STAPLEDON, (William) Olaf

(1886-1950)

   UK writer and philosopher, born of well-to-do parents in the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool, where he spent the greater part of his life. In Waking World (1934) he admitted that he lived "chiefly on dividends and other ill-gotten gains". The name Olaf does not indicate foreign antecedents: his parents happened to be reading Carlyle's The Early Kings of Norway (coll 1875) at the time. Memories of childhood inSuez and a cultivated family background are recaptured in Youth and Tomorrow (1946). He was educated at Abbotsholme, a progressive public school, and at Balliol College, Oxford. For a short period he worked without enthusiasm in the family shipping office in Port Said, an experience he used in his highly autobiographical last novel, A Man Divided (1950). There is scattered evidence that the international flavourof Port Said influenced his complex ideas about "true community". His service with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in WWI helped him formulate his pacifism, and provided material for Last Men in London (1932). He took a doctorate in philosophy at Liverpool University in 1925.OS began publishing essays as early as 1908; his first book was Latter-Day Psalms (coll 1914 chap), a small volume of privately printed verse. It isremarkable only for showing a preoccupation at the outset with one of the themes that would engage him for the rest of his life: the irrelevance of a RELIGION based on hopes of IMMORTALITY and the hypothesis of an evolving god. There was a gap of 15 years before his next book, A Modern Theory of Ethics (1929), written when OS was 43. Here is the philosophicalunderpinning for all the major ideas that would appear repeatedly in the fiction: moral obligation as a teleological requirement; ecstasy as a cognitive intuition of cosmic excellence; personal fulfilment of individual capacities as an intrinsic good; community as a necessary prerequisite for individual fulfilment; and the hopeless inadequacy of human faculties for the discovery of truth. It was this last conviction which provided the springboard for the writing of his fiction; all of it, by some speculative device or other, strives to overcome the congenital deficiencies of the ordinary human being.LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930), OS's first novel, caused something of a sensation. Contemporary writers and critics acclaimed it, though later it would for a time be nearly forgotten. The book employs a timescale of 2 billion years, during which 18 races of humanity rise and fall. The story is told by one of the Last(18th) Men working through the "docile but scarcely adequate brain" of one of the 1st Men (ourselves). The civilization of the 1st Men (he explains) reached its highest points in Socrates (in the search for truth) and Jesus (in self-oblivious worship). The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 15th, 16th and 18th Menrepresent higher orders of wisdom. The emigration of the 5th Men to VENUS is an early example of TERRAFORMING, and the construction of the 9th Men to adapt them for Neptune (OUTER PLANETS) is likewise for GENETIC ENGINEERING. In the intimate and less expansive Last Men in London, one ofthe Last Men returns to the time of WWI, enters into profound symbiosis with a young human, and attempts to arouse the Race Mind.In Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest (1935) the individual SUPERMAN appears,although his attributes are spiritual and intellectual, quite divorced from the supermen of the COMICS and PULP MAGAZINES. John recapitulates in his own evolution some of the characteristics of the 2nd, 3rd and 5th Men. He and his fellow "supernormals" finally achieve something akin to thewisdom of the 18th Men; a spiritual gain which costs them their lives: when normal humans threaten to destroy their island, they destroy themselves rather than fight back.STAR MAKER (1937) is often regarded as OS's greatest work. Its cosmic range, fecundity of invention, precisionand grandeur of language, structural logic, and above all its attempt to create a universal system of philosophy by which modern human beings might live, permit comparison with DANTE ALIGHIERI's Divine Comedy. The narrator is rapt from a suburban hilltop and becomes a "disembodied, wandering viewpoint", rather like Dante's own protagonist. Over a timespan which extends to 100 billion years, he first observes "Other Men", whose extraordinary development of scent and taste should remind us of the relative nature of our own perceived values; his purview then extends to "strange mankinds", including the Human Echinoderms - whose communalmethod of reproduction provides an ingenious metaphor for the ideal of true community - and to a wide range of species far removed from mankind. Of these ALIENS, among the most interesting are the "ichthyoids" and"arachnoids". Over a long period of time these 2 species come together in a symbiosis; the ichthyoids are artistic and mystical, while the arachnoids are dexterous and practical. The development of the relationship provides OS's most extended and detailed metaphor for the ideal of true community, which has its microcosm in a pair of human lovers and its macrocosm in a Universe of "minded" LIVING WORLDS. The narrator proceeds to the "supreme moment of the cosmos" in which he faces the Star Maker and discovers something of his pitiless nature.Paradoxically, thebook with the greatest human interest is sometimes said to be Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord (1944), the story of a dog with enhancedINTELLIGENCE, consciousness and sensibility. The dog, with its natural limitations, is a paradigm of our own limited capacity; but at the same time the dog's superior gifts - e.g., in the faculty of scent - are another reminder of human inadequacy. As in Odd John, the MUTANT being, when faced with the violence of normals and their incomprehension, dies - this time directly at their hands.The four works of sf described constitute the living core of OS's fiction. Both LAST AND FIRST MEN and STAR MAKER have their advocates as the finest sf ever written; manycritics argue that Odd John is the best novel about a superman, and that Sirius is the best book with a nonhuman protagonist. All 4 show OS'sunwavering concern with the pursuit of truth and with the impossibility of our species ever finding it. Each sets up a speculative device to leap over the plodding faculties of Homo sapiens: the supernormal intelligence of Homo superior in LAST AND FIRST MEN and Odd John, and the alternative intelligence of alien creatures in STAR MAKER and Sirius. Along with the quest for truth, and as a necessary accompaniment to it, there is a search for the gateways to a "way of the spirit". These constant preoccupations give to all OS's work a striking consistency, and it is possible to place everything he did within a highly original scheme of METAPHYSICS. Everything has its place in the same cosmic history that the Star Makercoldly regards. In his avatar of Jahweh, the Star Maker was invoked at the beginning in Latter-Day Psalms; and as the "mind's star" and "phantom deity" he will be there at the end in the posthumous The Opening of the Eyes (1954).Of OS's remaining fiction, perhaps The Flames (1947 chap)deserves most attention. The "flames" are members of an alien race, originally natives of the Sun, who can be released when igneous rock is heated; they have affinities with the "supernormals" who occur on OS's other worlds. There are similarities with the later-discovered Nebula Maker (1976), apparently written in the mid-1930s as part of an earlydraft for STAR MAKER and then put aside. It relates the history of the nebulae and shows how their striving is brought to nothing by an uncaring God. Religion is dismissed as the opium of the people in Old Man in NewWorld (1944 chap). Supermen reappear in Darkness and the Light (1942) and cosmic history is recapitulated in Death into Life (1946). OS's insistence on scrupulously considering opposed points of view, and his sceptical intelligence, found an admirable vehicle in the imaginary conversations of Four Encounters (1976), probably written in the later 1940s. Of OS'sremaining nonfiction, Philosophy and Living (1939), written after the best of his fiction, is the most comprehensive work. The best introduction for the general reader is Beyond the "Isms" (1942), whose last chapter, under the characteristic heading "The Upshot", provides an admirable summary of his philosophy and a clear exposition of what he means by the "way of the spirit".OS was writing in an ancient tradition of European speculative fiction. He called his stories "fantastic fiction of a semi-philosophical kind". He was - at least initially - unaware of GENRE SF and was somewhat taken aback when in the 1940s he was acclaimed by sf fans; he was even more startled when shown the contemporary magazines which provided their staple fodder. Ironically, the acclamation he received as an sf writer may partially account for his total neglect by historians of modern literature. At the same time he is sometimes ignored by sf commentators - e.g., Kingsley AMIS in New Maps of Hell (1960 US) - presumably partly because he did not write for the sf magazines and partly because his work is difficult to anthologize. OS is, however, though sometimes dimly perceived, the Star Maker behind many subsequent stories of the FAR FUTURE and GALACTIC EMPIRES. He did much original and seminal thinking about such matters as ALTERNATE WORLDS, COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS, COSMOLOGY, CYBORGS, ESP, HIVE-MINDS, IMMORTALITY, MONSTERS, MUTANTS and TIME TRAVEL.Arthur C. CLARKE and James BLISH are among the few sf writers who have expressed their indebtedness to him, though his influence, both direct and indirect, on the development of many concepts which now permeate genre sf is probably second only to that of H.G. WELLS.

