Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Magnum Books, Methuen Paperbacks. (1979), Paperback, 272 pages
Description
At a moment when Europe is in danger of a catastrophe worse than that of 1914 a book like this may be condemned as a distraction from the desperately urgent defence of civilization against modern barbarism.
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
Science fiction should have plenty of the wonder factor and I found Star Maker to be almost mind expanding. Stapledon is describing the birth and death of the whole cosmos, no less and is doing it from a first person perspective. I read the first half of this book late at night and later had the
Stapledon's book has long been regarded as a science fiction classic, receiving plenty of critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937 and today it features in the science fiction 'masterwork' series. That is quite an achievement for a book that hardly has a storyline: it is more of a framework for Stapledon to hang his theories about how galaxies were formed, how life emerged and how it eventually died, or was destroyed because of the machinations of the Star Maker. There is some philosophy some science, some world building and plenty of ideas about the life forms that pulse through the cosmos.
The speaker of the book is a man very much like Stapledon himself who walks up onto a hillside above the suburb where he lives, reflecting on the world below him (he can make out his bungalow where his wife has switched on the lights as night comes down). He gazes up at the stars and finds himself lost in the looking, so much so that he has an out of body experience and sees himself as a point of light rushing up towards the stars. This is the start of a most incredible journey as he vaguely wonders if he has died, but his experiences of travelling through space push those thoughts to the background. After a very long journey where he appears to have travelled way beyond the solar system to one of the arms of the milky way, winking in and out of time itself, he eventually arrives on a planet a little like earth which he calls the other earth. There is humanoid life on the planet and the speaker finds he is able to lodge himself within the mind of one of the aliens. He lives within the mind of Bvalltu becoming a sort of surrogate partner until he is also ready to join with the speaker to explore the universe and they both set off visiting other planets, collecting more minds along the way until they form a community of explorers/watchers. Time has no meaning for them as they watch various life forms struggle to what the speaker calls "The Awakened State". Very few civilizations achieve the utopia of this world community in which every person is a valued member, but it is only when they get to this stage that they can advance further into a more spiritual existence.
The watchers discover that they can travel backwards and forwards through time and in a search for the meaning of life they are able to watch the cosmos grow from its first inception to maturity and then slowly die as it's stars burn out. They discover that the very stars are a life force and eventually they have a dream or vision of the Star Maker itself. The Speaker is able to report on the various ages of the galaxy from the time of the isolated worlds to the time when interstellar travel is possible to a time when empires are formed as the inhabitants struggle to obtain a galactic community/mentality before moving further towards a cosmic mentality. Everything must die in the end and the futility of existence for those who seek answers to their questions becomes an insistent theme.
In the preface to his book Stapledon sets out his own state of mind when he was writing just before the second world war:
At a moment when Europe is in danger of a catastrophe worse than that of 1914 a book like this may be condemned as a detraction from the desperately urgent defence of civilization against modern barbarianism
The fight against barbarianism is a constant theme of the book and it is no surprise that homo sapiens are not one of the species that make it even as far as a world community. There are however more enlightened civilizations that do survive and Stapledon indulges in describing some of the most important civilizations that become leading players in the galactic community. These are the passages in the book that I enjoyed the most when the author can allow his fertile imagination to run ahead. He is also effective in describing the advanced civilizations battling against a decaying cosmos and he does a pretty good job with the creation of the galaxies. And what of the Star Maker itself? all to possible perhaps.
The science in the book holds up pretty well and Stapledon manages to pitch it at a level where many people will be able to grasp the concepts. In a book without a real story line there are some longuers and it can be a little repetitive. Stapledon writes well enough, but he is no poet and although he manages to induce a sense of wonder his writing at times is less than magical, but this does not stop it becoming a wonderful exercise in fiction writing. A bit of a milestone in the science fiction genre and with ideas enough to satisfy any literary criteria. A Five star book
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most weird dreams, so weird in fact that I thought I had better finish the thing the next morning. These days, dreams are the nearest I get to mind expansionStapledon's book has long been regarded as a science fiction classic, receiving plenty of critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937 and today it features in the science fiction 'masterwork' series. That is quite an achievement for a book that hardly has a storyline: it is more of a framework for Stapledon to hang his theories about how galaxies were formed, how life emerged and how it eventually died, or was destroyed because of the machinations of the Star Maker. There is some philosophy some science, some world building and plenty of ideas about the life forms that pulse through the cosmos.
