W HISTORY
L
OLAF STAPLEDON
BY ANDREW WOOD
William Olaf Stapledon was not a household name even
in his lifetime, still less so today. Nevertheless, the fact
remains that he was one of the most influential writers
of the 20th century. His four major works were ‘Last
and First Men’ (published in 1930), ‘Odd John’ (1935),
‘Star Maker (1937) and Sirius (1944). These are some
of the greatest in science fiction literature, and some
people rate ‘Star Maker’ as the single greatest work of
the genre ever written.
The philosophical depth as well as the imaginative scope of
Stapledon’s novels represented a particularly formative stage
in the development of science fiction as a genre, inspiring
and directly influencing subsequent writers including Arthur
C Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanislaw Lem, the Polish author of
science fiction, philosophy and satire, C S Lewis and, perhaps
surprisingly, John Maynard Smith the British theoretical
evolutionary biologist and geneticist who said in an interview,
“Possibly most influential in making me interested in genetics
and in evolution was a strange book by a man called Olaf
Stapledon, ‘Last and First Men’. It’s a history of the next – oh,
I don’t know – 100 million years of human history... the book’s
thesis is that there will be a succession of human civilizations
that collapse. And it isn’t until human beings deliberately change
their own constitution to make themselves less aggressive and
more friendly that a stable civilization can be made. Although
I no longer believe that the only path to human betterment is
to change our genes, I was really persuaded by the argument at
the time”.
Stapledon was born at 49 Falkland Road, Seacombe, on 10th
May 1886, the only son of William Clibbert Stapledon and
Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with
his parents in Port Said, Egypt, where his father managed a
shipping company. Both his parents had a ‘progressive’ outlook,
and encouraged the young Olaf ’s independence of mind. On his
return to England to begin his education, he attended schools in
the Liverpool area before boarding at the Abbotsholme School
near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. Abbotsholme had been founded in
1889 by Doctor Cecil Reddie; an old boy of the school said, “Cecil
Reddie showed that the best climate [in which to learn] was not
a hothouse of self expression but a temperate zone between
absolute freedom and the need to belong in an ordered body
of culture”. This too helped to form Stapledon’s approach to life.
He went on to read Modern History at Balliol Collage, Oxford,
where he gained a BA in 1909 and an MA in 1913. In the short
period before the outbreak of the Great War, he taught briefly
at the public school, Manchester Grammar, and then worked
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in a shipping office in Liverpool, and after that for his father’s
firm in Port Said. In 1914 he published his first book, ‘Latter-
Day Psalms’, a volume of undistinguished phil osophical poetry.
When the war broke out he was opposed to military service and
chose to serve as a driver in a Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU),
attached to the French army, as a compromise between bearing
arms and the status of a conscientious objector. The FAU was a
volunteer ambulance service, founded by the Religious Society
of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, in line with the Quaker refusal
to engage in war. Stapledon’s war experiences reinforced his
inclination toward pacifism. Released from service in January
1919, the French Government awarded him with the Croix de
Guerre for his bravery.
On 16th July 1919 he married his Australian cousin, Agnes
Zena Miller, whom he had first met in 1903, and with whom he
had kept up a correspondence all through the war. They were
married at the Quaker Meeting House in Reigate, Surry. Olaf
and Agnes went on to have two children, Mary Sydney, born in
1920, and John David, born in 1923. The family lived in West
Kirby from Olaf and Agnes’s wedding until 1940.
In 1925 Stapledon gained a PhD in Philosophy at the University
of Liverpool. He used his thesis as the basis for his first publish
book of prose, entitled ‘A Modern Theory of Ethics’ which was
published in 1929. However, he believed that fiction would be
a better means of introducing his ideas to a wider public. His
first novel, ‘Last and First Men’ (1930) was successful enough
to persuade him to become a full-time writer. He wrote a sequel
‘Last Men in London’ was published in 1932,the same year in
which his father died. These books were followed by many more,
both of fiction and philosophy.
In response to the senseless death and destruction of the Great
War, Stapledon became a lifelong advocate both of European
unity and of world government. He was one of the first teachers
in the Worker’s Educational Association (WEA), and an early
opponent of Apartheid in South Africa. Rather than being
“too idealistic to be any earthly use” Stapledon was capable of
turning Utopian beliefs into practical politics. He succeeded in
transforming himself from, as he cheerfully described himself,
“a provincial on the margins of English literary and political life”,
into a man of original and penetrating vision who attracted the
attention of scientists, journalists and novelists and – because
he made no secret of his left-wing affiliations – even the Federal
Bureau of Investigation in the USA. Although he described
himself spiritually as an agnostic, it would be interesting to know
whether or not his contact with Quakers extended to attendance
at their meetings.