The Possessors

by John Christopher

1st Sphere 1978 edition paperback vg++ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Thriller, Novels

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Samuel Youd was born in Huyton, Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.

As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: ‘In the early thirties,’ he later wrote, ‘we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.’

Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies … In all he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories, under his own name as well as eight different pen-names.

He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass (today available as a Penguin Classic), and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, young adult dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy.

‘I read somewhere,’ Sam once said, ‘that I have been cited as the greatest serial killer in fictional history, having destroyed civilisation in so many different ways – through famine, freezing, earthquakes, feral youth combined with religious fanaticism, and progeria.’

In an interview towards the end of his life, conversation turned to a recent spate of novels set on Mars and a possible setting for a John Christopher story: strand a group of people in a remote Martian enclave and see what happens.

The Mars aspect, he felt, was irrelevant. ‘What happens between the people,’ he said, ‘that’s the thing I’m interested in.’

Reviews

[Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written sci-fi potboilers by authors like John Christopher, John Wyndham or Stephen King are my literary comfort food. Sometimes you’ve had enough of multi-generational American family sagas or WWII-set Booker nominees. Sometimes you’re a bit overstuffed with beautiful prose that effortlessly reveals deep aspects of the human condition. Sometimes you just want to read an old paperback thriller about an isolated group of people facing an alien threat.

The Possessors is set in a British-run holiday chalet deep in the Swiss Alps, with an eclectic cast of characters (many with ~~Dark Pasts~~) gathered together for a few days of skiing. Naturally an avalanche cuts their valley off from the outside world, then one of the children appears to keel over dead, only for his body to vanish overnight, and then return, wandering in from the snow with a cold temperature and oddly flat and emotionless voice, etc. Before long his strange sickness appears to be spreading among the others, and those as yet unaffected realise they’re struggling against something alien and hostile. (I feel comfortable giving all of this away, since the prologue is told from the point of view of a dying parasitic alien race which releases spores through the galaxy, one of which lands on Earth.)

The Possessors naturally brings to mind the classic Carpenter movie The Thing, which of course came long after it, but was based on a short story by John Campbell from the 1930s. It also has touches of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And really, to a modern reader, it’s not going to seem all that different from thousands upon thousands of stories where a monster or monsters prey upon an isolated group of people, picking them off one by one. But who cares? Christopher knows how to write a compelling, engaging thriller that sucks you in and makes you miss your stop on the tram.

There are some odd aspects to the book; I welcome Christopher’s attempts at rounding out the characterisation (never a sci-fi writer’s strongest point) by switching the viewpoints between various characters and introducing us to their personal lives when they’re not on holiday, but it dragged a bit when the the group was still dwelling on their own messy dramas even as the threat becomes truly dire and the novel approaches its climax. And I may be something of a problem drinker myself, but I was gobsmacked that even as the group dwindles to a handful of people and is at the point of nailing up the doors and windows, they still drink enough to kill a herd of elephants – and in fact Christopher details precisely what everyone is drinking all the time, which made me wonder if he wrote this while trying to stay on the wagon. I also thought the characterisation of the Swiss house staff as ignorant peasants (Swiss, really!) was amusingly British.

Despite that, and despite an ending that’s possibly a bit too neat and quick, I enjoyed The Possessors a lot. Does what it says on the tin. I wouldn’t recommend people go out of their way to find a copy, but if you chance across it at a library or second-hand bookstore, by all means pick it up.

[John Wiltshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting and well written book from this author. He's well worth reading if you like apocalyptic novels and early science fiction. I suppose some people would find his interactions between men and women very old fashioned, almost unreadable, but I quite like them for that very reason: it's amusing to see how times have changed. In Christopher's books the men sit together in huddles discussing problems whilst keeping anything unpleasant from "the little ladies" who are relegated to getting some food prepared or looking after the children. But they are delicate and are always wearing rather flimsy clothing, so can't really do much of any use.
In this novel, a group of holidaying English people are trapped in a ski lodge in the Alps by an avalanche. The shift of snow uncovers something evil that came to Earth many millions of years before, but waited patiently until it could "possess" a new species.
I love books with a tiny cast of characters, a claustrophobic setting, and slow-building tension. I'm enjoying this immensely and will update when finished...
Finished--and what a great ending this had! So many stories like this have awful conclusions, but this one was brilliantly done and totally appropriate to the story.
Highly recommended and a must-read for anyone who likes gentle science fiction horror along the lines of Day of the Triffids.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Possessors had a long memory, but not long enough to encompass their origins.