The speaker of the book is a man very much like Stapledon himself who walks up onto a hillside above the suburb where he lives, reflecting on the world below him (he can make out his bungalow where his wife has switched on the lights as night comes down). He gazes up at the stars and finds himself lost in the looking, so much so that he has an out of body experience and sees himself as a point of light rushing up towards the stars. This is the start of a most incredible journey as he vaguely wonders if he has died, but his experiences of travelling through space push those thoughts to the background. After a very long journey where he appears to have travelled way beyond the solar system to one of the arms of the milky way, winking in and out of time itself, he eventually arrives on a planet a little like earth which he calls the other earth. There is humanoid life on the planet and the speaker finds he is able to lodge himself within the mind of one of the aliens. He lives within the mind of Bvalltu becoming a sort of surrogate partner until he is also ready to join with the speaker to explore the universe and they both set off visiting other planets, collecting more minds along the way until they form a community of explorers/watchers. Time has no meaning for them as they watch various life forms struggle to what the speaker calls "The Awakened State". Very few civilizations achieve the utopia of this world community in which every person is a valued member, but it is only when they get to this stage that they can advance further into a more spiritual existence.
The watchers discover that they can travel backwards and forwards through time and in a search for the meaning of life they are able to watch the cosmos grow from its first inception to maturity and then slowly die as it's stars burn out. They discover that the very stars are a life force and eventually they have a dream or vision of the Star Maker itself. The Speaker is able to report on the various ages of the galaxy from the time of the isolated worlds to the time when interstellar travel is possible to a time when empires are formed as the inhabitants struggle to obtain a galactic community/mentality before moving further towards a cosmic mentality. Everything must die in the end and the futility of existence for those who seek answers to their questions becomes an insistent theme.
In the preface to his book Stapledon sets out his own state of mind when he was writing just before the second world war:
At a moment when Europe is in danger of a catastrophe worse than that of 1914 a book like this may be condemned as a detraction from the desperately urgent defence of civilization against modern barbarianism
The fight against barbarianism is a constant theme of the book and it is no surprise that homo sapiens are not one of the species that make it even as far as a world community. There are however more enlightened civilizations that do survive and Stapledon indulges in describing some of the most important civilizations that become leading players in the galactic community. These are the passages in the book that I enjoyed the most when the author can allow his fertile imagination to run ahead. He is also effective in describing the advanced civilizations battling against a decaying cosmos and he does a pretty good job with the creation of the galaxies. And what of the Star Maker itself? all to possible perhaps.
The science in the book holds up pretty well and Stapledon manages to pitch it at a level where many people will be able to grasp the concepts. In a book without a real story line there are some longuers and it can be a little repetitive. Stapledon writes well enough, but he is no poet and although he manages to induce a sense of wonder his writing at times is less than magical, but this does not stop it becoming a wonderful exercise in fiction writing. A bit of a milestone in the science fiction genre and with ideas enough to satisfy any literary criteria. A Five star book
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LibraryThing member salimbol
Of all the books in the SF Masterworks series that I've read so far, this may the one whose resonances I think I can detect in later SF works the most. Firstly, the alien races (including the very non-human ones) are so carefully detailed and are so fully alive in terms of their physiology,
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sociology, psychology, etc. Secondly, the overriding concept is of a progression from singular individual consciousness to collective consciousness, as part of an overall spiritual evolution of a species *and* of a galaxy as a whole. These are powerful ideas, they're handled intelligently, and the book has aged surprisingly well (it was written in the late 1930s). However, like many idea-driven SF works, it's all about the explaining and teaching. There is virtually no plot, and no genuine characterisation of individuals to speak of. So to me, it was a worthy read rather than a truly enjoyable one. Show Less
LibraryThing member ablueidol
If you are looking for Space Opera then read no further! Stapledon undertakes the immense task of describing the entire history of life in the universe and we humans are a mere passing footnote. The entire book links to one of his main concerns... spiritual values without the deadening hand of
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religion Show Less
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
The ultimate galactic voyage - Stapledon takes a lonely Englishman and guides him around universe and time to the end itself, and right back to the beginning.
