Star Maker

"This is actually a perfect example of the relationship between science and science fiction. It’s mostly known now as the origin of the idea of Dyson spheres . So: Dyson spheres are named after Freeman Dyson, a physicist, and mathematician … a true polymath who popularised this idea that a super-advanced civilisation might power itself by building a sphere, or a spherical swarm, of satellites around a star, so as to capture the energy coming off that star. You know, here on Earth we get a tiny fraction of the sun’s energy, just whatever hits the Earth. A really advanced civilisation would want to capture more of that free energy. He always credited this idea as coming from this science fiction novel Star Maker. So I originally decided to read Star Maker because I know of it as the source of Dyson spheres. And I was really expecting a book about Dyson spheres—a civilisation powering itself that way, or maybe an ancient artifact from a long-gone civilisation. There’s actually an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation where a relic Dyson sphere is found. But I was blown away to find that, in Star Maker , Dyson spheres are mentioned in about half a sentence. You really have to be looking for it. It’s not a book about a single advanced alien society, or really about technology. It’s this fantastically sweeping imagining of all the different ways that intelligent life might evolve on planets, that civilisations might seek advancement.rd Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The book was published in 1937. Stapledon was an English author. Star Maker was explicitly a response to the rise of fascism. He talks in the book about how civilisations, planetary cultures, face this hurdle that they all come up against in their development. It’s fascism, which—as he sees it—is not just a governmental control but the opposition to openness and connection. So this vast and sort of mystical imagining of different versions of life and culture is really about imagining how some civilisations find their way through the darkness. But it’s also about, you know, planets and galaxies and stars. It’s a book that surprised me so much. It’s a beautiful, strange book that I really fell in love with. It was probably the most wonderful surprise of my research. I don’t think Star Maker counts as hard science fiction , because the technology is all kind of hand-wavy. You know? So it falls somewhere in the middle. There’s also telepathy—the civilisations that reach levels of enlightenment that humanity hasn’t attained yet have a kind of global consciousness that they achieve, not through the flattening homogeneity of fascism, but in a kind of unity where individuals retain their own purpose and passions, but share a collective consciousness through telepathy. I do love some hard sci-fi. I write about Vernor Vinge in the book, and I also really love Neal Stephenson . But I only love it when it is also character-driven. Technology is cool and fun, but I think I’m drawn to humanistic stories. You know? I love Ursula le Guin , and she is very much an anthropologist’s daughter. She’s interested in societies and people and interactions, and how we figure out how to be in the world—whether that be as aliens or humans."