With this opening sentence Sam Youd, writing as John Christopher, establishes that this is speculative fiction. But for all its SF credentials, The Possessors is grounded in human relationships and idiosyncrasies, exposing how a disparate group of individuals isolated in a skiing chalet cope with personal demons and with each other when the chips are down.

With its setting in the Swiss Alps near the fictional village of Nidenhaut we are at times reminded of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; but when an avalanche cuts the chalet off from the village the group quickly have to develop a siege mentality as, one by one, the residents start to become other, forming a threat to those left and, ultimately, humankind. Are they changed because of a physical trauma, a psychological weakness, an unknown virus or, as the two locals fear, possession by devils?

Make no mistake, the author is misdirecting us with the title, for this novel is not really about the Possessors: it’s about the possessed.

The prologue informs us that the spore of an alien species has been lying dormant, buried in the ice and snow of the Swiss Alps for untold ages until an avalanche brought it to the surface in 1965, ready to parasitise any sentient being which came into contact with it. From then on it would be free to continue infecting that species, assuming control of its hosts so that they’d perform the collective will of the parasites.

In successive chapters we then follow the point of view of most of the nine individuals from England, along with the English couple who own the chalet; two locals, Peter and Marie, perform most of the menial tasks though we don’t get to get into their minds as we do the others. As each individual succumbs to the alien parasite and rescue from outside is delayed by inaccessibility and bad weather, anxieties rise, tempers fray, and personalities are exposed in all their vulnerabilities. Pretty soon we learn what possesses each of the party, whether it’s a sense of loneliness, unrequited love, a roving eye, or an addiction to alcohol, for instance; and that’s before we get to alien possession, a realisation that slowly dawns on those who are left as their numbers steadily reduce and they consider what has really transpired.

This is an effective novel on so many levels. It maintains the suspense of whether any of the party survive right through to the end, a tension ably choreographed though each chapter. It also throws a light on its times in terms of social expectations and habits: a still rigid gender divide in terms of roles, for example, where the men have status (one is an ex-officer in the RAF, another a plastic surgeon, plus a solicitor and an industrialist) and the women don’t (reduced to office work, or being a widow, a wife, a mother). The amount of drinking, both social and secret, where certain individuals are concerned is shocking to me but, for all I know, may well have then been par for the course. All in all though, I felt some sympathy for most of the group, at least those of the thirteen whose points of view we share; flawed and damaged some of them are, disappointed in love, miserable because they’re missing siblings or deceased partners or children abandoned abroad, aggressively blustering at perceived social disparity, or prey to more dominant personalities.

The Possessors is set in the Swiss Alps, which also happened to feature in the author’s famous Tripods novels, such as The White Mountains. In addition it is the setting for parts of Frankenstein, a novel in which new life is created from the bodies where life had been previously extinguished. I’ve no doubt that the unstated parallel with Mary Shelley’s novel is intended: as with her Creature, Christopher’s symbiotic entities seek out other humans to contact, lurk outside human habitations, aim to create others of their kind, and find extremes of cold no barrier to existence.

I don’t think that we’re meant to identify the views expressed by any of the characters in this novel with the author’s own—he was much too subtle and sensitive a writer for that—but he does accurately reflect many of the attitudes and mores common to that period. Yet the 1960s are not so different from the 2020s that the possible exigencies arising from winter sports in a remote place are incomprehensible, nor the expectations that rescue would soon be at hand despite any break in communications. In particular we have all now been made alert to the dangers of contagion and transmission in a way that renders the situation faced by the narrative’s holidaymakers all too vivid. Except that there may be fates worse than chronic illness or death, such as the loss not just of individuality but also humanity.

