I have no idea how I missed this book after all these years. Perhaps it is best that I found it now and not earlier, for it is the supreme example of speculative thinking about the future in my experience. I can't think of another book in the science fiction genre that I could compare it to, for nothing else comes close.
This is the story of a man who takes an evening walk out upon the hills behind his home, only to be seized and swept away by a cosmic vision that seems to span the aeons. At first, he seems to be a single, disembodied point of consciousness with the ability to move at will among the stars. Then, he is drawn to a world of man-like creatures where he comes to enter into telepathic union with one of the natives. He and his host come to explore the entire history of this world before shoving off, together, to explore the other inhabited worlds of the galaxy. They are joined, one by one, by other simular explorers as they come to wander an incredible diversity of inhabited worlds. Slowly, they come to see the larger story of the galaxy, and then the entire cosmos. They see world after world unite into various forms of utopian "world minds." Then they see these world minds reach across the galaxy to colonise other worlds, and to make contact with other intelligent species. Finally, after aeons of conflict and struggle, all the galaxy is united into one great telepathically linked Galactic Union. Yet even this is but the beginning, for the next step is to make contact with the other galaxies- and with the stars and nebula themselves (for it turns out that the great cosmic bodies of the universe are themselves intelligent.) And when this is accomplished, all three great living super species press on into the higher dimensions of existance to make contact with the Creator himself- the Star Maker....
I understand that Stapledon spent part of his youth in Egypt, that would partially explain the ease at which he spans great extents of time, as well as, the rise and fall of great civilizations. Of course, he was also educated at Oxford, which would explain the simularities to Neoplatonism. At any rate, like the narrator, it is hard to believe that Stapledon didn't experience a vision of Cosmic Consciousness himself to inspire such a magnificently complex and profound work.
Oh yes, this book is not written like a conventional novel. In fact, there is not a line of conventional dialog in it. It is instead, an extremely concentrated journal of idea after significant idea. As for the ideas, not only does the science hold up remarkably well for a book written in 1937, but if you read closely you find hints of the big bang, the holographic universe, morphogenic fields, the multiverse, cybernetic reality, etc., etc., etc. It reads rather like the journal of a classically educated Englishman of before the war. No, check that, it reads like journal of a classically educated genius....
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