Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Star Maker
    Unavailable
    Star Maker
    Unavailable
    Star Maker
    Ebook326 pages7 hours

    Star Maker

    By Olaf Stapledon

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Star Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years.

    Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. 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 engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.

    A single human narrator from England is transported out of his body via unexplained means. He realizes he is able to explore space and other planets. After exploring a civilization on another planet in our galaxy at a level of development similar to our own that existed millions of years ago thousands of light years from Earth (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 disembodied travelers 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; a reference to a scenario closely predicting the later zoo hypothesis or Star Trek's Prime Directive; many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare; descriptions of the Multiverse; and the idea that the stars and even 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. A symbiotic species, each individual composed of two species, both non-humanoid, is discussed in detail.

    Normally detached from the galaxy's turmoil, they intervene in a deus ex machina to end the threat of a civilization dedicated to the idea of total insanity trying to force its mentality onto one stellar civilization after another. 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, 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".

    After meeting the Star Maker, the traveler is given a "fantastic myth or dream," in which he observes the Star Maker at work. He discovers that his own cosmos is only one of a vast number, and by no means the most significant. He sees the Star Maker's early work, and he learns that the Star Maker was surprised and intensely interested when some of his early "toy" universes — for example a universe composed entirely of music with no spatial dimensions — displayed "modes of behavior that were not in accord with the canon which he had ordained for them." He sees the Star Maker experimenting with more elaborate universes, which include the traveler's own universe, and a triune universe which closely resembles "Christian orthodoxy" (the three universes respectively being hell, heaven, and reality with presence of a savior). 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateNov 30, 2019
    ISBN9781387340279
    Unavailable
    Star Maker

    Read more from Olaf Stapledon

    Related to Star Maker

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      My Own Personal Nothingness: From a childhood hallucination to the halls of theoretical physics.

      Aug 28, 2014

      My most vivid encounter with Nothingness occurred in a remarkable experience I had as a child of 9 years old. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was standing alone in a bedroom of my home in Memphis Tennessee, gazing out the window at the empty street, lis

      12 min read

    • Article

      You only LIVE TWICE

      Apr 14, 2020

      You only LIVE TWICE
      4 min read

    • Article

      Botticelli’s Pin-up

      Jun 29, 2022

      Botticelli’s Pin-up
      3 min read

    • Article

      Ode To The Dinkus

      Jun 8, 2018

      Ode To The Dinkus
      5 min read

    • Article

      Still Streams

      Mar 31, 2020

      Still Streams
      3 min read

    • Article

      Searching for a Soul Mate Is Futile. The Ideal Partner Is the One You Create

      May 20, 2017

      “GIVEN THAT YOU HAVE 500,000,000 POTENTIAL soul mates,” writes Randall Munroe in the science book What If?, “you would find true love only in one lifetime out of 10,000.” A cousin of mine gave a toast along these lines at his brother’s wedding. He c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Australian Sky & Telescope

      Jun 9, 2021

      EDITOR Jonathan Nally ART DIRECTOR Lee McLachlan CONTRIBUTING EDITORS John Drummond, David Ellyard, Alan Plummer, David Seargent, EMAIL info@skyandtelescope.com.au ADVERTISING MANAGER Jonathan Nally EMAIL jonathan@skyandtelescope.com.au Ian Brooks E

      1 min read

    • Article

      Science Of Sci-fi

      Dec 1, 2021

      Science Of Sci-fi
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Myths We Wear

      Mar 20, 2019

      The Myths We Wear
      11 min read

    • Article

      Evil Triumphs in These Multiverses, and God Is Powerless

      Mar 2, 2017

      The challenge that the multiverse poses for the idea of an all-good, all-powerful God is often focused on fine-tuning. If there are infinite universes, then we don’t need a fine tuner to explain why the conditions of our universe are perfect for life

      7 min read

    • Article

      New View Of The Cone Nebula

      Dec 29, 2022

      New View Of The Cone Nebula
      1 min read

    • Article

      'Apsara Engine' Doesn't Break The Graphic Novel Rules — It Ignores Them

      Apr 18, 2020

      Bishakh Som's new comics collection is uncanny and hard to categorize — science-fictiony, mythic and humanistic, without making any particular assumptions about where humans as a species are going.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Why Physicists Make Up Stories in the Dark: In unseen worlds, science invariably crosses paths with fantasy.

      Mar 6, 2014

      For centuries, scientists studied light to comprehend the visible world. Why are things colored? What is a rainbow? How do our eyes work? And what is light itself? These are questions that preoccupied scientists and philosophers since the time of Ari

      15 min read

    • Article

      Curled Thyme

      Dec 6, 2019

      Curled Thyme
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hope Springs

      Feb 22, 2021

      The Thin Places in the title of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s intense memoir-cum-nature book are “places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in”. They are pools of stillness in a “broken, burning and bleeding world”. They are remote havens where t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Is Consciousness Fractal?

      May 4, 2017

      In one way, Jackson Pollock’s mathematics was ahead of its time. When the reclusive artist poured paint from cans onto vast canvases laid out across the floor of his barn in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he created splatters of paint that seemed co

      9 min read

    • Article

      How to Build a Probability Microscope: The surprising mathematics of the extremely rare.

      Jan 26, 2017

      If the rumors are true, 20th Century Fox will release a remake of the 1966 science-fiction film Fantastic Voyage in the next year or two. The conceit behind the film is that its protagonists are shrunk down and injected into the human body, through w

      9 min read

    Reviews for Star Maker

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words