[S.M. Guariento · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming with a rave recommendation from big-time SF fan Kingsley Amis on the cover, this 1965 novel by John “Death of Grass” Christopher [Sam Youd] is a quietly compelling take on the “alien bodysnatchers” template: proof that you don’t necessarily need Big Ideas to make a SF story work, just good old-fashioned storytelling talent. Beginning with an italicised prologue from the perspective of a doomed alien race, wherein we learn that these spectral beings (who require living flesh-and-blood hosts to supply their energy needs) have launched a flotilla of arks into the void to escape the impending destruction of their homeworld by supernova, we then switch to the glamorous setting of a remote Swiss ski chalet, temporary home to a handful of holidaying Brits and their kids. Each chapter assumes the perspective of one of the principal cast (while remaining in the third person): a quiet solicitor’s clerk, ex-RAF hale-and-hearty chalet owner and his alcoholic wife, skirt-chasing cynical plastic surgeon, two “smashing bid”-type sisters, mum-and-dad-plus-two-kids etc. When one of the kids abruptly topples stone-dead into the snow after discovering a mysterious blue sphere (which later is nowhere to be found), astute readers will be nodding contentedly to themselves (possible murmuring “Ah, Quatermass II” into the bargain) in anticipation of the little lad’s imminent resurrection as the first of the possessed. Christopher conveys the mother’s stunned sense of shock and loss extremely well; short on original ideas he may be, but you can’t really fault him on character. Before you know it, bad weather and a pesky avalanche have cut the chalet off from civilisation and the remaining humans must defend their makeshift stockade from the ever-increasing ranks of the alien undead (whose contamination-possession is spread by touch, so don’t get caught in a room by yourself with one or more of ’em).

Christopher builds tension very nicely, together with the survivors’ escalating feelings of isolation and despair of rescue; he’s also very good at conveying a palpable sense of place. Before the end, I could visualise very clearly the interior of the chalet, and almost feel the reassuring warmth from the crackling log fire and the pint or so of whisky in my belly. Speaking of which, the sheer volume of neat spirits that Christopher’s cast puts away during the course of this adventure is mind-boggling: every time they come in from a recce outdoors – or any time any of them feels slightly out of sorts, really – it’s out with the whisky or the gin or the brandy or all three. It’s very much a novel of the 1960s, not just in its attitude to heavy drinking but in pretty much every way you could imagine: predominantly male-oriented, full of Understanding Wives and up-for-it dolly-birds, and middle-class with a vengeance. In common with the works of John Wyndham, there’s an unthinking (though not unkind) condescension when discussing the working classes, whose dialect is always conveyed in comical phonetic style (often in the voice of a chirpy Cockney from a wartime morale-booster). Yes, I loved it. Despite its basic unoriginality, it’s a genuine page-turner, boasts a cast of at least 2.5-dimensional characters whose fates you actually care about, and a growing unpredictability about who will survive. Undemanding fun, and sometimes that’s exactly what the doctor ordered.

[Antonio Ippolito · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Youd, qui sotto l’alias di John Christopher sempre usato per la narrativa fantascientifica, ci propone un romanzo che a differenza dei suoi più famosi (almeno da noi) non è una catastrofe planetaria: ambientato in un incantevole chalet nelle Alpi svizzere, in vista del lago di Ginevra, riesce a mettere insieme con originalità elementi già noti come un’ambientazione da “Dieci piccoli indiani”, l’orrore tra i ghiacci del film “La cosa”, soprattutto il tema del bambino maledetto o posseduto che può ricordare “L’orrenda invasione” di Wyndham.. e alla fine ci sarà anche il rischio globale.
Sul piano stilistico, è un romanzo del ’65 (pubblicato nel ’77 dalla Libra come “I possessori”), quindi procede con cura a costruire personaggi credibili con storie difficili alle spalle, alternando abilmente a ogni capitolo il punto di vista di un protagonista diverso: in questo può risultare inizialmente un po’ lento per le nostre abitudini, ma sarà tanto più forte l’impatto di una situazione allucinante sui protagonisti, che credevano di ristorarsi in quel piccolo paradiso; la suspence diventerà progressivamente agghiacciante senza necessità di eventi truculenti, anzi giocando soprattutto su misteriose sparizioni e le allucinanti distese di neve invase dalla nebbia.
Una scrittura genuinamente britannica: sia nei dialoghi, sempre così impliciti e allusivi rispetto a quelli sfacciati dei cugini d’Oltreoceano, pieni di quel riserbo che è l’altra faccia di un’aggressività sempre pronta a scattare; sia nei costumi, dove l’autore, per rendere impossibile una tresca tra i suoi protagonisti, spende più pagine e scavo psicologico di quello che si userebbe oggi per descrivere un’intera relazione (vedi il debole Douglas Poole e Jane, la vedova senza più desiderii nella vita): sono ancora i tempi del “Niente sesso, siamo inglesi”. Anzi: ogni volta che l’aitante medico Selby Grainger, in vacanza nello chalet con la moglie, inizia a manifestare fisicamente il suo desiderio per la provocante signorina Diana, sorella di Jane, che non aspetta altro, qualcosa di orrendo accade..
Interessante anche notare che, come spesso si verifica nei romanzi di genere, la critica alla società è schietta (non per niente siamo negli anni ’60): il “bon ton” o “aplomb” britannico è solo la copertura di un’ingiusta struttura sociale; la rivalità ai confini dell’odio tra il medico e George, il gestore dello chalet, figlio di un macellaio, che gli rinfaccia continuamente l’ipocrisia della “upper class”, e la crudeltà gratuita di inviare i bambini alle “public schools” fin dagli otto anni (“avessero provato a proporlo a mia madre, ne avrebbero sentite! ..spediti via come pacchi, infilati nella trafila.. siamo l’unico paese al mondo che trova normale una follia del genere. E siccome voi siete sopravvissuto, pensate che a vostro figlio faccia bene, vero?”).
E come in tanti romanzi britannici di quegli anni e anche in “Morte dell’erba”, il ricordo della guerra: la consapevolezza non solo del suo orrore ma anche della “opportunità” di “un senso nella vita” che offre a certi uomini: “era un maschio ‘professionalmente maschio’.. doveva aver fatto una buona guerra: un nessuno prima, un nessuno dopo, doveva aver goduto i momenti in cui violenza e urgenza dominavano la vita” (con crudele autoronia, è la stessa “non carriera” militare fatta dall’autore: congedato dall’esercito nello stesso grado con cui era entrato anni prima). Segue uno degli aneddoti bellici più truci che io ricordi, quello del miglior amico di George rimasto incastrato, durante un bombardamento su Colonia a cui partecipavano entrambi, nel meccanismo di scarico delle bombe, già innescate.. meccanismo quindi da liberare a ogni costo.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quaint sf/horror tale, The Possessors has much in common with Campbell's "Who Goes There?" and Finney's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Christopher's authorial voice, however, is much less urgent, and his characters more emotionally reticent and circumspect.

