"Olaf Stapledon - Starmaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

a more dispassionate spirit. And perhaps the attempt to see our turbulent world against a back-ground of stars may,
after all, increase, not lessen the sig-nificance of the present human crisis. It may also strengthen our charity toward
one another.
In this belief I have tried to construct an imaginative sketch of the dread but vital whole of things. I know well that it
is a ludicrously inadequate and in some ways a childish sketch, even when regarded from the angle of contemporary
human experience. In a calmer and a wiser age it might well seem crazy. Yet in spite of its crudity, and in spite of its
re-moteness, it is perhaps not wholly irrelevant.
At the risk of raising thunder both on the Left and on the Right, I have occasionally used certain ideas and words
derived from religion, and I have tried to interpret them in relation to modem needs. The valuable, though much
dam-aged words "spiritual" and "worship," which have become almost as obscene to the Left as the good old sexual
words are to the Right, are here intended to suggest an experience which the Right is apt to pervert and the Left to
misconceive. This experience, I should say, involves detachment from all private, all social, all racial ends; not in the
sense that it leads a man to reject them, but that it makes him prize them in a new way. The "spiritual life" seems to be
in
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essence the attempt to discover and adopt the attitude which is in fact appropriate to our experience as a whole, just as
admiration is felt to be in fact appropriate toward a well-grown human being. This enterprise can lead to an increased
lucidity and finer temper of consciousness, and therefore can have a great and beneficial effect on behavior. Indeed, if
this supremely humanizing experience does not produce, along with a kind of piety toward fate, the resolute will to
serve our waking humanity, it is a mere sham and a snare.
Before closing this preface I must express my gratitude to Professor L. C. Martin, Mr. L. H. Myers, and Mr. E. V.
Rieu, for much helpful and sympathetic criticism, in conse-quence of which I rewrote many chapters. Even now I
hesitate to associate their names with such an extravagant work. Judged by the standards of the Novel, it is remarkably
bad. In fact, it is no novel at all.
Certain ideas about artificial planets were suggested by Mr. J. D. Bernal's fascinating little book The World, the
Flesh, and the Devil. I hope he will not strongly disapprove of my treatment of them.
My wife I must thank both for work on the proofs and for being herself.
At the end of the book I have included a note on Mag-nitude, which may be helpful to readers unfamiliar with
astronomy. The very sketchy time scales may amuse some.
O. S.
March 1937
vii


CONTENTS

preface v
I. The earth 11
1. The Starting Point 11
2. Earth Among the Stars 14

II. Interstellar travel 18

III. The other earth 27
1. On the Other Earth 27
2. A Busy World 31
3. Prospects of the Race 44

IV. I travel again 54