Starmaker olaf6/2/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In this disembodied form, he finds himself traveling through space with bewildering speed. Beneath him, the dwindling earth appears as a pebble in the vast expanse of stars. Yet as he reflects on the littleness of life in the vast emptiness of space, his vision suddenly changes, first sweeping across the whole extent of the earth and then lifting him into space. He is overwhelmed by a sense of unreality and futility in daily life as well as the delirium of the world. It begins in the midst of a personal crisis when a man walks out on a hill near his home. Even though Stapledon does away with conventional plot, his narrator describes in mesmerizing detail a journey across the cosmos. Star Maker proved to be a sourcebook of ideas for the work of countless writers. Considering that Stapledon trained as a philosopher and had little acquaintance with science fiction before writing his novels, he had an enormous influence on the field. Clarke, Jorge Luis Borges, Doris Lessing and Virginia Woolf, among many others, have praised Stapledon’s work, especially Star Maker. Writers as diverse as Brian Aldiss, Arthur C. I doubt any writer before or since has taken so literally the task of sketching “the whole of things” as a myth of the cosmic mind or done it so effectively. ![]()
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