Two excellent book-length studies have appeared in this country over the past three years, and about ten years back, one English enthusiast, Harvey Satty, announced the formation of an Olaf Stapledon Society. But there are plenty of signs that an awakened interest in Olaf Stapledon is finally beginning to take hold. More ambitious, far-reaching and mind-boggling than any other SF practitioner, this English philosophy teacher who died thirty-five years ago is still far from becoming a household name, either in the U.S. No one in the whole field of science fiction has worked on as broad a canvas - the remaining two billion years of mankind ( Last and First Men), the birth and death of the cosmos ( Star Maker) - or delved into such mystical, arcane matters as the psychology and aesthetics of stars in their dancing orbits, or plant men who function as vegetables by day and as animals by night. Without Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), science fiction classics as diverse as Childhood’s End, Dune, the Foundation trilogy, Methusaleh’s Children, More Than Human, The Sirens of Titan, Solaris, and 2001: A Space Odyssey might never have existed. He said that he hadn’t reread it since the 60s, “but of course, once you’ve read it, you can never forget it.” - J.R.

One anecdotal epilogue to Jorge Luis Borges’s interest in Star Maker, cited at the end of this piece: I was lucky enough to attend a public discussion with Borges at the University of California, Santa Barbara shortly before his death, and asked him at the time to comment on this book. Although having just seen the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s original and powerful experimental feature loosely based on Last and First Men, released earlier this year, I wonder if that might also serve the same function. (Dover has excellent editions pairing Last and First Men with Star Maker and Odd John with Sirius, and An Olaf Stapledon Reader, edited by Robert Crossley, which Syracuse University Press published in 1997, includes all of The Flames and samplings from the others.) Although I don’t have much to say here about Odd John, this novel may actually serve as the best single introduction to Stapledon’s work.

I can happily report that Stapledon’s work has garnered a lot more attention since 1985, including a book-length study by Leslie Fiedler, and all the fiction discussed here is currently in print (or was when I last posted this), which wasn’t true back then.

As I recall now, the main reason for the pseudonym was my unhappiness with the editor’s thoughtless editing I’ve tried to repair a little of the damage here, and also added a few details. Published under a pseudonym in the August 1985 issue of High Times.

Star maker novel