MA/JC

   Other works: New Hope for Britain (1939); Saints and Revolutionaries (1939); Worlds of Wonder (omni 1949 US), assembling The Flames, Death into Life and Old Man in New World; To the End of Time (omni 1953 US), assembling LAST AND FIRST MEN (cut), STAR MAKER, Odd John, Sirius and The Flames; Odd John, andSirius (omni 1972 US); Far Future Calling: Uncollected Science Fiction and Fantasies of Olaf Stapledon (coll 1979 US) ed Sam MOSKOWITZ; Nebula Maker, and Four Encounters (omni 1983 US); Letters Across the World: The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919 (coll 1987Australia; vt Talking Across the World 1987 US); numerous uncollected articles for such scholarly journals as Mind and Philosophy.

   About the author: Olaf Stapledon (1982) by P.A. McCarthy; Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided (1984) by Leslie A. FIEDLER; Olaf Stapledon: A Bibliography (1984)by Harvey J. Satty and Curtis C. SMITH; Olaf Stapledon and his Critics (1988) by Curtis C. Smith.

   See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); DEVOLUTION; END OF THE WORLD; EVOLUTION; FRANCE; GODS AND DEMONS; HISTORY IN SF; HISTORY OF SF; INVASION; LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS; MAINSTREAM WRITERS OF SF; MUSIC; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PHYSICS; SOCIOLOGY; SUN.