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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
+ full of fascinating, absolutely mind-blowing ideas
- not much of a plot, and after a while quite hard to read
- not much of a plot, and after a while quite hard to read
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This reminds me of Contact by Sagan. Neat ideas, but written so dryly and boring—and in this particular case, also featuring a truly forgettable, monotone narrator—prose work that reminds me of reading a text book in science class. That’ll either be your bag or it isn’t. It sure isn’t mine. I couldn’t tell you if this was substantive or not, it is so mind numbing slippery, I just kept tuning in and out. So: I’m out.
My second reading of "Star Maker", a vision of life and time so vast, so sprawling, it dwarfs any other book I know of — the Bible, the Mahabharata — all of it appears minuscule and pale in the light of the "Star Maker". The only other text that comes close is Stapledon's other masterpiece, "Last and First Men". This unconventional novel is a tour de force of science fiction, sociology, anthropology, existential philosophy, theology, myth making, and political commentary about the world of 1937 projected into the velvety darkness of outer space. Plodding, slow, dense, but, as with "Last and First Men" my admiration for Stapledon grew with every page and subsequent reading. Absolutely breathtaking.
the first half was actually incredible i could not stop thinking about it when i was not reading!! and then it kind of fell off. the religious stuff i found quite frankly a little boring. nevertheless a really interesting read & cool insight into the 30s.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Certainly one of the most thoughtful and "thought-provoking" books I've ever read. The scope is ever-expanding. It's philosophical in timbre, and very concerned with existential questions on a "hypercosmical" scale. In some parts it reads more like a history or anthropology text, in others it approaches the philosophical or spiritual. Take your time with this one!
reviews.metaphorosis.com
3.5 stars
A man suddenly acquires the power to travel mentally throughout all dimensions of the universe, from creation to conclusion. He traces the development of many kinds of life while seeking signs of a postulated creative force.
This is possibly the dullest interesting book I've read, or vice versa. It's seldom that it takes me this long to complete a book (even the dread Alexandria Quartet felt faster), and it could almost be said of this novel that I "couldn't pick it up".
I believe I've read some of Stapledon's work before, though I don't recall when or what - perhaps Last Men in London. In any case, I wasn't sure what to expect.
What I found was a book with an amazing scope (literally the entire lifespan of the universe, and more), and an astounding creativity. Stapledon tosses off interesting and novel ideas every few pages, including the original Dyson sphere. He postulates intriguing intelligences, species, societies, cultures, lifeforms, you name it. There's a mountain of fascinating material in here.
Unfortunately, he presents it all in a style so determinedly dry that it's hard to stay awake for the marvels. Even allowing for the period (1930's), the prose is so clinical that it begs to be treated as an academic report, to be put down in favor of something more engaging. It's a shame, because if you can keep your mind focused, there's a lot here to like.
The main story kicks off on "Other Earth", with what seems a thinly-veiled polemic against capitalist materialism. It ends somewhere in the cosmos with what seems a thinly-veiled paean to religious creationism. But neither of those impressions is really accurate, for in between is a steadfastly logical exploration of the concept of human development. This is a 'what if' story in the best way. If it reads more like a thought experiment than a story, that's not inaccurate.
'Human', in this book, means roughly 'intelligent life'. Stapledon doesn't discriminate between humans shaped like homo sapiens and symbiotic whale-crab partners. What he cares about is how they develop, and how they'll succeed. Most of them don't. This is not a warm and fuzzy YA story, and to his credit, Stapledon doesn't duck the hard questions. He makes some assumptions, and sets in motion a train of events, but there's no magic happy-ever-after. Instead, there's a genuine exploration of what could happen, and what it would mean.
'What it all means' is a central theme of the novel, and perhaps its reason for being. I found Stapledon's answer to have too strong a religious tinge for my taste, but it's clearly something he (and his narrator) thought long and hard about. Ironically, C.S. Lewis thought Stapledon's answer was "devil worship", so perhaps he hit an unhappy medium after all.
