Pale Shadow of Science. Brian Aldiss

only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste of fire.

      Under the detached tone is an almost animist belief in life everywhere, sentience everywhere. One of Stapledon’s last fantasies, The Flames, postulates a madman’s vision of fire with intellect.

      With such paradox, such bleakness and beauty, Fiedler is well-equipped to deal. ‘Ecstasy’ is one of Stapledon’s favourite words, and the ecstasy is usually one of both pain and pleasure. For there is pleasure of a high order in making that desperate voyage to come face-to-face with the Star Maker, and pain in discovering that this universe is but one in a sequence of universes, each imperfect in its way. ‘Cosmos after cosmos, each more rich and subtle than the last, leapt from his fervent imagination.’ In the extraordinary Chapter XV, Stapledon describes a progression of these flawed cosmoses, each one in turn failing ultimately to satisfy its creator, who stores them away like so many old video games in a cupboard, as he turns to prepare a yet more complex strategy.

      Our own cosmos is in turn about to be put away. In the succeeding cosmos, according to the thought of the Star Maker, the physical will be ‘more patently phantasmal than in our own cosmos,’ while the beings who inhabit it will be ‘far less deceived by the opacity of their individual mental processes, and more sensitive to their underlying unity.’