The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 13 October 2001
by Olaf Stapledon
In 1937, amid growing European fascism, and on the eve of World War 2, Olaf Stapledon looked at the troubled world around him and set out on a flight of fancy that dreams of a universe working together to attain a higher plane of existence. While purportedly a science fiction novel, the book is much more a descriptive meditation of the universe Stapledon envisions. The book opens with our unnamed protagonist laying on a hill in the darkness, looking up at the winking stars and contemplating the fragile connections between individual humans. He is suddenly spirited into the sky and away into the cosmos, where, in a non-physical form, he enters the worlds and minds of other inhabitants of the universe.
At first, Stapledon does a great job using the physics known at his time to describe the universe and the sense of superluminal travel. He connects with worlds in crisis just as the Earth he left distantly behind. He travels through time and space in a sympathetic manner. Along the way, he joins up with other individual minds, to become one vast traveling mind of exploration. Together, they witness the evolution of the cosmos and the discovery that so very many things, including nebulae and stars themselves, are alive. Stapledon spends many dense pages imagining a dizzying array of sentient beings. Each suffers great self-inflicted tragedy. He is desperately hopeful that a higher state of being is the ultimate goal of life. The universe and the explorers strive to meet the Star Maker. What they discover, though, is a marvelous paradox of pitiless love and merciful cruelty. Stapledon's vision of the universe as a whole being is quite magnificent, and it calls upon the reader to think outside of his or her little cocoon of existence. It calls upon the world, about to enter years of warfare, to realize its commonality and brotherhood in this dark vale of existence. It calls us all to work together for peace and spiritual awakening. The nature of this awakening, and what awakened species do with it, is extremely vague in this book. The narrator is at a loss for words and begs excuse by his lack of ability to grasp the minds of advanced intelligence. This is a flaw to the book, as the thoughts expressed seem incomplete. Yet it is an ambitious philosophical novel, dreaming greater things for humanity.