The book is momentous; a delightful find for the spiritual atheist. Having read about men and civilisations and planets and systems all
A classic of world literature - this book should be read by everyone, and not just science fiction diehards.
The book is momentous; a delightful find for the spiritual atheist. Having read about men and civilisations and planets and systems all
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evolving and dying out and passing on, the real world suddenly seemed empty and trivial.A classic of world literature - this book should be read by everyone, and not just science fiction diehards.
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LibraryThing member JohnGray
A remarkable account of the history of the universe. It affirms the value of each action for good, no matter how invisible or insignificant that action may feel.
LibraryThing member RobertDay
Aiee! My brain's exploding! (With enormous concepts, that is...)
LibraryThing member TimCTaylor
If you ever come my way you'll know you're near my house because my WiFi network is called 'Olaf Stapledon'. Star Maker is the main reason for that. It is a page-turner of breathtaking imagination.
Be warned, though, this book has no room for plot or characters except for the most flimsy of framing
Be warned, though, this book has no room for plot or characters except for the most flimsy of framing
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devices. It doesn't need them. It has ideas. Show Less
LibraryThing member iansales
I have the SF Masterwork edition of this book – that’s the one from the original numbered series – but that’s in storage now. I bought a 99p copy on my Kindle so I could read it. I’ve no idea if the two editions are the same – they can’t be that different, I’d have thought, since
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this isn’t a work that needed translating. But the copy I read certainly had more than its fair share of OCR errors and typos. There’s not much of a plot to review: the narrator is an Englishman of the 1930s who falls asleep on a hillside and becomes a disembodied galactic traveller, as you do. He visits various worlds, learns to cohabit the minds of certain of their inhabitants, and they too join him on his travels, until he is more of a gestalt intelligence than the man he once was. Stapledon describes the various types of civilisation his observer visits, and while they’re initially based on extrapolations of Earth biology – even the symbiotic races, which play such a great part in the book – but soon it transpires the stars are sentient, and then the galaxies too. This is sf on the grandest scale, and it’s unlikely it would wash these days because it only really works with a style that’s no longer commercially acceptable. It’s not that genre fiction of the past fifty years has been stunted in any way, or has held off from Stapledonian scales because he did it first – Stephen Baxter’s entire career is ample rebuttal to that – but more that the style which allowed Stapledon to what he did is no longer considered commercially viable. Is that a bad thing? Not really. We still have Stapledon. He’s in the SF Masterworks series, and his books are readily available in a variety of editions as ebooks. Obviously, these are, paradoxically, historical documents, but for those who know what they’re getting into, they’re definitely worth a go. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rynooo
Mind-boggling in scope and rife with ideas, many chapters in this book read like synopses for other, more recent novels. For that I can appreciate the praise it has garnered.
However, it was a slog to get through, reading like some kind of protracted thesis and got tiresome very quickly. Two thirds
However, it was a slog to get through, reading like some kind of protracted thesis and got tiresome very quickly. Two thirds
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of the way I was was wishing it would get to the point, and the ending took far too long to come around. I found it very, very boring. Show Less
LibraryThing member M.Campanella
This is the book your university creative writing teacher warned you against. And that is not a good thing. Ideas are rich, but the writing is burdensome. I plowed through it just to see why CS Lewis thought the ending was so heretical. I don't think I got that either.
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
Just couldn't get into this. It was written as the shadow of WWII was growing over Europe, with related worries esp. re' fascism, and it just wasn't working as speculative fiction for me.
LibraryThing member ikeman100
Wild ride through the imagination of Stapledon. I like his writing style and see the appeal of this book. I just was not in the mood for fun, plotless survey of his imagination. Maybe another time.
Awards
Locus All-Time Best (Science Fiction Novel — 32 — 1998)
The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1937
Physical description
272 p.; 17.7 cm
ISBN
0417037406 / 9780417037400
Local notes
Omslag: Peter Goodfellow
Omslaget viser Vaselius' muskelmand, der kigger på en stiliseret sol med overlagt kompasrose
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Gutenberg, Australia
Omslaget viser Vaselius' muskelmand, der kigger på en stiliseret sol med overlagt kompasrose
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Gutenberg, Australia
Similar in this library
Series
Pages
272
DDC/MDS
| 823.912 |