[Marcus Blakeston · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bunch of self-centered alcoholic poshos go on a skiing trip and get possessed by an alien tennis ball.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thing of it's era really. Fascinating portrait of the way things largely were between men and women before more liberating times. A good, solid quite scary story but not up to his usual standards like in The Death Of Grass.

[Alan Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been a lifelong fan of end-of-the-world stories, and John Christopher specialised in them. As a teen I read his best known ones, The Death of Grass, The World in Winter, A Wrinkle in the Skin, probably several times over.

But as a grown-up, I never really followed up on that. Possibly because, even then in the 70s, just a decade or two after most of them were written, they seemed a bit dated. The male characters were all either very British stiff upper lip types or brash Northerners, the women either game young fillies or hystericals who needed protection.

I found a copy of this book while sorting through stuff at my parents house, and realised that I must have owned it at some point but have no recollection of reading it. To show the age of the copy, it has the price printed on the front cover, that being 3/6.

Having now got round to reading it, it is a slim volume of just over 200 pages and a quick and easy read as I expected it to be, but two things occur to me. The first is that in my youth I may have misjudged his abilities as an author. The characters here, while fitting those categories already stated, are more complex and well rounded than I was expecting. The second is that he knows how to tell a thrilling and suspenseful yarn.

What we have here is an alien invasion story in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. On a far off planet, a parasitical race of intelligent symbiotes inhabit the bodies of the local lifeforms in a kind of master-slave arrangement. Finding that their sun is about to go nova, and having no time for a proper evacuation, they send their spores out into the galaxy in the hope that some might find a planet to thrive on.

One such landed on Earth during the last Ice Age, and has been buried in the ice and snow since. Now a group of English holidaymakers on a skiing holiday become trapped in a remote cabin in the Swiss Alps when an avalanche cuts off the road that leads to the nearest town. But the avalanche also uncovers the alien spore, and one by one it begins to infect the group and take over their bodies.

Christopher keeps the reader guessing as to who will succumb over the course of the book by shifting the point of view character with each successive chapter. In doing so, he also reveals their backstories, presenting us with a pretty damaged bunch. There’s the plastic surgeon whose wife turns a blind eye to his numerous affairs, a young widow who can no longer feel emotion of any kind, the wife of the proprietor who feels trapped and has turned to a secret drinking problem, and a sad sack kind of man who has been in love with a married woman for over a decade and can’t face up to the fact that she will never leave her husband for him.

The adversaries are kept at an arm’s length, meanwhile, they are outside, somewhere, and they can only get in if someone lets their guard down. They remain a creepy but unknown presence, all the more creepy because they are the loved ones or friends of the other characters, and at the same time they are not.

