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Colin Wilson

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Colin Henry Wilson (born June 26, 1931) is a British writer.

He was born and brought up in Leicester. Wilson left school at 16 and worked at a variety of jobs while reading in his spare time. As a result of his readings he published The Outsider in 1956, which takes a look at certain people's lives (for example, William Blake) and their alienation from their fellow beings and asks 'Why' and concluded that it has to do with the importance of finding an objective religion (sans the dogma, just including what religion is actually fundamentally about) that can be passed down to others without needing a lifetime of study. The book was very successful and was a serious contribution to the popularization of existentialism in Britain. Wilson was labelled as an Angry Young Man, though he had little in common with other members of the group. In the 1959 General Election he campaigned for Oswald Mosley in the North Kensington constituency, who was standing under his post-war Union Movement banner.

Wilson also published in 1980 The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff, a text concerned with the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff, which forms an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic.

On a dare from August Derleth, Colin Wilson wrote 'The Mind Parasites', as another tool to take a look at his own ideas (which suffuse all of his works), putting them in the guise of fiction.

Wilson has also published fiction: Many novels, mostly detective fiction or horror fiction, the latter including several Cthulhu Mythos pieces. He has also written extensively about crime and various metaphysical and occult themes.

One of his novels, The Space Vampires, was made into the movie, Life Force.

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