Some theories that were very novel at the time, an expanding universe, redshift from the speed of light, the value of earth seen from above Apollo mission style, come back prominently.

Or like the space scenes in The Tree of Life movie.

The approach feels alike to the documentary Alien Planet or The Future is Wild, spin-offs from Walking with Dinosaurs. Despite brilliant concepts I found the overall execution of the book bland, even bordering on boring, while I do love SF in general. Olaf Stapledon takes us on a journey from the solar system to a multiverse, through time and space. Star Maker is definitely a grandiose work, but much more a documentary than a novel. I was the struggling embryo in the cosmical egg, and the yolk was already in decay. Enormous in ambition, but despite this surprisingly dull as a reading experience It's as good as any of the most vast-spanning hard-SF of today.Īlready the author notes that immensity is not in itself a good thing. I'm not even giving it special props for coming out of 1937. Was he a brilliant man? What do you think? Olaf Stapledon is easily one of the most brilliant and imaginative writers to have ever decided to use hard-SF as a furious vehicle of massive speculative philosophy in sociology, biology, physics, and cosmology. And even better, it even flies right into Manichean heresies! :) As HARD SF! It's fast as hell and fun as HELL! :) Why? The Star Maker is the creation of God from Man.

More than that, it's probably something that would be appreciated more NOW than way back then. This novel is just as valid and fun today as it must have been back in 1937. This is a short novel that spans 5 billion years! It may be fast, glorious, imaginative, and deeply philosophical, but more than that, it's SUBVERSIVE. Intelligent suns.Īnd an ever further exploration follows. In fact, it starts out like a strong hard-SF exploration novel touching on many possible alien races, mindsets, and physiologies, but it dives right down the rabbit hole into vast combined telepathic minds, galactic societies that actually are GALACTIC in scale, telepathic communication with multiple galaxies, and even to the discovery the rich stellar intelligence. This novel disproves the general assumption that golden age SF is either hokey or unscientific.

Starmaker olaf