The world's most effective sleeping pill. ( )

"Last and First Men" is perhaps the greatest future history ever written. "Star Maker" is a visionary masterpiece of biologic and experiential metamorphoses, like a scientifically-informed "Voyage to Arcturus"(by David Lindsay). Stapledon is one of the great science-fiction authors, and a major incluence on Arthur C. Clarke, among others. Both novels are filled with ideas, and Stapledon manages to hold our interest even when writing in the detached manner of a historian of vast epochs of human evolution.

There is little consolation here for those, like myself, who seek surety of a purpose to our existence. The perspective is atheistic, or at most a pantheism in which the exercise of human will and intelligence suffice for themselves. But this, at times, almost inhuman detachement is accompanied by some of the most awesome visions of social and technological possibility ever committed to writing.

What mystifies this reviewer is that Olaf Stapledon is not better known among the reading public. It is possible that his time has not yet come. ( )

http://eor.livejournal.com/179113.htm... &
http://eor.livejournal.com/181126.htm... ( )

It's a fantastical mixture of philisophical treatise and science-fiction that still shows us exactly what Science-Fiction is capable of. ( )

The thin page paper and small font of this Dover publication somehow added to the reading experience for me. Invited me to stay along for the ride. The plot covers eons of time and through various stages of "human" evolution from our current fleshy, upright walking selves to winged angel like creatures communicated through music, and is so vividly portrayed you'd think OS had literally been through it all himself. A wonderful, awe-inspiring read. Influential, original, groundbreaking.