William Olaf Stapledon

"STAR MAKER", regarded as one of the true classics of science fiction, Star Maker is a poetic and deeply philosophical work. The story details the mental journey of an unnamed narrator who is transported not only to other worlds but also other galaxies and parallel universes, until he eventually becomes part of the "COSMIC MIND.." Book, First published in 1937, Olaf Stapledon's descriptions of alien life are a political commentary on human life in the turbulent inter-war years. The book challenges preconceived notions of intelligence and awareness, and ultimately argues for a broadened perspective that would free us from culturally ingrained thought and our inevitable anthropomorphism. This is the first scholarly edition of a book that influenced such writers as C.S. LEWIS and ARTHUR C. CLARKE and which JORGE LUIS BORGES called "a prodigious novel.."

A Prodigious Novel

Star Maker

IS IT credible that our world should have two futures? I have seen them. Two entirely distinct futures lie before mankind, one dark, one bright; one the defeat of all man's hopes, the betrayal of all his ideals, the other their hard-won triumph.At some date within the age that we call modern, some date not precisely known to me, for I looked back towards it from the distant futures as though searching in my remote past, the single torrent of terrestrial events is split, as though by a projecting promontory, so that it becomes thenceforth two wholly distinct and mutually exclusive surging floods of intricate existence, each one a coherent and actual history, in which the lives of countless generations succeed one another along separate ravines of time.

Darkness and the Light

He was born in Seacombe, Wallas, on the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool, the only son of William Clibbert Staple don and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said.

Star Maker Illustrated

After I had changed into dry clothes I stuffed myself with a good farm-house high tea. How do they manage it in these times of scarcity? Thoughts of starving German children did occur to me, but I am ashamed to confess that they did not spoil my meal. I sat down to read in the decrepit armchair by the fire. But the day of fresh air had made me drowsy, and I found myself just sitting and gazing at the bright embers. Curiously I had forgotten about my stone since the moment when I had arrived and put it on the mantelpiece. Now, with a little shock I remembered it, reached for it, and examined it in the light of the oil lamp.It still appeared to be just an ordinary stone, a little bit of some kind of igneous rock. Using my field-glass, back to front, as a magnifier, I still found nothing unusual about it. It was a commonplace medley of little nodules and crystals all jambed together, and weathered into a uniform greenish grey. Here and there I saw minute black marks that might perhaps be little holes, the mouths of microscopic caves. I thought of breaking the stone, to see what it was like inside; but no sooner had the idea occurred to me than I was checked by a wave of superstitious horror. Such an act, I felt, would have been sacrilege.I fell into a reverie about the stone's antiquity. How many millions of years, I wondered, had passed since its molten substance had congealed? For aeons it had lain waiting, a mere abstract volume, continuous with a vast bulk of identical rock. Then miners had blasted the rock, and brought the debris to the surface. And there it had lain, perhaps for a whole human generation, a mere moment of geological time. Well, what next? A sudden thought struck me. Why not let the little stone enjoy once more some measure of the heat that it had so long lacked? This time no horror stayed me. I threw the stone into the fire, into the glowing centre of the little furnace that my kind landlady had prepared for me on that frosty evening.The cold stone produced a dark patch in its fiery environment; but the fire was a hot one, and very soon the surrounding heat had re-invaded its lost territory. I watched with a degree of excitement that seemed quite unjustified. After a while the stone itself began to glow. I piled on fresh fuel, carefully leavitig a hole through which I could watch the stone. Presently it was almost as bright as the surrounding coal. After all those millions of years it was at last alive once more! Foolish thought! Of course it was not alive: and my excitement was ridiculous, childish. I must pull myself together. But awe, and unreasoning dread, still gripped rue.Suddenly a minute white flame appeared to issue from the stone itself. It grew, till it was nearly an inch tall; and stood for a moment, in the draught of the fire. It was the most remarkable flamelet that I had ever seen, a little incandescent leaf or seedling, or upstanding worm, leaning in the breeze. Its core seemed to be more brilliant than its surface, for the dazzlng interior was edged with a vague, yellowish aura. Near the flame's tip, surprisingly, was a ring or bulging collar of darkness, but the tip itself was a point of brilliant peacock blue. Certainly this was no ordinary flame, though it fluttered and changed its shape in the air-current much like any other flame.

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The Flames

William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 - 6 September 1950) - known as Olaf Stapledon - was a British philosopher and author of science fiction.[1][2] In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

VICTOR HAD REFUSED his bride at the altar! That was the brute fact which agitated the little party in the vestry. No amount of explanation could mitigate it. As best man I had been in a good position to observe events; and even I, who had formerly been fairly intimate with Victor, was completely taken by surprise. True, I had long suspected that there was something queer about him; but up to the very moment of his quietly shattering remark, as he put the ring into his pocket, I had no idea that anything serious was amiss.

A Man Divided

Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator.

Star Maker Annotated

The Star Maker is the creator of the universe, but stands in the same relation to it as an artist to his work, and calmly assesses its quality without any feeling for the suffering of its inhabitants. This element makes the novel one of Staple don's efforts to write "an essay in myth making".

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates genetic engineering, and the idea of superminds composed of many telepathically-linked individuals. A controversial part of the book depicts humans, in the far-off future, escaping the dying Earth and settling on Venus-in the process totally exterminating its native inhabitants, a marine intelligent species. Stapledon's book has been interpreted by some as condoning such interplanetary genocide as a justified act if necessary for racial survival, though a number of Stapledon's partisans denied that such was his intention, arguing instead that Stapledon was merely showing that although mankind had advanced in a number of ways in the future, at bottom it still possessed the same capacity for savagery as it has always had. He was born in Seacombe, Wallasey, on the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool, the only son of William Clibbert Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said. He was educated at Abbotsholme School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA in Modern History in 1909 and a Master's degree in 1913[citation needed]. After a brief stint as a teacher at Manchester Grammar School, he worked in shipping offices in Liverpool and Port Said from 1910 to 1913.

William Olaf Stapledon

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