Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (bts book recommendations .txt) 📕

Star Maker

Olaf Stapledon

1937

AT a moment when Europe is in danger of a catastrophe worse than that of

1914 a book like this may be condemned as a distraction from the

desperately urgent defence of civilization against modern barbarism.

Year by year, month by month, the plight of our fragmentary and

precarious civilization becomes more serious. Fascism abroad grows more

bold and ruthless in its foreign ventures, more tyrannical toward its

own citizens, more barbarian in its contempt for the life of the mind.

Even in our own country we have reason to fear a tendency toward

militarization and the curtailment of civil liberty. Moreover, while the

decades pass, no resolute step is taken to alleviate the injustice of

our social order. Our outworn economic system dooms millions to

frustration.

In these conditions it is difficult for writers to pursue their calling

at once with courage and with balanced judgment. Some merely shrug their

shoulders and withdraw from the central struggle of our age. These, with

their minds closed against the world’s most vital issues, inevitably

produce works which not only have no depth of significance for their

contemporaries but also are subtly insincere. For these writers must

consciously or unconsciously contrive to persuade themselves either that

the crisis in human affairs does not exist, or that it is less important

than their own work, or that it is anyhow not their business. But the

crisis does exist, is of supreme importance, and concerns us all. Can

anyone who is at all intelligent and informed hold the contrary without

self-deception?

Yet I have a lively sympathy with some of those “intellectuals” who

declare that they have no useful contribution to make to the struggle,

and therefore had better not dabble in it. I am, in fact, one of them.

In our defense I should say that, though we are inactive or ineffective

as direct supporters of the cause, we do not ignore it. Indeed, it

constantly, obsessively, holds our attention. But we are convinced by

prolonged trial and error that the most useful service open to us is

indirect. For some writers the case is different. Gallantly plunging

into the struggle, they use their powers to spread urgent propaganda, or

they even take up arms in the cause. If they have suitable ability, and

if the particular struggle in which they serve is in fact a part of the

great enterprise of defending (or creating) civilization, they may, of

course, do valuable work. In addition they may gain great wealth of

experience and human sympathy, thereby immensely increasing their

literary power. But the very urgency of their service may tend to blind

them to the importance of maintaining and extending, even in this age of

crisis, what may be called metaphorically the “self-critical

self-consciousness of the human species,” or the attempt to see man’s

life as a whole in relation to the rest of things. This involves the

will to regard all human affairs and ideals and theories with as little

human prejudice as possible. Those who are in the thick of the struggle

inevitably tend to become, though in a great and just cause, partisan.

They nobly forgo something of that detachment, that power of cold

assessment, which is, after all, among the most valuable human

capacities. In their case this is perhaps as it should be; for a

desperate struggle demands less of detachment than of devotion. But some

who have the cause at heart must serve by striving to maintain, along

with human loyalty, a more dispassionate spirit. And perhaps the attempt

to see our turbulent world against a background of stars may, after all,

increase, not lessen the significance of the present human crisis. It

may also strengthen our charity toward one another.

In this belief I have tried to construct an imaginative sketch of the

dread but vital whole of things. I know well that it is a ludicrously

inadequate and in some ways a childish sketch, even when regarded from

the angle of contemporary human experience. In a calmer and a wiser age

it might well seem crazy. Yet in spite of its crudity, and in spite of

its remoteness, it is perhaps not wholly irrelevant.

At the risk of raising thunder both on the Left and on the Right, I have

occasionally used certain ideas and words derived from religion, and I

have tried to interpret them in relation to modern needs. The valuable,

though much damaged words “spiritual” and “worship,” which have become

almost as obscene to the Left as the good old sexual words are to the

Right, are here intended to suggest an experience which the Right is apt

to pervert and the Left to misconceive. This experience, I should say,

involves detachment from all private, all social, all racial ends; not

in the sense that it leads a man to reject them, but that it makes him

prize them in a new way. The “spiritual life” seems to be in essence the

attempt to discover and adopt the attitude which is in fact appropriate

to our experience as a whole, just as admiration is felt to be in fact

appropriate toward a well-grown human being. This enterprise can lead to

an increased lucidity and finer temper of consciousness, and therefore

can have a great and beneficial effect on behavior. Indeed, if this

supremely humanizing experience does not produce, along with a kind of

piety toward fate, the resolute will to serve our waking humanity, it is

a mere sham and a snare.

Before closing this preface I must express my gratitude to Professor L.

C. Martin, Mr. L. H. Myers, and Mr. E. V. Rieu, for much helpful and

sympathetic criticism, in consequence of which I rewrote many chapters.

Even now I hesitate to associate their names with such an extravagant

work. Judged by the standards of the Novel, it is remarkably bad. In

fact, it is no novel at all.

Certain ideas about artificial planets were suggested by Mr. J. D.

Bernal’s fascinating little book The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I

hope he will not strongly disapprove of my treatment of them.

My wife I must thank both for work on the proofs and for being herself.

At the end of the book I have included a note on Magnitude, which may be

helpful to readers unfamiliar with astronomy. The very sketchy time

scales may amuse some.

O. S. March 1937