Olaf Stapledon is an undeservedly obscure British writer from the first half of the 20th century. He was the one who first imagined much of the later science fiction genre: planetary terraforming, genetic engineering, collective hive minds, and Dyson spheres that . His works stand out as mythology set at a universal level, and he spends much of his efforts at expressing his allegience to something he called the “spirit” of man. Stapledon’s spirit is related to Hegel’s geist but elaborated in his own aesthetic way.

Olaf Stapledon used a metaphor of the jackdaw to describe himself. A jackdaw steals shiny bits of treasure from across the landscape and fashions it into a nest that meets his own aesthetic preferences. His philosophy drew eclectically from Western and Eastern sources. I have adopted Stapledon’s jackdaw as my own avatar.

Stapledon was a man of superior intellect and erudition. His works are semi-autobiographical but he was quite self-conscious about sounding conceited and pretentious. Odd John was a book about a super-intelligent mutant and how he grew up; Stapledon’s narrator was a journalist who befriended the boy. Last and First Men was written from the standpoint of an Englishman whose mind was in direct telepathic contact with a man millions of years in the future, who in turn narrated future historical events. Star Maker was similarly written as an everyman, but his testimony was through the experience of joining a Cosmic Mind. My character Hermes Phimegistus is a hat-tip to this mode of authorship, and the sweep of Stapledon’s mythology inspires me to strive for the grandeur of his visions.