[What makes The Heaven Makers] unique among mind-invasion science fiction stories is [its] historical orientation. [It attributes] the madness and misery of past and present to mind-warping incubi—vampires feeding on man's creative energy or string-holders of the Punch-and-Judy show called history, whose scenario human beings imagine they have written. (pp. 111-12)

The Heaven Makers stirs recollections of Samuel Johnson's satiric criticism, "A Review of Soame Jenyns' A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil." "He [Jenyns] imagines," Johnson writes, "that as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure or utility." Johnson proceeds to demolish Jenyns' speculations, pricking him with exquisite ridicule, and concludes, "The only end of writing is to enable the readers...