The aforementioned outdated attitudes are present, mostly in the domestic arrangements with the men being the ones to take action while the women cook dinner and brew pots of tea. But the book does manage to do something original with the old “trapped in a remote location with a killer” trope. Christopher keeps the suspense high, and the melodrama adds to the pressure cooker atmosphere rather than distracting from it. Well worth a read.

[D. Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1967 or 68 or whenever I read it, this book scared the bejesus out of me. It was like The Blob or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both relatively new concepts back then of aliens taking over your body or soul or absorbing you. And that’s what this is about: space spores containing a malevolent intelligence that take you over, Body Snatcher style. These particular spores were buried under a Swiss glacier thousands of years ago, where a rather isolated bed-and-breakfast owned by an English couple happens to be when the glacier has receded enough to reveal the spores to a vacationing English schoolboy, who becomes their first victim. And who then marches through the other guests, turning them into spore things, as an inopportune blizzard cuts the B and B off from civilization. So it’s fight the spore people or become one yourself.

Pretty scary stuff when you’re eleven or twelve because you’re just not a very sophisticated reader at that age. Which is why we have middle grade and YA, which we called 'kid' or 'teenage' books back then, so adult angst and nuances didn’t deter budding readers. Because this book has lots of adult angst and nuances, all of which I missed back then and which made this time around a fresh read, even though I knew what was going to happen.

Quite a delight to find levels you missed the first time, isn't it? It’s like going back to Baldur’s Gate and discovering side missions you missed.

What Christopher did, and that I missed, is give each of the characters a fairly complicated back story that is not apparent when they are first introduced, but which teases out as the spores advance their attacks. From the woman who abandoned her family to pursue what she thought was a better life to the sad sack who is still carrying on an affair with a married woman that he knows is doomed, about 95% of the characters are in some kind of existential funk when the spores show up. So it’s either shake off the funks or get eaten.

Christopher is an excellent writer and I can’t recommend him enough, along with his literary twin John Wyndham, both of whom wrote post-apocalyptic stories back when the subgenre was just warming up. That’s mostly when I read both, in the 60s, and it’s been a bit of a refreshment to find out I may have missed half the stories they crafted simply because I wasn’t advanced enough to catch it. So I guess this means they’re due for a re-read.

After I read everything else I need to read, of course.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
On holiday at an English-run chalet in the Swiss Alps, tourists and proprietors are cut off from the world by an avalanche, only to find that something is causing some of them to act very strangely.

Review
As Christopher himself puts it (as a character discussing an in-book story), this is “written bout fairly pleasant people in fairly pleasant prose.” And, frankly, that was a pleasant relief from the tedium of the L.E. Modesitt book I was reading at the same time. Christopher is a dependable, talented author, and he largely comes through here.

The science fiction element here is somewhat ancillary – this is really a book about people and how they respond to each other. Christopher shifts through several perspectives across the book – one per chapter – giving us a chance to get to know many of the key characters better. They’re all engaging, interesting, moderately complex, and fairly ordinary, though some are a touch oversimplified.

Christopher relies on a tried and true device – sudden isolation cuts a group off from civilization, there’s an external threat, and they start being picked off one by one. But, because the characters are so self-absorbed, it never really turns into a horror story. They also do a lot of drinking.

The story comes in two parts – one a setup of the alien beings of the title, and the second about the humans. The human story has a decent (if somewhat easy) conclusion. The alien portion is resolved by implication, but to my mind lost something by not completing the initial framing.

I said above that the characters are self-absorbed, and they are – we hear, in bits and pieces, tidbits about them, their desires, and their prior relationships. But that works fairly well for this story, though it also slows substantially in the middle, when we’ve gotten to know them, but little is really happening. They run close to the verge of whiny before the action saves them from themselves.

[Darryl Sloan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Possessors" reminded me a lot of John Carpenter's movie "The Thing" (which is an adaptation of John W. Campbell's story "Who Goes There?" The setting is similar: not an arctic base, but a ski resort high in the Swiss Alps, which ends up cut off from civilisation due to a nearby avalanche. This also accidentally uncovers an unusual object which had been buried in the snow for centuries. It is discovered by a young boy - the first to fall foul of possession by an alien intelligence. One by one, the humans are taken over - first due to ignorance, but then due to the cunning of the enemy. In the beginning, the humans have the advantage of numbers, but the balance is gradually shifting.

The story is firmly in the vein of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." There's nothing particularly original about it, but it's still really enjoyable. The sense of isolation and dread is palpable. Picture yourself in the warmth of a firelit parlour, surrounded by friends. Somewhere outside, hidden by the mist, are your loved ones (or emotionless things that look like them), staring in at you, impervious to the freezing cold.

