By TED SABINE (Pinnacle Books; 1975)
Another example of an out of print paperback that I was able to easily get ahold of not too long ago, and at a reasonable price. As with other 1970s-80s paperbacks like EAT THEM ALIVE by Pierce Nace and THE SHADOW by Bill Garnett, THE SOULSUCKER by Ted Sabine has in a very short period become a sought-after collector’s item. The good news is that, if you’re among the interested parties who missed out on grabbing a copy while the grabbing was good, you can rest assured that, unlike EAT THEM ALIVE and THE SHADOW, you haven’t missed much.
THE SOULSUCKER’s problems begin with its premise. It involves a telepathically endowed extraterrestrial spider stuck on “Sol-III” (a.k.a. Earth) that takes the form of a sexy woman. Precisely how the critter accomplishes this feat is never made entirely clear (humans and spiders being quite divergent in form), but the surrounding “Duopeds” (a.k.a. humans) have no trouble accepting the “false image of her body-self” the spider projects, and so end up becoming unwilling repositories for the blood it needs to survive.
Any number of possibilities would appear to be suggested by this premise, but author Ted Sabine utilizes very few of them. There’s some reasonably potent grue, contained mostly in descriptions of the “sticky silk” the spider woman emits to spin webs and entrap her enemies, and a mid-book sexual encounter that’s perfunctory and unconvincing. A sample sentence: “She made her image whimper with frightened little gasps while frantic hands tore away an imaginary cover of cloth,” as apparently the spider projects a mental image of clothing in addition to that of a woman’s body.
Much of the novel is related from the point of view of the spider woman, in mildly interesting passages that foreshadow UNDER THE SKIN. Less successful are the author’s attempts at psychedelic prose, which further the confusion and add unintended comedy (as in the line “He ran after it, holding his penis, which had turned into a rifle barrel”). Nor was I too satisfied with the chapters detailing the investigation into the spider woman’s crimes, undertaken by police and Avery Yellow Horse, a bounty hunter who’s described as “a six-foot, eight-inch black man with a Cheyenne surname.” Yellow Horse’s investigation takes a turn for the bizarre when a large spider’s leg and crashed spaceship are found. A psychically endowed agent known as Andromeda Brown is sent to help with the investigation, while the spider lady tries desperately to catch the next flight to her home planet.
Another problem: at just 180 pages, and with printing that’s exceptionally large, THE SOULSUCKER is far too perfunctory. More fleshing-out was needed, as were more coherent plotting, more vivid descriptions, and a more workable premise. In short, THE SOULSUCKER just needs more.