The Space Vampires is a British science fiction novel written by author Colin Wilson, and first published in England and the United States by Random House in 1976.

"[1] Lovecraft's stories with similar themes include "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Colour Out of Space", "The Whisperer in Darkness", and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward".

[3][4] In the late twenty-first century, far out in a nearby asteroid belt, a gigantic derelict castle-like alien spacecraft is discovered by the space exploration vehicle Hermes, commanded by Captain Olof Carlsen.

Investigating the spacecraft's interior, the astronauts first discover the desiccated corpses of giant bat-like creatures, then three glass coffins containing three immobilised humanoids—two male and one female—preserved in a state of suspended animation.

An epilogue, set nearly a century later, reveals that Carlsen has used the techniques of benevolent energy transference he learned via his encounters with the vampires to live an extraordinarily long life, and possibly (it is implied) to have achieved a kind of transcendence upon his death.

The film differs in many respects from the novel; it is set in the modern day (using the 1986 flyby of Halley's Comet as a plot element), and the character of Carlsen (an American colonel named Tom) is much weaker, with a more obsessive relationship to the female vampire.