Conference noted::sf

    I've another major book of his, "Star Maker."  It's a cosmic history
    told in the first person ... by the cosmos.  Well, sorta.  The narrator
    starts out as a human being practicing astral projection or something
    like it.  He meets up with an alien mind and they journey through time
    and space, accumulating traveling companions, and eventually form a
    joint mind, which joins other minds until the narrator is the universe.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I have a copy of Odd John.  While an interesting story, I found it to
    be a bit of a tedios read.  Then again, I usually find these types of
    stories to be a much slower read than the action/adventure types - but
    this seemed to be slower than most.  I also had a bit of trouble buying
    the premise that just because John was a supergenius that he was a
    whole new breed of human.

    _First and Last Men_ traced the history of the various races _Genus
    Homo_; this in turn became a sort of prologue to _The Star Maker_
    (which had an interesting twist once the Cosmos became intelligent;
    let's just say it was vaguely reminiscent of a certain famous Peter
    Arno cartoon).  Odd John was talky but fun.
    
    There was a book that contained the major novels, now out of print.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Please tell us more about the Arno cartoon!
    
    			-John Bishop

    Re .4 (John):
    
    Since it kinda applies, I'll put it on the other side of a spoiler.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    <spoiler>
    
    The cartoon, which appeared in a 1940(s) edition of _The New Yorker_
    showed a man walking away from a plane wreck, dressed in business
    suit, and with what looked like some blueprints rolled under his
    arm.  Behind him, smoke rises from, the wreckage, and others are
    rushing towards it, presumably to give assistance to the test pilot.
    The man speaks, saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board."
    
    For those who've read _The Star Maker_, the connection should be
    obvious.

    
    I've read a couple of his books--_Last and First Men_, _Starmaker_, 
    and (about 1/3 of) _Last Men in London_. I liked the "future histories"
    because of their range and inventiveness, but I can see where some
    people might find them hard going; like the Manhatten telephone book,
    "there's not much plot but, boy, what a cast of characters!"
    
    I thought _Last Men in London_ was getting much too predictable--
    highly advanced visitor used to critique modern society--so I never
    finished it. 

    when I was a student at northeastern they had the compilation of his
    work there, the hardcover was old and ratty looking but it was
    precious. I think it was called "THE END OF TIME". i think i borrowed
    it from the library 20 times. I really loved his grand scale, to
    misquote monty python he makes Ben Hur look like an epoch!
    pete

	It's been many years since I read Odd John and Sirius, and they were
quite old then. I did so at the urging of a friend who assured me they were
some of the all-time great science fiction. I was underwhelmed. I suppose the
feeling would be akin to watching Shane for the first time, or reading Riders
of the Purple Sage for the first time... after years of hearing that they were
the greatest Westerns EVER. You would find them full of cliches. The fact that
at the time they were written (filmed) they were originals, and that it is
copycats that have rendered them cliche ridden, is rather beside the point. To
you they are trite.

Mike J

    If you were put off by "Odd John" and "Sirius", you still might 
    want to try "Starmaker" or "Last and First Men".  The first two 
    are rather near-term and pedestrian.  The latter 
    two embody what people mean when they say "Stapledonian in scale": vast 
    sweeps of space and time, and long-range extrapolation.
    
    Most SF writers deliberately limit their imaginations.  They keep 
    things to the near future (say, the next thousand years) and to 
    small variations on the basic frame of humanity.  The reasons are clear:
    they need to maintain identification with the reader and are 
    uncertain how well they can extrapolate at that level anyway.  
    Stapledon did not limit himself.  He took things out to the very 
    limit: to the limit of humanity and the limit of the universe itself.
    You may not agree with his speculations (and in fact his 
    short-term history of the world in LaFM is 
    already off), but you've got to admire the scope.
    
    Not everyone agrees with his outlook.  Alexei Panshin attacks 
    Stapledon vigorously in his major new critical work on SF, "The 
    World Beyond the Hill".  His basic complaint is that Stapledon is 
    a defeatist.  Humanity expands and evolves in LaFM to beings who 
    would be gods to us, but are still limited to this solar system 
    and are ultimately extinguished by the dying of the sun.  
    Sentience itself expands in SM until it incorporates every joule of the 
    cooling universe, but is then found wanting.  Panshin puts this 
    down to English melancholy.  He much prefers the youthful vigor 
    of E. E. Smith, where the possibilities of growth and change are 
    infinite.   He even contrasts Stapledon with E. R. Burroughs' 
    Mars novels.  No matter how many adventures John Carter of Mars 
    has, he's always up for another one, always ready to plunge out 
    into the unknown again.  Stapledon's Last Men aren't even up for 
    interstellar travel; the prospect of all that space drives them mad.
    
