The novel “The Philosopher’s Stone” by Colin Wilson was published for the first time in 1969.

Howard Lester is just a kid when he meets Sir Alastair Lyell and discover that he share with him a passion for science and music. Soon, Lyell becomes like a second father to the boy, who lives more with him than with his own family.

When his mentor dies, Howard contacts his family and ends up getting in touch with other people that expand his interests. After spending a long time studying problem of longevity, he starts investigating the expansion of mental skills. Over the years, along with colleague Henry Littleway he performs various experiments but also discovers the existence of the Great Old Ones and the possible dangers posed by them.

Colin Wilson is an author who has had a quite unique career. He became famous first as a philosopher despite being basically self-taught and later as a novelist. He also wrote works dedicated to mysticism and the paranormal and sometimes the boundaries between his activities are difficult to establish.

The novel “The Philosopher’s Stone” is the typical case in which Colin Wilson uses fiction to express his philosophical concepts. It in fact tells through a sort of diary of the protagonist the research that originally aimed to investigate longevity and then expands to focus on mental skills.

Many initial bases of the protagonist’s research are real and especially in the first part of the novel real scientists and philosophers are mentioned. Going on with the novel, Colin Wilson increasingly uses wild speculation including many elements of archeological science fiction and other novels passed off as truth.

The boundaries between science, philosophy, pure speculation and science fiction become sometimes difficult to find, also because Colin Wilson gets into meta-narrative. For example, he mentions the Voynich manuscript, a code of the 15th century that really exists and no one has yet managed to decipher but also H.P. Lovecraft and the Necronomicon.

It can be said that the expansion of mental skills obtained by the protagonist goes hand in hand with the expansion of speculation and science fiction elements. Thanks to the initial real bases, what comes after it becomes almost plausible. The links between Stonehenge, Chichen Itza almost seem to make sense and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, strongly connected to Wilson’s ones, almost seem a real possibility.

The fundamental problem of “The Philosopher’s Stone” in my opinion is that it’s too much an essay of philosophical speculation and too little a novel. The plot is an excuse to bury the reader under a flood of bits from philosophers, scientists of various types and even musicians used, often in great detail, by Colin Wilson for his many speculations.

To some readers this way to develop “The Philosopher’s Stone” may be cause for appreciation but it’s the reason why it’s a controlversial novel. Many speculations are intriguing but their amount and their development can be daunting. For example, I think certain parts could have very well been left out such as the diversion about Shakespeare.

The result is a novel in which the pace is very slow and the characters are also sacrificed in a story totally idea-oriented. The part about the Great Old Ones, which in my opinion was potentially the most evocative, comes only at the end and is short despite the fact that is the one mentioned in the synopses of “The Philosopher’s Stone”. In the end, it’s in part a Lovecraftian novel written in a style completely different from Lovecraft’s.

Unfortunately Colin Wilson has a style that seems made to take away my pleasure of reading his works, especially those heavy under the philosophical point of view such as “The Philosopher’s Stone”. It’s no coincidence that the opinions of this novel are very mixed and for these reasons I only recommend it to people interested in strongly idea-oriented stories.