Frasi di Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon è stato uno scrittore e filosofo britannico, che con le sue opere letterarie contribuì grandemente allo sviluppo del genere fantascientifico nel Novecento.

Concetti che oggi sono parte integrante della fantascienza – ingegneria genetica, terraformazione, imperi galattici, menti collettive, sfere di Dyson sono solo alcuni di questi – possono essere fatti risalire in sostanza alle sue due opere Infinito e Il costruttore di stelle, seppure possono esserci stati riferimenti passeggeri ad alcuni di essi nella fantascienza precedente.

Molte delle opere di Stapledon presentano la tensione tra le aspirazioni più nobili degli esseri intelligenti e i loro istinti animaleschi e violenti. In genere la sua narrativa espone gli avvenimenti in modo distaccato ed impersonale, dando una visione d'insieme di grande ampiezza ma dissolvendo il senso dell'individualità. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. Maggio 1886 – 6. Settembre 1950
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Olaf Stapledon: Frasi in inglese

“Since then two experiences have dominated me: philosophy, and the tragic disorder of our whole terrestrial hive.”

Introduction
Philosophy and Living (1939)
Contesto: My childhood, which lasted some twenty-five years, was moulded chiefly by the Suez Canal, Abbotsholme, and Balliol. Since those days I have attempted several careers, in each case escaping before the otherwise inevitable disaster. First, as a schoolmaster, I swotted up Bible stories on the eve of the scripture lesson. Then, in a Liverpool shipping office, I spoiled bills of lading, and in Port Said I innocently let skippers have more coal than they needed. Next I determined to create an Educated Democracy. Workington miners, Barrow riveters, Crewe railway-men, gave me a better education than I could give them. Since then two experiences have dominated me: philosophy, and the tragic disorder of our whole terrestrial hive. After a belated attack on academic philosophy, I wrote a couple of books on philosophical subjects and several works of fantastic fiction dealing with the career of mankind. One of them, Last and First Men, is in this series.

“Throughout man's career intelligence and charity have been man's distinctive and most valuable assets.”

Philosophy and Living (1939)
Contesto: Throughout man's career intelligence and charity have been man's distinctive and most valuable assets. One of our early pre-human ancestors is said to have been much like the Spectral Tarsier, a little mammal about the size of a mouse, with long wiry fingers and huge forward-looking eyes adapted for binocular vision. Not by weapons but by correlation of subtle eyes and subtle hands through subtle brain, this creature triumphed. And man himself conquered the world by the same means, by attention, by discrimination, by skilled manipulation, by versatility; in fact by intelligence and imagination in adapting himself to an ever-changing environment.

“I, at any rate, acknowledge only one master, not forty-five million two-legged sheep, or two thousand million, but simply and absolutely the spirit.”

Olaf Stapledon libro Sirius

Origine: Sirius (1944), Chapter XII Farmer Sirius (an answer to Plaxy's rant about democracy).

“Chapter IV: Paul comes of age”

Olaf Stapledon libro Last Men in London

fragments of poems supposedly writen by Paul
Last Men in London (1932)

“Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos.”

Olaf Stapledon libro Last and First Men

Origine: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XIV: Neptune; Section 1, “Bird’s-Eye View” (p. 206)

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