    The trouble with this argument is that the books of Smith and 
    Burroughs are meant for children and teenagers, not adults.  That 
    doesn't mean that adults can't appreciate them, just that they
    skip adult concerns.  Adults know that there are limits to what 
    one can do, that everything gets boring after enough repetitions, 
    and that eventually everyone dies.  As a kid you might think that 
    John Carter is having a wonderful time in book after book, but as 
    a grown-up you have to wonder why he doesn't get tired of it 
    all.  Another damn princess to rescue, another invasion to fight 
    off.  The guy is trapped at an age of seventeen.
    
    Stapledon pushs growth as far as it can go (and far beyond any 
    American writer), but recognizes that 
    there are limits somewhere.  That's not melancholy, that's 
    maturity.  Further, it lends a tone of real tragedy to his works 
    that few other SF books of the time have.  It's why they're still on 
    everyone's must read list, and while they're still worth picking 
    up fifty years later.
    
    /jlr      

    Re .8 & .9
    
    I found "Star Maker" a facinating read, but, like "Odd John" and "Sirius,"
    it is "full of cliches" because it is the source of many standard SF
    themes, e.g. race-minds and sentient stars.  This did not bother me; I
    responded with a feeling of discovery -- "So THAT'S where this comes
    from!"
    
    Panshin is entitled to his opinions, of course, but I hope that, in his
    book, he recognizes there is a distinction between moral or ideological
    goodness and artistic goodness.  Both triumphs and tragedies can be
    good art, even if you disapprove of the morality of writing a tragedy.
    
    For instance, Stapledon's prose is by no means polished or
    entertaining, but it is certainly much more literate than that of Smith
    or Burroughs.  On the other hand, when Stapledon wrote "Star Maker" and
    "Last and First Men," he set himself the stern task of writing an
    imaginary history that is told in the dry and impersonal manner of a
    non-fiction history.  His prose style doesn't get in the way, but it
    doesn't assist, either.  And there are NO PEOPLE, except for brief
    cameo appearances.  You have to be carried through the book strictly by
    your interest in the ideas, because there is nothing else there -- no
    people, no scenery, no plot other than the march of history.
    
    Compare this to "The Silmarillion."  It, too, is a history, and rich in
    invention, but it is a heck of a lot easier to read than "Star Maker,"
    thanks to Tolkien's skills as a verbal musician, and thanks to the fact
    that it is a history of people.
    
    Moving into the still more slippery territory of ideological issues, I
    don't know that world-weariness is any more "adult" than enthusiasm or
    heroism.  All my life, adolescents have been both posing as cynical and
    disillusioned and BEING cynical and disillusioned.  If Stapledon's view
    deserves to be called more "adult" than Smith's or Burrough's, it's not
    by coming down on the negative side at last (if, in fact, he does), but
    by giving the issue a lot more consideration than either of the other
    authors.
    
    However, I suspect a lot of the "age difference" is simply the result
    of the one author choosing to write fictional history and the others
    choosing to write adventure stories.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    
    I think that Panshin is overlooking a basic premise in Stapledon's
    books (at least in LaFM and _Starmaker_)--they have a lot of elements
    of Classic Greek theater. The civilizations rise and triumph for a
    short time, but distroy themselves through hubris--the "fatal flaw"
    of the Greeks playwrights. The tragety, the catharsis which was the
    basis for Greek Theater, comes about _because_ each civilization 
    rises so high before it is distroyed. 

    I have read all the Stapledon books and enjoyed them all. When I first
    read Starmaker I was amazed at the scope of his imagination, but a
    second and third reading seemed to be tedious going.  A sequel, well
    expansion, to Starmaker is Nebula Maker, which gives more detail to the
    Nubula mind than StarMaker does. F&LM and LMiL were very good although
    history, as said before, has made them erroneous. Still Stapledons
    imagination was extraordinary. 
    
    	Jeff. 

Article: 340
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews #15: Olaf Stapledon
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 26 Aug 93 02:29:12 GMT
 
		Belated Reviews #15:  Olaf Stapledon
 
Between 1930 and 1950, Olaf Stapledon wrote some of the most impressive
and influential science fiction of the century.  He was English, which may
have been an advantage.  The best English science fiction writers seem to 
have escaped the American curse of writing within, and for, the science 
fiction ghetto.  In the best of cases, this has meant that what they write
has to be not only good science fiction, but also good fiction.  
 