The back stories of the characters hamper the pace a little, but give them substance and make them relatable. One thing that I found funny was all the drinking. Every five minutes, the survivors seemed to be reaching for alcoholic comfort - despite the obvious necessity of keeping your wits about you. It happened to often that I thought it was going to be pivotal to the plot, but it wasn't. Just a sign of the times, maybe.

One of the better John Christopher novels that he wrote for adult readers.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Christopher, the author responsible for the exemplary apocalypse novel THE DEATH OF GRASS, here tries his hand at a briefer and more straightforward sci-fi thriller clearly indebted to INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. That's a plus for me, because I find the whole sub-genre to be thoroughly unnerving, best brought to life in the 1978 film version of the Jack Finney which just so happens to be my favourite movie of all time.

This tale's set in the Swiss Alps, where a dozen or so Brits are practising their skiing. Unfortunately for them, an alien lifeform, dormant in the snow, is thawed and latches on to one of their number; familiar shenanigans ensue. It does feel like there's a lot of padding here in the form of endless characterisation, with the leads discussing their woes and spending a lot of time boozing, but I didn't have much of a problem with this material as it's still readable. The sci-fi aspects are kept minimal, which is right, and the thriller and horror aspects are really engaging, especially in the underwritten alien attacks which chilled me to the core. Nothing original, then, but nonetheless a strong stab at this well-established plotline.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

An old but extremely well written little science fiction/horror book from 1965.
In a small Swiss chalet a small group of guests is isolated during a snowstorm Christopher's great writing creates the setting and the characters through dialogue and interaction. This writing style was very enjoyable.

Now, from the prologue we were introduced to the Possessors, one got a subtle picture of a parasitic race that control their hosts, or 'the Possessed' entirely. When the native planet of the possessed faces destruction, spores were scattered into into space in huge numbers, in hope that one or more would reach an habitable world with new host species available and inhabit them.

Just before an avalanche isolates the chalet in the Alps, one of the children finds a blue sphere and falls down dead. But then he seemingly returns for the dead, not quite the same and the Possessors start to pick off the oblivious visitors.

Beautifully written, with a fun concept it was at times quite a slow read. In terms of horror, by 2020's standards it really did not land, but as a fun 's book I was pretty happy with it.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book from the mid-sixties seems to have been initially marketed as a mystery, but it's a mix of SF and horror. A bunch of people staying at a Swiss ski lodge are trapped by an avalanche and one by one find themselves turning into...well, it's hard to say. They're like slightly friendly versions of the zombies from Night of the Living Dead. It's theorized that they have a disease of some kind that they transmit, or that they have become psychologically damaged and are bringing others into their illness. An explanation of sorts is eventually offered (hint: check the title) but honestly, it feels like Christopher wanted to leave it all up in the air and the original publisher coerced him into adding 3 pages that offered an explanation that wasn't fully thought through. Still, I liked this--there is more character development than usual in a what might be seen as SF pulp fiction, and it's interspersed throughout the narrative. I'm quite surprised that this was never made into a movie; nowadays, it seems ripe for development as a streaming series.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel was also a disappointment - in part because I was expecting the wrong genre conventions. I picked it up because it was another book about mind-controlling alien invaders, by the author of the Tripods trilogy I enjoyed as a kid. Unfortunately, this isn't a kids' adventure book. It's an adult horror book.

But even as a horror book, I think it would be a disappointment. The alien spores possess a few people of a party snowed in at an Alpine resort, and the survivors are left besieged in the chalet while being picked off one by one. We never talk with the aliens; our protagonists don't even identify them as aliens until very late in the book; they barely do anything horrible except besiege the chalet and try to get in. I finished it out of a sense of loyalty to the author, but I don't really think it was worth it.

[Michael D Jedlowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great horror/sci-fi. When life-forms from outer space land on earth, they lie in wait for someone to come along and take them over. Little is given about the alien life-forms. The story is largely character driven. Which is not always the case with horror or sci-fi for that matter.

John Christopher is a good writer. His characters are well fleshed out and his prose is not belabored as English writers can sometimes be.

I will definitely be checking out more of his work.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

By far the best of the three Christopher books I've read recently. Whilst this continues to suffer the almost Victorian attitudes toward the female characters, the plot is perfectly paced. The gradual abduction of members of the holidaying party is well handled, and even until the end I could not decide who was going to survive, or if anyone was going to survive.

