Olaf Stapledon’s ‘Star Maker’. The whole thing is filtered through semi-communist theology, but its a fascinating trek through the author’s far-flung ideas about all kinds of creatures and what they could hold in common versus major differences that come from their natures. One of the dozens of races he describes is a race of plant-men on an airless world that locked up all its volatiles in living soup in the deep valleys, they stand at the shore and soak up energy from their star in a meditative trance during the day and do more animal-style activity at night… his writing style is NOT for everyone nor is his philosophy but I heartily enjoyed it.
Yes! Star Maker is one of the very few books that I’d place up there with Blindsight and a few others in depicting truly alien aliens; and he doesn’t do it once but repeatedly throughout the book. It’s really impressive how Stapledon just casually scatters around handfuls of jewels that lesser authors might belabor singly throughout an entire book.
That book and Last and First Men and possibly Last and First Men in London are amazing. He’s got paragraphs that a normal science fiction writer would flesh out into novels.
Literally in this case: the events of Last and First Men get mentioned in one paragraph of Star Maker as one race that didn’t pan out and wind up becoming part of wider happenings after only lasting 2 billion years.
Olaf Stapledon’s ‘Star Maker’. The whole thing is filtered through semi-communist theology, but its a fascinating trek through the author’s far-flung ideas about all kinds of creatures and what they could hold in common versus major differences that come from their natures. One of the dozens of races he describes is a race of plant-men on an airless world that locked up all its volatiles in living soup in the deep valleys, they stand at the shore and soak up energy from their star in a meditative trance during the day and do more animal-style activity at night… his writing style is NOT for everyone nor is his philosophy but I heartily enjoyed it.
Yes! Star Maker is one of the very few books that I’d place up there with Blindsight and a few others in depicting truly alien aliens; and he doesn’t do it once but repeatedly throughout the book. It’s really impressive how Stapledon just casually scatters around handfuls of jewels that lesser authors might belabor singly throughout an entire book.
That book and Last and First Men and possibly Last and First Men in London are amazing. He’s got paragraphs that a normal science fiction writer would flesh out into novels.
Literally in this case: the events of Last and First Men get mentioned in one paragraph of Star Maker as one race that didn’t pan out and wind up becoming part of wider happenings after only lasting 2 billion years.