A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
William Olaf Stapledon – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but it has since come to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.
Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations.
Nicolas Camille Flammarion FRAS was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France.
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest is a 1935 science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel explores the theme of the Übermensch (superman) in the character of John Wainwright, whose supernormal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human society and to the destruction of the utopian colony founded by John and other superhumans.
An extraterrestrial or alien is any extraterrestrial lifeform; a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word extraterrestrial means "outside Earth". The first published use of extraterrestrial as a noun occurred in 1956, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Last Men in London (1932) is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon.
Galaxy novels, sometimes titled Galaxy Science Fiction Novels, were a series of mostly reprint American science fiction novels published between 1950 and 1961.
Peculiar Lives is the seventh in the series of Time Hunter novellas and features the characters Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish from Daniel O'Mahony's Doctor Who novella The Cabinet of Light. It is written by Philip Purser-Hallard, author of the Mad Norwegian Press Faction Paradox novel Of the City of the Saved...
Darkness and the Light (1942) is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon.
Four Encounters is an unfinished work by the writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon, written in the late 1940s but only published by Bran's Head Books in 1976, 26 years after the author's death. This edition contained an introduction by Brian Aldiss, a longtime champion of Stapledon's works. The text is also available in compilations of the author's writings.
The Flames is a science fiction novella by British writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon. It was published by Secker and Warburg in 1947.
Nebula Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon and published posthumously by Bran's Head Books in 1976. It was probably around 1932-33, while Stapledon would have also worked on another novel, Odd John. It was a first draft of the author's 1937 opus Star Maker. A notable difference is the treatment of the nebulae themselves, as a cosmic civilisation, peopled with recognisable characters. Two of them – Bright Heart and Fire Bolt – are treated as if individual human beings.
Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc., or FPCI, was an American science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing company established in 1946. It was the fourth small press company founded by William L. Crawford.
Worlds of Wonder is a collection of three science fiction works by Olaf Stapledon: a short novel, a novella and a short story. It was published in 1949 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 500 copies. All of the stories had originally been published in the United Kingdom.
Quadratic is a collection of four science fiction works by Olaf Stapledon and Murray Leinster. It was edited by William L. Crawford and published in 1953 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in an edition of 300 copies. The book is an omnibus of Stapledon's Worlds of Wonder and Leinster's Murder Madness, created by combining unbound sheets from the publisher's previous editions of the two volumes.
Saints and Revolutionaries is a non-fiction work by the writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon, published by Heinemann in 1939.
Vast is a science fiction novel by Linda Nagata, part of her loosely connected "Nanotech Succession" sequence.