I recommend this book. It's a slow and painful read - much more of a slog than a sprint. But if you persevere, and if you manage to keep Stapledon's ideas in focus, you'll be rewarded. I wish (oh how I wished while I was reading this) that Stapledon had been a lighter writer. He wasn't, but his ideas are worth engaging anyway.
I can’t find the passage now but I distinctly remember early on in the book reading something like “I tried to blink but had no eyes nor eyelids” and that is a sensation I myself recall from a DMT trip in which I too soared through the cosmos. The book was published in 1937, six years after that molecule was identified but more than a decade before and its magical psychedelic properties were identified, but we shouldn’t forget that it is endogenous within us and that our bodies likely flood us with it when facing insurmountable existential challenge—science still has some ground to cover in verifying this, but it seems likely that near death experiences, alien abductions, and potentially many religious visions are all biological in origin: endogenous DMT trips. Along with countless externally-induced trips, I experienced once such endogenous trip, and it was the only time I had a “breakthrough”… in that I shot faster than light into hyperspace and spent eons traversing alien realities, telepathically spectating through alien entities a while before falling into another equally alien reality. By the time I returned to my own body I didn’t realize it was where I began and at first assumed my body was another alien one I was visiting. I only gradually came to grasp that this was home. I mention all this to say that I suspect or would venture that the author Stapledon likely had some fateful near death experience himself, along with such a DMT trip, and that this inspired and motivated this book.
The writing style is archaic and far from engaging but the ideas are rich and original. His made up history of the past and future of the universe isn’t all that captivating, though he casts some of his worlds with interesting analogues for human propensities and dynamics, but his account of the ultimate creator, the titular Star Maker, is logically sound and one I find rather agreeable.
After my dalliances with the spirit molecule the whole notion of telepathic travel suddenly became so obvious, though to my mind it was interdimensional rather than interstellar. But Stapledon has opened my mind there. Indeed when that first trip I mentioned—when I soared through the cosmos—ended, it was quite jarring and slightly horrific to return to the grounded ego of “I”… I had been the free roaming consciousness of the universe, one and all things, unbounded and infinite, and here I was returning to the lowly prison of a monkey’s head, the ego it hallucinates for itself. We’re so used to being ourselves we can’t imagine a consciousness unlike ourselves, ego-less, but DMT can remind us, and if there’s none at hand and no threat to life to trigger it, this book will get you a few percent of the way.
2 stars for the writing and narrative, rounding up towards 5 for the ideas and articulating some pretty ineffable shit.
The writing style is archaic and far from engaging but the ideas are rich and original. His made up history of the past and future of the universe isn’t all that captivating, though he casts some of his worlds with interesting analogues for human propensities and dynamics, but his account of the ultimate creator, the titular Star Maker, is logically sound and one I find rather agreeable.
After my dalliances with the spirit molecule the whole notion of telepathic travel suddenly became so obvious, though to my mind it was interdimensional rather than interstellar. But Stapledon has opened my mind there. Indeed when that first trip I mentioned—when I soared through the cosmos—ended, it was quite jarring and slightly horrific to return to the grounded ego of “I”… I had been the free roaming consciousness of the universe, one and all things, unbounded and infinite, and here I was returning to the lowly prison of a monkey’s head, the ego it hallucinates for itself. We’re so used to being ourselves we can’t imagine a consciousness unlike ourselves, ego-less, but DMT can remind us, and if there’s none at hand and no threat to life to trigger it, this book will get you a few percent of the way.
2 stars for the writing and narrative, rounding up towards 5 for the ideas and articulating some pretty ineffable shit.
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A fascinating read I would recommend to most. More creative than most sci fi. Far more spiritual. Acknowledged by CS Lewis and Arthur C Clarke as major influences on their work. The great grand daddy of sci fi.