Rating: 
Summary: the best science fiction ever written
Review: Sirius is an intelligent, strange work of contemporary fiction (contemporary to Britain inbetween the wars, that is) with a touch of science fantansy, and as such it is successful. Odd John is much the same only more so; in fact it is the equal of any science fiction tale ever created. It uses fiction as a device to conceal the author's real intent, which is to get some points across to those "supermen" that walk the real earth, people so far advanced in terms of mental and conscious functioning as to be like men living in a world of monkeys. If you are among them you must see what Stapledon has to say to you.
Rating:
Summary: The next step
Review: The story of Odd John serves a didactic function for the rest of us. Man as we know him has evolved, and continues to do so. Stapeldon gives us in Odd John the next evolutionary step in man: Homo-Superior! Just as what once was sience fiction (flying machines, spacecraft, communications satellites, etc.), this story has become science fact! Odd John is already here, maybe not as physically described, but definitely here none the less.
Rating:
Summary: On the outside looking in
Review: Too few poeple know of this man's work. Stapledon's writing style is a bit dry for most readers, and one is often presented with the idea that he is using his work as a vehicle to voice his own opinions. However, both of these works are truly unique views of a mindset alien to humanities, looking upon our species. Reflected in their own views is the same arrogance and folly that we must see other species through. Few writers have ever truly approached writing from this perspective, and Stapledon does a good job of presenting of presenting the oddness of ourspecies to those who may see it from the outside. It is something we find rarely expressed in ourselves, the ability to look with such a scrutinous eye through our own vanity and see ourselves from the outside looking in.
Rating:
Summary: STEPPENDOG
Review: Until 2002 Sirius was the only thing by Stapledon I had read. Now with Last and First Men, Star Maker, Nebula Maker and Odd John, plus a good few more years, behind me, it means a lot more to me. Like his author, the dog with an equal-to-human brain is one of a kind, but the main theme is Stapledon's familiar tragic theme of the futile destruction of what intellect, mind and spirit can achieve. This is a Stapledon story with some very unfamiliar ingredients like characters and humour. It may be the strangest love story ever, but it's a love story all right, and a harrowing one. This time Stapledon is not looking directly into the mind of the Creator, but the religious professionals still get it in the neck from him. That strikes a chord with me. At a recent college reunion I attended a service for which 'unctuous and complacently servile' would have been an excellent description. If there is a Creator, to behave to him in this manner seemed to me to be verging on blasphemous, and I was relieved to get out before a thunderbolt struck. 'Find your calling...or be damned' may be the main message of this book, but it seems that the forces of futility may still get to you whether you do or not. Bertrand Russell has a story that Macaulay never spoke until the age of 6, when hot tea was spilled over him at a children's party and he reassured his fussing hostess with 'Thankyou madam, the agony is abated'. The early story of Odd John Wainwright, the son of slightly eccentric and moderately talented parents, started by reminding me of this, but I knew I would soon have to take it seriously. Odd John is a superhuman and he knows it. He is not cruel or evil, but like Stapledon's Star Maker he has more important priorities than, say, human life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life will be calmly sacrificed if it interferes with his mission. His 'property-is-theft' attitude to the local tycoon is probably a mask for the kind of early-20th century socialism that appealed to Stapledon, and John's early sexual mores have a touch of Bloomsbury about them -- the activity that dares not speak its name would seem to be obviously incest, except for the fact that it does not appear to create any downstream waves in his later relations with any of his family. The thought crossed my mind that I might be on the wrong track altogether. What could be equally unmentionable, something on which the taboo is almost as much cosmic as human? But on folk-dancing I dare not dwell. Odd John will not wring your emotions the way Sirius ought to do. It has other virtues. The creativity that conjured such a riveting series of human species in Last and First Men and would later create the planetary civilisations in Star Maker is at work here with the freakish superhumans, including one that is surely the most hellish being in all literature. The book is also obviously the main inspiration for Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End, in which the writer surpasses himself and achieves a stupendous reinterpretation of the whole legend of God and Satan. In Odd John the supreme being is not showing his hand regarding his ultimate intentions for humanity, but all in a way more reminiscent of the Overmind in Childhood's End than of the terrifying Star Maker. The main difference for me is not the stylistic gulf between the two authors but that in Childhood's End I am always conscious that I am reading a colossal piece of imagination. Stapledon, like his Sirius, upsets me by giving me the uncomfortable sense that he may be sniffing around the truth.
|
