(A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes ...)
A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive.
(Last Men in London is the story of this being's explorati...)
Last Men in London is the story of this being's exploration of the consciousness of a present-day Englishman named Paul, from childhood through service with an ambulance crew in the First World War (mirroring Stapledon's own personal history) to adult life as a schoolteacher faced with a "submerged superman" in his class nicknamed Humpty.
(The story details the mental journey of an unnamed narrat...)
The story details the mental journey of an unnamed narrator who is transported not only to other worlds but also other galaxies and parallel universes, until he eventually becomes part of the "cosmic mind."
(Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, dep...)
Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of World War II but on the failure or success of a future "Tibetan Renaissance" to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic empires that threaten it.
William Olaf Stapledon, mostly known as Olaf Stapledon, was a British philosopher, poet and author of science fiction. His "histories of the future" have had a major influence on contemporary science fiction.
Background
William Olaf Stapledon was born on May 10, 1886, in Seacombe, Wallasey, Cheshire, United Kingdom. He was a son of William Clibbett Stapledon, a manager of a shipping agency, and Emmeline (Miller) Stapledon. He spent his early childhood in Egypt, where his father managed a shipping agency. When Stapledon was eight years old, he and his mother returned to England.
Education
Stapledon was educated at the Abbotsholme School and later at Balliol College of the University of Oxford. He graduated from the college in 1909 with a bachelor's degree in modern history. He then obtained Master of Arts degree in 1913. Later, in 1925, Stapledon received his doctor's degree from the University of Liverpool.
Early in his career, Stapledon worked as a shipping clerk and as a schoolteacher but found neither of these occupations suited to his talents and personality. In 1912 he found more congenial work lecturing on history and English literature for the Workers’ Educational Association and for the University of Liverpool. According to biographer Patrick A. McCarthy, Stapledon found this occupation “especially welcome since it provided him with a forum for expounding his socialist interpretation of industrial history”.
In 1914 Stapledon wrote Latter-Day Psalms, a poetry collection in which appeared many of the concerns that would later dominate his fiction, including contemporary social issues and the search for transcendent spiritual truths. Despite pacifist leanings, Stapledon served in World War I as a driver for the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium.
After the war Stapledon resumed his position with the Workers’ Educational Association and with the University of Liverpool. In 1929 his first philosophical study, A Modern Theory of Ethics: A Study of the Relations of Ethics and Psychology, was published to little critical attention. In 1930, however, Stapledon received both popular and critical acclaim for his first novel Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future. For the next twenty years he alternately published works of philosophy that were largely ignored and science fiction novels that were highly praised. Stapledon’s second major future history was Star Maker. More conventional in style and form than Stapledon’s future histories was 1935’s Odd John: A Story between Jest and Earnest, which is regarded among science fiction’s greatest “superman” novels. The book treats several of Stapledon’s favorite themes, including the alienation of a superior individual and the importance of personality-in-community.
Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord, published in 1944, is generally considered Stapledon’s most artistically successful work. Old Man in New World, 1944, depicts the positive influence on world politics that results from political activism by a group of intellectual leaders. Death into Life (1946), draws a portrait of a bomber crew flying missions over Germany during World War II and includes their communications after death with each other and with a universal spirit. A Man Divided (1950) focuses on an individual rather than humankind, depicting a man with a split personality whose actions alternate between the dull habits of a social follower and the insightful deeds of a leader committed to the good of others.
Since he began writing science fiction novels in the 1930s Stapledon’s writings have attracted a devoted readership, though limited by what many consider the difficult style of Last and First Men and Star Maker.
A succession of anthologies and reprint versions of Stapledon’s works followed his death in 1950 and include such volumes as To the End of Time: The Best of Olaf Stapledon (1953), and the unfinished novel Nebula Maker: An Early Version of Star Maker (1976). Far Future Calling: Uncollected Science Fiction and Fantasies of Olaf Stapledon was published in 1979; at the time of its publication, a commentator in Kirkus Reviews called attention to “The Man Who Became a Tree” as “a superb spirit-expander” and the “best” of the works collected in the volume.
In 1987 a volume of Stapledon’s correspondence with his wife was published under the title Talking across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919.
Stapledon’s philosophical and fictional works often criticize dominant twentieth-century views of religion, politics, and socioeconomic systems. In his first philosophical work, A Modern Theory of Ethics, Stapledon viewed such ethical concepts as duty and self-fulfillment within the context of modern science and psychology. Central to his thought is the conviction that the painful rediscovery and restatement of ‘spiritual values’ is the most important feature of our time. He rejected both capitalistic deification of the individual and communistic suppression of the individual as means to that end, contending that true spiritual growth is only possible through “personality-in-community”, the development of the individual through interaction with other members of a community.
At the same time, Stapledon’s writings often assert the inadequacy of human intellect for apprehending spiritual truth. His New Hope for Britain (1939) advocates political activism that will lead to socialism for England and the dawning of an age of world citizenship. In Saints and Revolutionaries, also published in 1939, Stapledon—according to E. W. Martin in The Pleasure Ground: A Miscellany of English Writing— “considers the possibility of the recovery of fundamental guiding principles for himself and for society”.
Among Stapledon’s numerous other theoretical works, Youth and Tomorrow comprises a philosophical discussion mixed with reminiscences of his childhood in Port Said, Egypt, and in Merseyside; Waking World presents an attack on the capitalist system and advances a socialist viewpoint; and Beyond the “Isms" critiques the dominant religious and political movements of the first half of the twentieth century. In the late work The Opening of the Eyes, which was posthumously published in 1954, Stapledon considered religious and political questions, including belief in God and the inevitability of political revolution to bring about socialist ideals.
A number of Stapledon’s other fictional works explore the potentialities of human existence, including Darkness and the Light (1942).
Although he considered science fiction primarily a vehicle for the propagation of his philosophical ideas, Stapledon is acclaimed for the inventiveness of his works and is credited with introducing many of the themes that have since become staples of the genre.
Quotations:
“Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.”
“Men endured so much for war, but for peace they dared nothing.”
“In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in company, in spite of the universal assumption of comradeship, these strange beings remained as remote from one another as the stars. For everyone searched his neighbour’s eyes for the image of himself, and never saw anything else. Or if he did, he was outraged and terrified.”
Membership
Stapledon was a member of the League of Nations Union, the Progressive League and the Association for Education in Citizenship.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Stapledon is surely the most ambitious science fiction writer who has ever lived. His aim is no less than to synthesize all human knowledge, to summarize all human history past and future, and to justify the Star Maker’s ways to man." - Curtis C. Smith
"There is in Stapledon’s tragic vision of man’s bittersweet history, an ennobling effect, a catharsis of sorts. We are better for having shared his imaginative spirit. It is this particular power that makes Stapledon’s writings endure. In science fiction he is a writer and thinker of the first magnitude whose influence and readership will continue to widen in the future." - James L. Campbell, Sr.
Connections
Stapledon married Agnes Zena Miller on July 1919. The couple had two children - Mary Sydney and John David.