[Jim Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invasion of the body snatchers in a remote Swiss chalet. The thing meets body snatchers is the vibe with this book. Big house full of characters with a menacing antagonist in the snow. I love the story and the decision making processes and the deduction when finally it dawns on the remaining survivors what they are dealing with.

[Richard Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read everything by John Christopher I could get my hands on in my teens but 'The Possessors' I could not find. (It might well have been banned in 70s South Africa because of the title alone. I mean, Black Beauty was! 😂) This is more horror-sf than his usual eco-thrillers and less interesting. It's 'The Thing' meets 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' but without the first's body-horror and without the second's slow burn paranoia.
It's an okay read but misses so many opportunities. Character's back stories are given but not are particularly memorable, which makes it difficult to care for any of them. They are a bloodless group too; passive until the final five pages. There's no mystery as the prologue tells you exactly the nature of the eponymous 'possessors'. The set up is good: isolated Swiss chalet cut off by an avalanche but no tension is created at all. 'Frank's Missing!' 'Oh dear, time for another drink I guess.' (Everyone spends an inordinate amount of time drinking and eating, something very common in books written after WW II.)
All in all, it's okay but rather dull.

[Kelsey Osos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent take on “invasion of the body snatchers” with a good snowy vibe. The different perspectives add a nice amount of enjoyment, and it’s reasonably tense. Probably not one that will stick with me, but solid all-around if you’re looking for winter horror.

[Derelict Space Sheep · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sort of novel whose publication in 1965 might well have informed Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis as they gravitated Doctor Who towards ‘base under siege’ stories. Christopher postulates an isolated setting and bleak alien invasion scenario, grimly explored through damaged characters.

[Marco Lanzagorta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome

Awesome reading. Brings to mind the horrors from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and Night of the Living Dead.

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit long winded, but an enjoyable story.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reminded me very much of The Thing film. Snowy environment, possessed by a creature and a group of people cut off from the outside world.

[Asen · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF, or rather CNF. I understand that casual, authoritative sexism is par for the course for a book this old, by a male author, and I don’t have the patience for it. YEEEEEEET

[sabisteb aka callisto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Für die englischen Gäste einer kleinen Schweizer Skihütte hätte es eigentlich ein klassischer Winterurlaub werden sollen. Ein wenig Skifahren, ein wenig wandern und am Abend Après Ski. Als eine Lawine die Urlaube von der Außenwelt abschneidet, nimmt das Unheil seinen Lauf. Ein Kind stirbt unter mysteriösen Umständen, um kurz darauf wieder zu erwachen, und zu verschwinden. Kurz darauf verfällt seine Mutter dem Wahnsinn und greift ihren zweiten Sohn an. Der Vater des Jungen steckt sich am Wahnsinn seiner Frau kurz darauf an und die Familie verschwindet in Eis und Schnee, um sich nach und nach die restlichen Gäste der Skihütte vorzunehmen.
John Christophers Idee zu diesem 1964 erschienenen Roman basiert auf Svante Arrhenius Panspermie-Lehre (1906), einer Hypothese, die besagt, dass Leben durch Meteoriten auf die Erde kam, und dass Sporen zwischen Planeten übertragen werden können. Hinzu kommen Einflüsse durch den 1956 erschienenen Film „Die Dämonischen“ (Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
Eine parasitische, vom Aussterben bedrohte Spezies schickt ihre Sporen in die Weite des Weltalls, um ihre Art zu retten.
Prinzipiell eine gute Idee. Das in Kombination, dass John Christophers Stärke in der Charakterisierung von Gesellschaften unter Stress ist, und wie diese in Extremsituationen reagieren, verspricht eigentlich ein spannendes Buch.
In diesem Fall jedoch sind zwei Dinge gehörig schief gelaufen.
Zum einen brauchen die Feriengäste ziemlich lange, um zu begreifen, was passiert. Dann wird stundenlang darüber diskutiert. Die Handlungsweisen und Reaktionen sind schlüssig, nachvollziehbar und logisch, jedoch darum teilweise wohl auch wenig unterhaltend.
Das Buch Beginnt aus der Sichtweise der aussterbenden Spezies. Um ihre Art zu retten, schicken sie ihre Sporen ins All. Das Schicksal der Sporen wird beschrieben. Nur eine Überlebt. Damit ist dem Leser klar, was mit dem Jungen passiert ist. Noch einmal wird die Handlung aus der Sicht der Spore erzählt, nämlich als sie den Jungen übernimmt. Danach Funkstille. Anstatt die Geschichte aus beiden Blickwinkeln zu erzählen, aus der Sicht der Spore, der letzten ihrer Art, die nur überleben und den Fortbestand der eigenen Art sichern will und aus Sicht der Menschen, die ihre Art schützen wollen, wird hier nur der einsame Kampf der Urlauber gegen die Bodysnatcher erzählt. Es wird nicht darauf eingegangen, dass sie damit eine Spezies endgültig auslöschen, es wird nicht darauf eingegangen, wie die Situation aus Sicht der Spore aussieht. Nein hier wird Wache geschoben, Gewürfelt (und der Leser mit Würfelspieljargon gequält) und getrunken. Persönliche Probleme der Urlauber werden durchgekaut und durchleuchtet, aber dennoch bleiben sie einem fremd und fern. Die Urlauber verschwimmen zu einer Gruppe mit den anderen, den Besessenen auf der anderen, feindlichen Seite. Es kann nur eine Gruppe überleben und die Entscheidung muss fallen, bevor die Lawine beseitigt wurde, damit es keine Zeugen gibt.

