the sensory-deprivation chamber. The titular character of the Inspector Gregory Saltfleet whodunnits acts on information received from psi/occult sources in The Schoolgirl Murder Case (1974). The author's only sf short story is "Timeslip" (in Aries 1, anth 1979, ed John Grant).

Wilson's first outright sf novel, The Mind Parasites (1967), combines the long temporal perspectives of H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with the transcendental solipsism of A E van Vogt and the metabiological pathos of George Bernard Shaw in a tale which suggests that humanity has for aeons been deliberately hampered by quasi-Alien entities, and that these shackles of Arrested Development could be cast off; doing so leads to the acquisition of Psi Powers (notably Telepathy and Telekinesis). This novel features August Derleth as a minor character (> Recursive SF). The Philosopher's Stone (1969), perhaps the most intellectually stimulating of his novels, with an appealingly ramshackle construction, begins with a philosophical quest for Immortality and again invokes the Cthulhu Mythos to suggest that the Lovecraftian Old Ones who seem to be keeping humanity in thrall are in fact asleep and indifferent; it is our responsibility to equal and surpass their immense Psi Powers before they wake again. Wilson's third Mythos tale, The Return of the Lloigor (in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, anth 1969 US, ed August Derleth; rev 1974 chap), is dark fantasy. The Space Vampires (1976; vt Lifeforce 1985), filmed as Lifeforce (1985), promulgates the same message as the previous sf novels, in the form of a partly Space-Opera horror tale featuring, again, parasitic aliens – psychic Vampires, intentionally homaging A E van Vogt's "Asylum" (May 1942 Astounding) – and a human race of thwarted (but infinite) potential.

A similar dynamic of oppression and release serves as the philosophical base underlying the boys'-fiction dramaturgy of the later Spider World sequence – Spider World: The Tower (1987; vt in 3 vols as Spider World 1: The Desert 1988 US, Spider World 2: The Tower 1989 US and Spider World 3: The Fortress 1989), Spider World: The Delta (1987) and Spider World: The Magician (1992) – set in a Far-Future Earth whose human remnants live in thralldom to giant arachnids. An equivalent of Shaw's "Life Force" is invoked as an underlying harmonizing principle. The series seemed complete after its third volume but was later extended with Spider World 4: Shadowland (2003). [JC/JGr/DRL]

see also: Great and Small; Invisibility; Monsters; Parasitism and Symbiosis; Shakespeare; Suspended Animation; Time Travel.

Colin Henry Wilson

born Leicester, Leicestershire: 26 June 1931

died

works (selected)

series

Gerard Sorme

Inspector Gregory Saltfleet

Spider World

individual titles

nonfiction (highly selected)

works as editor

about the author

links

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