Writing good fiction means, among things, that a novel can't coast on clever 
gimmicks and gadgets, as so much science fiction of the time did.  It has to
have something extra.  In Olaf Stapledon's case, that meant tackling *big*
subjects.  Four of his novels stand out in particular:
 
"Last and First Men" (***+) is Stapledon's future history of human
evolution.  Two billion years of it.  (Did I mention that he tackled big
subjects?)  It starts after the twentieth century with the First Men -- our
own species -- and the events which led to a worldwide Pax Americana -- a
culture based on unrestricted energy usage, which collapses with the
exhaustion of the last coal fields.  It follows humanity's near-extinction,
and the eventual evolution of the survivors into the Second Men, millions
of years later, then *their* near-extinction and their replacement by the
Third Men, and so on till the Eighteenth and last.  The genus has its ups and
downs.  Some of the species are successors we would be proud to own; others
are nasty, brutish, and not very tall.  Some are destroyed by cosmic
accidents; others bring about their own destruction.  
 
All the successor species are expressions of humanity.  Ultimately the
questions raised by a two-billion-year cycle of existence are the same as
those raised by our civilization's span of a few millenia and our personal
spans of a few decades.  The final question raised by the impending extinction
of the Last Men is -- was it all for nothing?
 
"Star Maker" (***+) is written on an even larger scale.  Indeed, "Last and
First Men" is a footnote within the time and space covered by "Star Maker",
which presents a history of the galaxy -- later the universe.  This is a 
history of spiritual advancement amidst physical decay.  Worlds develop 
world-minds which (after any number of false paths) become galactic ones.  
Meanwhile, as billions of years pass, galaxies become physically impoverished,
energy becomes scarce, the universe runs down.  Towards the end, the narrator
glimpses later, better universes, each finite and doomed.  Once again, the 
final question is "what was it all for?", and once again, the answer is an 
optimistic one.
 
I hope I'm not giving the impression that these books are all grand movements
and designs.  Imagination can capture a reader's attention, but it takes
storytelling to hold it.  Oh, it's an impersonal storytelling.  When every
page must cover millions of years there isn't much room for individuals.  The
protagonists must be entire species and worlds.  The destruction of Patagonia,
the Martian Plagues, the abandonment of Venus, the war with the sentient 
stars:  Events that ought to take entire books get tossed off in a few lines.
 
"Odd John" (***) is more modest in scope, if not in topic.  The John of the
title is an exceptionally bright little boy who grows up to be that later
staple of science fiction, the mutant supergenius.  Now, one mutant super-
genius is an oddity, but when there turn out to be a good number of them
scattered around the globe, it gives some people cause for concern.  Not
that they have any designs upon humanity -- they form an isolated colony
and ask only to be left alone -- but that's asking too much of humanity.
 
"Sirius" (***) is something of a companion piece to "Odd John".  The
Sirius of the title is an exceptionally bright dog -- too bright.  His
'creator' only meant to develop a "super sheep dog", but wound up with an
intelligent and sentient being.  Not that Sirius is any brighter than the
average human, but it turns out that humans don't seem to take kindly to
even fair competition. 
 
These four are Stapledon's best.  Some of his other books are far less
digestible, and even these may not be to all tastes.  They're special enough,
however, that if you've never read Stapledon, and any of these four sounds 
like something you *might* like, I recommend giving it a try.  The philosophy
behind his books may strike the contemporary reader oddly, but the books 
themselves have a lasting power.
 
%A  Stapledon, Olaf
%T  Last and First Men
%T  Star Maker
%T  Odd John
%T  Sirius
 
Standard introduction and disclaimer for Belated Reviews follows.

Belated Reviews cover science fiction and fantasy of earlier decades.
They're for newer readers who have wondered about the older titles on the
shelves, or who are interested in what sf/f was like in its younger days.
The emphasis is on helping interested readers identify books to try first, 
not on discussing the books in depth.
 
A general caveat is in order:  Most of the classics of yesteryear have not
aged well.  If you didn't encounter them back when, or in your early teens,
they will probably not give you the unforced pleasure they gave their
original audiences.  You may find yourself having to make allowances for
writing you consider shallow or politics you consider regressive.  When I
name specific titles, I'll often rate them using the following scale:
 
**** Recommended.
***  An old favorite that hasn't aged well, and wouldn't get a good
	reception if it were written today.  Enjoyable on its own terms.
**   A solid book, worth reading if you like the author's works.
*    Nothing special.
 
Additional disclaimers:  Authors are not chosen for review in any particular
order.  The reviews don't attempt to be comprehensive.  No distinction is 
made between books which are still in print and books which are not.
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]
 
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity." -- W.B. Yeats