He started to write stories, plays, and essays in earnest – a long "sequel" to Man and Superman made him consider himself to be 'Shaw's natural successor.'

In the autumn of 1949, he was conscripted into the Royal Air Force but soon found himself clashing with authority, eventually feigning homosexuality in order to be dismissed.

There he continued to work on Ritual in the Dark, receiving some advice from Angus Wilson (no relation) – then deputy superintendent of the British Museum's Reading Room – and slept rough (in a sleeping bag) on Hampstead Heath to save money.

He contributed to Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and was also anthologised in a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men.

[11][12] Some viewed Wilson and his friends Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd as a sub-group of the "Angries", more concerned with "religious values" than with liberal or socialist politics.

[16] Undaunted, Wilson continued to expound his positive "new" existentialism in the six philosophical books known as "The Outsider Cycle", all written within the first ten years of his literary career.

In The Age of Defeat (1959) – book 3 of "The Outsider Cycle" – he bemoaned the loss of the hero in twentieth century life and literature, convinced that we were becoming embroiled in what he termed "the fallacy of insignificance".

Among the latter were The Strength to Dream (1962), Eagle and Earwig (1965), Poetry and Mysticism (1970) The Craft of the Novel (1975), The Bicameral Critic (1985) and The Books in My Life (1998).

In 1971, he published The Occult: A History, featuring interpretations on Aleister Crowley, George Gurdjieff, Helena Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Mesmer, Grigori Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home and Paracelsus, among others.

Originally, Wilson focused on the cultivation of what he called "Faculty X", which he saw as leading to an increased sense of meaning, and on abilities such as telepathy and the awareness of other energies.

In his later work he suggests the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits, which he personally analyses as an active member of the Ghost Club.

[18]Like some of his non-fiction work, many of Wilson's novels from Ritual in the Dark (1960) onwards have been concerned with the psychology of murder—especially that of serial killing.

"[19] Wilson wrote the Spider World series in response to a suggestion made to him by Roald Dahl to 'write a novel for children.'

And he would have given free rein to his love of curious and remote erudition, so that his work would have been, in some respect, closer to that of Anatole France or the contemporary Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges".

Tobe Hooper directed the film Lifeforce, an adaptation written by Dan O'Bannon based on Wilson's novel The Space Vampires.

Critics who turn to him will find themselves involved in the central questions of our age and will be in touch with a mind that has disclosed an extraordinary resilience in addressing them.

[28] The psychologist Dorothy Rowe gave Wilson's book Men of Mystery a negative review and wrote that it "does nothing to advance research into the paranormal".

[29] Benjamin Radford has written that Wilson had a "bias toward mystery-mongering" and that he ignored scientific and skeptical arguments on some of the topics he wrote about.

Radford described Wilson's book The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved as "riddled with errors and obfuscating omissions, betraying a bizarre disregard for accuracy".

Michael Dirda in The Washington Post called Wilson a "controversial writer who explored the nature of human consciousness in dozens of books" and said that Lachman, a "leading student of the western esoteric tradition, writes with "exceptional grace, forcefulness, and clarity.

"[31] Brett Taylor "enjoyed" the biography, but said that "a more critical author might have written a book that argued for the subject's worth in a broader and more convincing context.

The Third Conference was held in Nottingham on September 1-3, 2023 which included the premiere of the Figgis-West eight-part documentary film series Colin Wilson: his life and work.

Directed and edited by Jason Figgis, the documentary is a detailed study of Wilson's life and work which includes interviews with Uri Geller, Gary Lachman,Tahir Shah, Damon Wilson, Jason Figgis, John West, Martha Rafferty and Philip Pullman.