Rating: 
Summary: Workers of the Galaxy Unite!
Review: Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker is a sequel of sorts to his earlier book Last & First Men. Whereas L&FM dealt with the fate and evolution of humankind, Star Maker concerns the fate and evolution of the universe. The unnamed narrator passes through time and space in an out of body experience, discovering the history of the universe both past and future, with the ultimate goal of understanding the nature of the Prime Creator- The Star Maker.
Like L&FM Star Maker is a book that is easily admired yet difficult to enjoy. The scope of Stapledon's imagination is astonishing. Yet because of its broad scope (literally billions of years of time and billions of light-years in space) it is by its very nature general, with little detail and much philosophy. This makes for tedious reading. And the philosophy espoused by Stapledon is Socialism. The theme running through the book is that only when the workers overcome their capitalist masters and control the means of production will a society be able to evolve a world mind -the next stage in galactic evolution. Those societies which do not will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
This attitude is not surprising given when the book was written. WWI demonstrated the failure of monarchy, the Depression the failure of liberal democracy and capitalism. The choice seemed to many in the 1930's, a choice between fascism and communism. And Stapledon chose Lenin; to quote 'we were amazed to find that in a truly awakened world even a dictatorship could be in essence democratic' (Chp 9.1)That would be the Dictatorship of the Proletariat comrade.
Politics aside, it is a seminal work in the history of the genre. It is an amazing work of imagination, even if it does take a great deal of effort to wade through.
Rating: 
Summary: APOCALYPSE ON THE WIRRAL PENINSULA
Review: On a suburban hill, presumably on the Wirral (with the foundry beyond the estuary being Shotton or Brymbo), a man falls asleep and experiences not some mere vision of the entire cosmos but a conscious participation in the Creator's whole programme of innumerable cosmoi. This is a compulsive and utterly comfortless book. Keep a sense of humour if you are going to read it attentively, as you may need that to stay sane. It starts at a level familiar to science-fiction readers, and the details of the various alien intelligences have the sort of fascination that one gets in, say, Van Vogt (or even the work that immortally began 'Help, we are surrounded by Vugs'). The vision then advances to the collective telepathic minds developed by some of the civilisations, next to the sentient minds (individual and collective) of the stars themselves, then to similar consciousness possessed by whole nebulae, and finally to direct contact with the Creator. This Creator is not some fount of infinite love and goodness as we might understand those concepts. Our values are not his -- 'Sympathy was not ultimate in the temper of the eternal spirit; contemplation was. Love was not absolute; contemplation was.' Countless disasters and unthinkable suffering are all part of the grand design. Hell itself may be deliberately inflicted by the Creator on those he gives no opportunity to avoid it. To me this scenario seems just as likely as any religious theory of ultimate goodness, which may be basically wishful thinking. Grappling with questions like these by reasoning is like wrestling with a jelly in a high wind -- when we think we have made progress it just closes back in on us from behind. And other than reason what do we have? Belief is just belief -- things may be the way we believe or would rather believe, or they may not. 'I know not "seems"' says Hamlet. 'Seems' may be all we've got.Back on his suburban hill in 1937, the anonymous visionary contemplates the 'reality' around him. Like many agonising intellectuals of the time, Stapledon partly fell for the monstrous con of Soviet communism. He had no grasp of Realpolitik whatsoever, and Muggeridge's account of the edifice of corruption, chicanery and strategic lying that took in Shaw and other big brains is recommended to any who have not read it. Others of Stapledon's perceptions ring partly 'true' -- '...a world wherein, none being tormented, none turns desperate' is probably a bit much to hope for, given human perversity, but we all know the lengths people will go to when they have 'beliefs', which flourish where there is injustice and oppression. Can you face this book? In recommending it I am quite aware of the disorientation and unhappiness it may create in some. In others, if it undermines the high ground occupied by those deceptive and destructive phantoms, deeply held beliefs, it may do some 'good'. The bigger questions stay just as they were, of course.
Rating:
Summary: Total Perspective Vortex
Review: Star Maker -- totally ignored by literature, hard to find, hard to read when you've found it, and completely unforgettable once you have succeeded. Like another reviewer on these pages, I first heard of this book after reading Brian Aldiss's epic critical history of science fiction. Trillion Year Spree, and I eventually tracked it down in a secondhand book store. Star Maker is less a novel than a vision of the physical and spiritual history of the cosmos, conceived on a scale that few other writers would dare even contemplate, let alone attempt -- even today. Aldiss and others criticize Stapledon for the inhumanity of his stories, but I disagree -- the grandeur of the themes of cosmic disharmony, strife and unity point up our everyday human concerns to an almost painfully intense, poignant degree. If Stapledon feels pain at the wanton destruction of entire star systems, then so do we: without this humanity, we would not share the narrator's horror at the dismissive attitude of the Creator to the sufferings of his creations. Without this humanity, the book would have been a failure, when what we see before us is a hugely involving and mind-altering experience. After many years of reading SF and other branches of literature, I have found no other book that can inspire a real sense of existential terror than this -- but also a kind of equanimity. Whatever our worries, they hardly rate a mote in the eye of Brahma. Perhaps Douglas Adams was thinking of Stapledon when he invented, in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, an instrument of psychological torture called the Total Perspective Vortex, in which the victim is given a brief glimpse of the entire unimaginable vastness of creation, together with a small plastic button reading 'You Are Here'? Star Maker is the literary equivalent of the vortex. What Aldiss calls Stapledon's 'ontological prose poem' is not for everyone, but for those sympathetic to its austere charms, the effects will be both profound and long-lasting.
