Star Maker
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Star Maker (1937) is a cornerstone work of science fiction by Olaf Stapledon, in which he undertakes the immense task of describing the entire history of life in the universe. It dwarfs in scale even his 1930 book Last and First Men, which is a history of the human species over two billion years. It tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator, and it succeeds in evoking a sense of the sheer scale and complexity of the cosmos. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure, if crudely, later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. It has long been considered to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.
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Science in Star Maker
The science in Star Maker shows its age, but much of the book is much less dated than one could expect for something written in 1937. Astronomical scales would have to be adjusted by a few orders of magnitude, but the overall sense of vastness in time and space is as valid now as then. Stapledon is one of very few authors of science fiction who takes interstellar and galactic distances seriously. Some editions contain a timeline (over billions of years) for the book. It may be instructive to compare these with modern conceptions of Orders of magnitude (length) and Orders of magnitude (time), in particular 1 E19 s and more as well as the modern view of the ultimate fate of the universe.
Stapledon imagines alien biologies, minds and civilizations radically different from human ones. But unlike Lem's Solaris, all these are supposed to be fundamentally similar in the long run, since all are governed by the same Darwinian and Marxist laws of development. These views, rooted in the late 19th and early 20th century, may appear dated to some modern readers. The eclectic mix of popular science, Socialism and religious mysticism is Stapledon's own.
Some of Stapledon's ideas for alien minds, i.e. collective intelligence, seem far ahead of their time, anticipating recent ideas about swarm intelligence and the general fascination with networks.
Criticisms
Critics of the novel see it as dry, characterless, difficult, and even scientifically implausible at points. However, its admirers at the time of first publication saw it as one of the most brilliant, inventive, and daring science fiction books. Among its more famous admirers was the writer Virginia Woolf. Among SF writers, Arthur C. Clarke has been strongly influenced by Stapledon.
Plot
The book begins with a single human narrator from England who is, via unexplained means, transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. After exploring one other planet (the "Other Earth") in some detail, his mind merges with that of one of its inhabitants, and as they travel together they are joined by still more minds or group-minds. This snowballing process is paralleled by the expansion of the book's scale, describing more and more planets in less and less detail.
The travellers encounter many ideas that are interesting from both science-fictional and philosophical points of view. These include the first known instance of what is now called the Dyson sphere, many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare, and the idea that the stars and even the pre-galactic nebulae are intelligent beings, operating on vast time-scales. A key idea is the formation of collective minds from many telepathically linked individuals, on the level of planets, galaxies, and eventually the cosmos itself.
The climax of the book is the "supreme moment of the cosmos", when the cosmical mind (which includes the narrator) attains momentary contact with the "Star Maker" of the title. 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 Stapledon's efforts to write "an essay in myth making".
References
- A paperback edition has appeared in the SF Masterworks series.fr:Créateur d'étoiles