Olaf Stapledon

'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

Star Maker

里森

ONE NIGHT WHEN I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill.

There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone.

How could I describe our relationship even to myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with the tawdry decoration of sentimentality?

And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of stars.

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

Was man indeed, as he sometimes desired to be, the growing point of the cosmical spirit, in its temporal aspect at least? Or was he one of many million growing points? Or was mankind of no more importance in the universal view than rats in a cathedral? And again, was man’s true function power, or wisdom, or love, or worship, or all of these? Or was the idea of function, of purpose, meaningless in relation to the cosmos?

I reminded myself that stars with planets must be as rare in the galaxy as gems among the grains of sand on the sea-shore.

During my last years on the Other Earth a system was invented by which a man could retire to bed for life and spend all his time receiving radio programmes. His nourishment and all his bodily functions were attended to by doctors and nurses attached to the Broadcasting Authority. In place of exercise he received periodic massage.

Ideology as a substitute for religion following the death of God

in the two great Communist countries the officially organized ‘irreligion’ was becoming a religion in all but name. It had its institutions, its priesthood, its ritual, its morality, its system of absolution, its metaphysical doctrines, which, though devoutly materialistic, were none the less superstitious. And the flavour of deity had been displaced by the flavour of the proletariat.

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