“I find it difficult to summarize the main interests and influences in my life. Philosophy, in spite of a late attack, has always taken a high place. Formerly English literature dominated. Science, though I lacked scientific training, was first a sort of gospel and later something the fundamental principles of which must be carefully criticized. It took me long to realize both its true value and its mischief. In politics I accept the label Socialist, though all labels are misleading. My chief recreations have been foreign travel, and rough walking with a very small spot of rock climbing. I am addicted to swimming, and I like the arduous and brainless side of gardening."
* * *
Mr. Stapledon writes occasionally on ethics and philosophy for the technical and scholarly reviews. He is primarily not a novelist but a philosopher, and his style is sometimes cumbersome and crude, but the originality and brilliance of his thought outweighs these disadvantages. Elmer Davis, though he acknowledged that "fiction is a tool he uses awkwardly," said of Mr. Stapledon's first and most successful novel that it is "perhaps the boldest and most intelligently imaginative book of our times." Stapledon himself considers Star Maker "by far the best" of his novels. He is striking in appearance, with thick dark hair, deep-set eyes, and a lined, brooding face.
Bibliography
Fiction:
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930)
Last Men in London (1932)
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest (1935)
Star Maker (1937)
Darkness and the Light (1942)
Old Man in New World (short story, 1944)
Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord (1944)
Death into Life (1946)
The Flames: A Fantasy (1947)
A Man Divided (1950)
Four Encounters (1976)
Nebula Maker (drafts of Star Maker, 1976)
Non-fiction:
A Modern Theory of Ethics: A study of the Relations of Ethics and Psychology (1929)
Waking World (1934)
Saints and Revolutionaries (1939)
New Hope for Britain (1939)
Philosophy and Living, 2 volumes (1939)
Beyond the “Isms” (1942)
Seven Pillars of Peace (1944)
Youth and Tomorrow (1946)
The Opening of the Eyes (ed. Agnes Z. Stapledon, 1954)
Poetry:
Latter-Day Psalms (1914)
Collections:
Worlds of Wonder: Three Tales of Fantasy (1949)
To the End of Time: the Best of Olaf Stapledon (ed. Basil Davenport, 1953)
Far Future Calling: Uncollected Science Fiction and Fantasies of Olaf Stapledon (ed. Sam Moskowitz, 1979)
An Olaf Stapledon Reader (ed. Robert Crossley, 1997)
Table of Contents
STAR MAKER
Enter the SF Gateway
Contents
Foreword
CHAPTER 1 - THE EARTH
1. THE STARTING POINT
2. EARTH AMONG THE STARS
CHAPTER 2 - INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL
CHAPTER 3 - THE OTHER EARTH
1. ON THE OTHER EARTH
2. A BUSY WORLD
3. PROSPECTS OF THE RACE
CHAPTER 4 - I TRAVEL AGAIN
CHAPTER 5 - WORLDS INNUMERABLE
1. THE DIVERSITY OF WORLDS
2. STRANGE MANKINDS
3. NAUTILOIDS
CHAPTER 6 - INTIMATIONS OF THE STAR MAKER
CHAPTER 7 - MORE WORLDS
1. A SYMBOLIC RACE
3. COMPOSITE BEINGS
3. PLANT MEN AND OTHERS
CHAPTER 8 - CONCERNING THE EXPLORERS
CHAPTER 9 - COMMUNITY OF WORLDS
1. BUSY UTOPIAS
2. IN MUNDANE STRIFE
3. A CRISIS IN GALACTIC HISTORY
4. TRIUMPH IN A SUB-GALAXY
5. THE TRAGEDY OF THE PERVERTS
6. A GALACTIC UTOPIA
CHAPTER 10 - A VISION OF THE GALAXY
CHAPTER 11 - STARTS AND VERMIN
1. THE MANY GALAXIES
2. DISASTER IN OUR GALAXY
3. STARS
4. GALACTIC SYMBIOSIS
CHAPTER 12 - A STUNTED COSMICAL SPIRIT
CHAPTER 13 - THE BEGINNING AND THE END
1. BACK TO THE NEBULAE
2. THE SUPREME MOMENT NEARS
3. THE SUPREME MOMENT AND AFTER
CHAPTER 14 - THE MYTH OF CREATION
CHAPTER 15 - THE MAKER AND HIS WORKS
1. IMMATURE CREATING
2. MATURE CREATING
3. THE ULTIMATE COSMOS AND THE ETERNAL SPIRIT
CHAPTER 16 - EPILOGUE: BACK TO EARTH
Time Scales
About the Author
Bibliography
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
Poetry:
Collections:
Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
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