Star Maker is an influential
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
novel by
Olaf StapledonWilliam Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...
, written in 1937.
Star Maker is a cornerstone work of science fiction. Stapledon 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 MenLast 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...
, 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.
Star Maker is an influential
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
novel by
Olaf StapledonWilliam Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...
, written in 1937.
Overview
Star Maker is a cornerstone work of science fiction. Stapledon 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 MenLast 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...
, 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. The narrator starts with a concern at the clash of ideas on Earth and finds analogies to both
communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
and
fascismFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
among the
aliensExtraterrestrial life is defined as life which does not originate from planet Earth. The existence of life outside the planet is theoretical and all assertions of such life remain disputed....
he visits.
A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning
genetic engineeringGenetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology, genetic modification/manipulation and gene splicing are terms that apply to the direct manipulation of an organism's genes. Genetic engineering is different from traditional breeding, where the organism's genes are manipulated indirectly...
and alien life forms. Arthur Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.
Science in Star Maker
Some of the
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
described in
Star Maker has since been shown to be inaccurate, but much of the book is still thought to be correct. Astronomical scales would have to be adjusted by a few orders of magnitude, but the overall scale of time and space is as valid now as then. Stapledon is an author 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)align="right"| |}-Detailed List:To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various lengths between 1.6 m and 1.3 m.-Subatomic:-Atomic to Cellular:
...
and
orders of magnitude (time)-Seconds:-Years:The pages linked in the right-hand column contain lists of times that are of the same order of magnitude . Rows in the table represent increasing powers of a thousand ....
, in particular
1 E19 s and moreTo help compare orders of magnitude of different times, this page lists times longer than 1019 seconds . See also Heat death of the universe.-Half lives:Some radioisotopes have extremely long half-lives:...
as well as the modern view of the
ultimate fate of the universeThe ultimate fate of the universe is a topic in physical cosmology. Many possible fates are predicted by rival scientific theories, including futures of both finite and infinite duration....
.
Stapledon imagines alien biologies, minds and civilizations radically different from human ones. But unlike Stanisław Lem's
SolarisSolaris is a Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem , published in Warsaw in 1961 and is his best known work in English translation. While the narration suggests that humans study the planet, the opposite seems to be the case, where the titular alien planet, Solaris, examines the secret and...
, all these are supposed to be fundamentally similar in the long run, since all are governed by the same
DarwinianCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
and
MarxistMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
laws of development.
Some of Stapledon's ideas for alien minds, such as
collective intelligenceCollective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals. Collective intelligence appears in a wide variety of forms of consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans, and computer networks...
, seem far ahead of their time, anticipating recent ideas about
swarm intelligenceSwarm intelligence is a type of artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems....
and the general fascination with networks. He also mentions the idea of
virtual realityVirtual reality is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world...
in the first alien world visited, in the form of an apparatus that directly affects sense centers in the brain. The idea of entire worlds as spacecraft is used several times.
Reputation
The novel is one of the most highly acclaimed in science fiction. 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 were
H. G. WellsHerbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary....
,
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
,
C. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist...
,
Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , best known as Jorge Luis Borges, was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and...
,
Brian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is a prolific English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by SF pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
and
Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH, OBE is a Iranian-born British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook.In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature...
. Borges wrote a prologue for a 1965 edition and called it “a prodigious novel”. Lessing wrote an afterword for a UK edition. Among SF writers,
Arthur C. ClarkeSri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, a collaboration which also produced the film of the same name; and as a...
has been most strongly influenced by Stapledon. Critics of the novel tend to see it as full of interesting ideas but its writing as dry, characterless, difficult, and even scientifically implausible at points.
Plot
The book begins with a single human
narratorA narrator is, within any story , the entity that conveys the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind...
from
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
who is, via unexplained means, transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. After exploring another 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
snowballingThe definition of snowballing can be refer to:Economy:* A situation in which the exercise of stop orders in a declining market or advancing market or specific share creates further downward or upward pressure, triggering more stop orders, magnifying the decline or advance.* Debt-snowball method: A...
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 sphereA Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output...
, reference to a scenario closely predicting the later
zoo hypothesisThe zoo hypothesis is one of a number of suggestions that have been advanced in response to the Fermi paradox, regarding the apparent absence of evidence in support of the existence of advanced extraterrestrial life...
or Star Trek's
Prime DirectiveIn the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet's General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of pre-warp civilizations, consistent...
http://www.spacearchaeology.org/2008/01/zoo-hypothesis-prime-directive.html, many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare, and the idea that the stars and even the pre-galactic
nebulaA nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and plasma...
e are intelligent beings, operating on vast time scales. A key idea is the formation of collective minds from many
telepathicallyTelepathy is supposed to be the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five senses . The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H...
linked individuals, on the level of planets, galaxies, and eventually the
cosmosIn its most general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from a Greek term κόσμος meaning "order, orderly arrangement, ornaments," and is the antithetical concept of chaos. Today the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The words cosmetics and...
itself.
The
climaxThe climax or turning point of a narrative work is its point of highest tension or drama or when the action starts in which the solution is given.
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 cynical point of view vis à vis
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
seems to be a distillation of Stapledon's readings in philosophy; most notably the works of Spinoza, and the more cynical philosophical ideas of the nineteenth century. Stapledon articulated these ideas to their fullest extent within a framework of modern cosmology) This element makes the novel one of Stapledon's efforts to write "an essay in
mythMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
making".
- The Earth
- The Starting Point
- Earth among the Stars
- Interstellar Travel
- The Other Earth
- On the Other Earth
- A Busy World
- Prospects of the Race
- I Travel Again
- Worlds Innumerable
- The Diversity of Worlds
- Strange Mankinds
- Nautiloids
- Intimations of the Star Maker
- More Worlds
- A Symbiotic Race
- Composite Beings
- Plant Men and Others
- Concerning the Explorers
- The Community of Worlds
- Busy Utopias
- Intermundane Strife
- A Crisis in Galactic History
- Triumph in a Sub-Galaxy
- The Tragedy of the Perverts
- A Galactic Utopia
- A Vision of the Galaxy
- Stars and Vermin
- The Many Galaxies
- Disaster in Our Galaxy
- Stars
- Galactic Symbiosis
- A Stunted Cosmical Spirit
- The Beginning and the End
- Back to the Nebulae
- The Supreme Moment Nears
- The Supreme Moment and After
- The Myth of Creation
- The Maker and his Works
- Immature Creating
- Mature Creating
- The Ultimate Cosmos and the Eternal Spirit
- Epilogue: Back to Earth
- Appendix: A Note on Magnitude
External links