Rating:
Summary: Profound
Review: Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon As if Last and First Men were not enough, Stapledon takes on the history of an entire galactic civilization in Star Maker (published 1938). The book -- again, not so much a novel as a sort of narrative history -- begins with the narrator fleeing a domestic argument and walking to the top of a hill to gaze at the stars. He finds himself "astrally projecting" and soon discovers another world, populated by roughly humanoid creatures. After telepathically joining with a sympathetic native, he explores the world and its troubled civilizations. After disaster and folly doom the planet, the narrator and his guide find themselves whisked to another troubled world, and another, and so on, each populated by stranger and stranger creatures with more and more esoteric mental and spiritual natures. Star Maker soon turns from the fate of individual worlds to the big picture; the two-billion year long history of humanity rates about two paragraphs. In a series of dazzling chapters Stapledon describes the construction of artificial worlds, space travel by wandering space colonies, and spectacular interstellar wars. Strife and religious bigotry lead to genocide through rtificially induced novas; lesser races fall prey to technologically advanced but spiritually misguided "pervert" races. After several millenia, a true galactic civilization arises and begins organizing itself into a Galactic Mind to root out the deepest questions of existence. This final quest -- to confront the Prime Mover behind the existence of the universe and reality -- requires a rather long time; at one point further progess seems threatened by the heat death of the universe. What the Cosmic Mind -- the combined mentalities of all living creatures since the birth of the galaxies -- eventually
discovers is bleak and terrible and wondrous. Reading Star Maker is an exhausting and humbling experience. Stapledon rattles off ideas and concepts that didn't make it into mainstream SF until the last decade or so. It is mighty difficult to be impressed by mainstream science fiction after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome excercise for mind and soul
Review: Star Maker is without doubt the most profound book I have ever read. Starting with a lone, troubled human on 1937 Earth, and culminating in a direct confrontation with the Divine Intelligence, the story comprises the most powerful dose of imagination and philosophy ever expressed in words. Though I've read it more than ten times, I always find something fresh, and I enjoy re-taking English literature's "ultimate trip." (P.S.: Also read Stapledon's Last and First Men; it makes a great companion to the masterpiece.)
Rating:
Summary: Great Book For Any Time
Review: Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon, is an incredible achievement. It was first published in 1937. It is not a conventional novel, so if that is what you are looking for, you should look elsewhere. It is more of a philosophical journey than a conventional story. The nameless narrator takes a journey through the universe and through time, starting on a hill near his home, and ultimately finding the creator of the universe, i.e. the Star Maker. He witnesses the entire life of the universe, and joins with many other minds from other civilizations throughout the galaxy. It is tempting to use phrases like "for its time" when describing this book, but it is a remarkable work for any time. I am sure that some of descriptions of civilizations and their scientific achievements would change if it were written today. However, the statement that the book makes would likely remain the same. This book was tied for 13th on the Arkham Survey in 1949 as one of the `Basic SF Titles'. It also was tied for 30th on the 1975 Locus All-Time poll for Novels; and 32nd on the 1998 Locus All-Time Poll for Novels written prior to 1990. This particular edition includes a Foreword by Brian W. Aldiss, and also includes A Note on Magnitude, Time Lines, and a Glossary all created by Olaf Stapledon. This is the 21st of the SF Masterworks paperbacks released by Victor Gollancz Books. If this is an indication of the quality of work they have done throughout the series, then it is a very worthwhile series to own.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book For Any Time
Review: Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon, is an incredible achievement. It was first published in 1937. It is not a conventional novel, so if that is what you are looking for, you should look elsewhere. It is more of a philosophical journey than a conventional story. The nameless narrator takes a journey through the universe and through time, starting on a hill near his home, and ultimately finding the creator of the universe, i.e. the Star Maker. He witnesses the entire life of the universe, and joins with many other minds from other civilizations throughout the galaxy. It is tempting to use phrases like "for its time" when describing this book, but it is a remarkable work for any time. I am sure that some of descriptions of civilizations and their scientific achievements would change if it were written today. However, the statement that the book makes would likely remain the same. This book was tied for 13th on the Arkham Survey in 1949 as one of the 'Basic SF Titles'. It also was tied for 30th on the 1975 Locus All-Time poll for Novels; and 32nd on the 1998 Locus All-Time Poll for Novels written prior to 1990. This particular edition includes a Foreword by Brian W. Aldiss, and also includes A Note on Magnitude, Time Lines, and a Glossary all created by Olaf Stapledon. This is the 21st of the SF Masterworks paperbacks released by Victor Gollancz Books. If this is an indication of the quality of work they have done throughout the series, then it is a very worthwhile series to own.
Rating:
Summary: What a feast for the mind!
Review: What a feast for the mind...for the soul. Stapledon takes us on a journey through imagination, science and philosophy from the gropings of intelligence on this small planet through the evolution of a minded cosmos The greatness of this book is that it stands alone without peer in science fiction. It's true wonder will never be approached....Magnifico
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