The narrator, while participating in this larger consciousness, records his own impressions as the journey continues across hundreds of worlds. This psychical force comes to determine the direction of travel, as they are drawn toward like-minded beings in different worlds. Thus emerges a cosmic mind that exerts an attractive force toward other intelligences that are also seeking a wider understanding. They feel a separate awareness emerging that sets aside the cultural uniqueness of each individual and focuses on “those attributes that were essential to the spirit.”

They realize that their journeys are not simply personal adventures but part of a larger force of consciousness.

As the number of these psychic travelers increases, they sense a common purpose as galactic explorers. He finds a way to infuse himself into their minds and even to communicate with them while sharing their mental space. The narrator travels as a psychic entity from world to world in search of sentient beings across the galaxy. He made this essentially religious impulse the driving force that impels the journey forward to its ineffable climax in a glimpse of the supreme creative force of the cosmos. Though Stapledon was agnostic on religious beliefs, he felt strongly the yearning to grasp the mysteries of existence. So begins an epic journey in search of the source of being itself and the community of other minds that may be able to make sense of life in the context of a seemingly infinite universe. In this disembodied form, he finds himself traveling through space with bewildering speed. Beneath him, the dwindling earth appears as a pebble in the vast expanse of stars. Yet as he reflects on the littleness of life in the vast emptiness of space, his vision suddenly changes, first sweeping across the whole extent of the earth and then lifting him into space. He is overwhelmed by a sense of unreality and futility in daily life as well as the delirium of the world. It begins in the midst of a personal crisis when a man walks out on a hill near his home. Even though Stapledon does away with conventional plot, his narrator describes in mesmerizing detail a journey across the cosmos.

Star Maker proved to be a sourcebook of ideas for the work of countless writers. Considering that Stapledon trained as a philosopher and had little acquaintance with science fiction before writing his novels, he had an enormous influence on the field. Clarke, Jorge Luis Borges, Doris Lessing and Virginia Woolf, among many others, have praised Stapledon’s work, especially Star Maker. Writers as diverse as Brian Aldiss, Arthur C. I doubt any writer before or since has taken so literally the task of sketching “the whole of things” as a myth of the cosmic mind or done it so effectively.

Star maker novel