Leider vorhersehbare, durchschnittliche Bodysnatcher Kost.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Τζον Κρίστοφερ, συγγραφέας του βιβλίου, είναι κυρίως γνωστός στο εξωτερικό για τα βιβλία της εφηβικής σειράς επιστημονικής φαντασίας The Tripods (η τριλογία έχει μεταφραστεί στα ελληνικά), της εφηβικής σειράς φαντασίας The Sword of the Spirits και του δυστοπικού/μετά-αποκαλυπτικού The Death Of Grass, που είναι από τα κλασικότερα βιβλία της κατηγορίας του. Το Οι Δαίμονες, που ο τίτλος στο πρωτότυπο είναι The Possessors και όχι The Devils, όπως λανθασμένα αναφέρεται στην έκδοση του Κάκτου, δεν είναι ούτε από τα γνωστότερα ούτε από τα καλύτερά του βιβλία, παρόλ'αυτά εμένα με άφησε αρκετά ευχαριστημένο.

Σ'ένα μικρό ξενοδοχείο στις ελβετικές Άλπεις, κάτι παράξενο συμβαίνει. Μια μέρα ένα μικρό παιδί ανακαλύπτει μια παράξενη μικρή γαλάζια μπάλα και ξαφνικά πέφτει σε κώμα. Και το ίδιο ξαφνικά, το βράδυ, ανακτά τις αισθήσεις του και εξαφανίζεται μες στο χιόνι. Και μετά έρχεται σ'επαφή με την μητέρα του. Τώρα οι δυο τους έχουν αλλάξει. Και όποιος έρχεται σ'επαφή μαζί τους παθαίνει το ίδιο. Ο αριθμός των "αλλαγμένων" ανθρώπων θ'αρχίσει να μεγαλώνει και οι εναπομείναντες φυσιολογικοί θα πρέπει να υπερασπιστούν τις ζωές τους με κάθε κόστος...

Μην περιμένετε σπλάτερ σκηνές και άφθονη δράση, να περιμένετε όμως μια αρκετά ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία με καλή γραφή, κλειστοφοβική ατμόσφαιρα, αρκετό σασπένς και ένα όχι τόσο ευχάριστο τέλος. Α, και δεν θα σας πάρει πολύ ώρα, είναι πολύ ευκολοδιάβαστο, εγώ μέσα σε τρεισήμισι συνεχόμενες ώρες το τελείωσα. Η ελληνική μετάφραση μου φάνηκε ικανοποιητική, αν και έδειχνε βέβαια τα χρονάκια της.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cd've been as young as 10 or 11 when I read this. I was in an SF bk club & this is one of the bks I got thru that. It was probably pretty adult for me at the time. Looking at it now it seems more like a mystery or horror bk but I've filed it under SF. Christopher's an English writer, maybe this is close to some Ballard. Page 200:

""Men have recorded the abnormalities of themselves and their fellow humans since they learned how to scratch signs on papyrus. I don't know of anything that's anything like what's been happening here. That's why I called it unprecedented. We're faced with something that seems to use human intelligences, but is not human. If it had existed before on the earth, men would have encountered it."

"Elizabeth said, "Intelligence doesn't arise out of nothing. Are you saying that snow and ice have somehow acquired consciousness?""

All I remember of this, if one can even call it remembering, is a vague feeling of eerie foreboding - probably what the author was aiming for & something most likely to be effectual w/ an inexperienced young mind such as my own at the time.