I love books like 'Island', 'A Modern Utopia', 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', etc, but I'm just coming to the end of the most mindblowing thing I've ever read;
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker
*"Star Maker is a cornerstone work of science fiction. Stapledon undertakes the immense task of describing the entire history of life in the universe. It dwarfs in scale even his 1930 book Last and First Men, which is a history of the human species over two billion years. It tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator, and it succeeds in evoking a sense of the sheer scale and complexity of the cosmos. The narrator starts with a concern at the clash of ideas on Earth and finds analogies to both communism and fascism among the aliens he visits.
A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. It has long been considered to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written."*
I love books like 'Island', 'A Modern Utopia', 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', etc, but I'm just coming to the end of the most mindblowing thing I've ever read;
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker
*"Star Maker is a cornerstone work of science fiction. Stapledon undertakes the immense task of describing the entire history of life in the universe. It dwarfs in scale even his 1930 book Last and First Men, which is a history of the human species over two billion years. It tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator, and it succeeds in evoking a sense of the sheer scale and complexity of the cosmos. The narrator starts with a concern at the clash of ideas on Earth and finds analogies to both communism and fascism among the aliens he visits.
A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. It has long been considered to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written."*