Name: Star Maker
Rating: 4.09375 (16 reviews)
ISBN: 9780819566935

Olaf Stapledon

Patrick A. McCarthy

Star Maker

'A prodigious novel ... Stapledon's literary imagination was boundless' Jorge Luis Borges A lasting influence on successive generations of science fiction writers and on the physicist Freeman Dyson, this poetic, philosophical tale of one man's unexpected voyage through the universe is imbued with a sense of mystery and vast cosmic loneliness. 'The most wonderful novel I have ever read ... Star Maker remains light years ahead' Brian Aldiss 'Probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written' Arthur C. Clarke 'A unique genius' Doris Lessing 'One of the most creative thinkers of our time' Greg Bear

Interesting, very definitely unique, but also possibly now feeling dated in style and language. Worthwhile persisting with, but be prepared for it to take a while to get through.

Alastair Temple

One moment a man sits on a suburban hill, gazing curiously at the stars. The next, he is whirling through the firmament, and perhaps the most remarkable of all science fiction journeys has begun. Even Stapledon's other great work, LAST AND FIRST MEN, pales in ambition next to STAR MAKER, which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of life in the universe, encompassing billions of years.

Justin Jerome Price

In many ways, Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon is not a science fiction novel. Not in the traditional sense anyway. This is not to say that the story does not partake in science fiction tropes. In fact, the story has codified many conventions and tropes that many stories of the genre employ to this day. A prototype of the dyson sphere--a superstructure surrounding a star designed to harvest solar energy--makes an appearance in this book. Concepts such as life extension through genetic modification, colonizing new worlds, exploring cultures much different and foreign than one’s own--many of these concepts appear within this novel and arguably sets the stage for many other science fiction stories and series. And yet this story does not seek to be a traditional science fiction story. In many ways, the novel seeks to transcend this simple categorization and seeks to be an attempt at mythmaking. And while in the author’s glossary he does admit that this story is a crude form of myth, it is not from a lack of imagination or scope that this story is crude. The story seeks to answer several big questions regarding the purpose of humanity, if there is life on other planets and what form of intelligence it would take, and if there is a God or Star Maker as the story begins to refer to such a being that we would consider God from the beginning of the story. Due to this broad scope, the plot does suffer from both a lack of focus and poor pacing. Furthermore, while the book is very imaginative in scope, this also hurts the story in terms of being able to convey what is happening in the story. This story, in many ways, requires the reader to have a strong suspension of disbelief or be familiar with the concept of process theology and certain eschatological positions concerning the soul reuniting with the Creator to fully appreciate the story. Still, I did find myself fully engrossed by this story. While the story does bite off more than it could possibly chew, I do find the concepts it raise regarding the universal struggle of society to overcome its baser instincts in regards to xenophobia and classism, the idea of different societies from different species joining together an enthralling and very pertinent for today’s society.

Star Maker

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