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Dawn, issue 11, combined with The Imaginative Collector, issue 1, November 1950
Page 6
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BOOK REVIEWS (6) Death Into Live by Olaf Stapledon, Mehuen & Co. London, 1946, 7/6 It is a source of regret, to me at least, that Dr. Stapledon's books grow shorter. No more the meaty volumes of well over 300 pages apiece--Last & First Men, Last Men In London, Star Maker, and Odd John (nearly 300)-- but Sirius(200) Darkness and the Light,(181),Old Man in New World but a booklet of 36 pages and now Death Into Life, containing 159 pages At the same time, I have a criticism to make of Death Into Live that I had not to make of his preceding books, except in small part Star Maker and Odd John: It did not completely capture my interest, did not spellbind me as say Darkness or Sirius. For in Death Into Life Dr. Stapledon is concerned primarily with that mystical, metaphysical thing, the spirit, and the affairs of the spirit seem th proceed at a more pedestrian pace than the considerations of body or brain. Actually, to quote the blurb on the interior of the jacket would be to pretty well tell all that the book has to say on 159 pages. It describes the sensation of dying; how the individual is aware of himself briefly as an individual, then coalesces with the nearest -- to it--newly released spirits, this multispirirted entity in turn combining with the spirit of Man, and so up the span to the Universal Spirit-- which yet yearns to know the dark, tyrant Other, the creater responsible for all that is, was and will be. The book does not have a story ;Stapledon plainly states at the beginning, "This fantasy is not a novel". Sandwiched in along with the spiritual spiral, as dead souls approach their goal, are homely interludes, 7 in all, of life among the living. These are italiciized pages occuring 2 or 3 at a time; they are not fantastic, and I do not especially see their relationship to the rest of the book; but they are nice. Stapledon displays only briefly the facet most appreciated by fans when he stands "at the foothills of eternity" and envisions Man's colonization of 5 planets, the distant disintegration of Luna into a Saturnlike ring around Terra, and the eventual explosion of the sun which annihilates the minded-life of the solar system. He uses a phrase I liked "beyond the starts and aeons", for our more familiar "space and time"; and he introduced me to a fascinating new world"sublunary", for under the moon. I can recommend the book only with reservations. I doubt it will be anybody's favorite Stapledon-- it's too repititious and eventless to charm me completely-- but it's one advanced thinker's guess at "life" after death, and what it might be like and is worth say a buck and a half, used.Don't let some money mad dealer try to convince you your life won't be worth living-- or death worth dying if you don't buy a copy from him for five bucks. Forrest J. Ackerman
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BOOK REVIEWS (6) Death Into Live by Olaf Stapledon, Mehuen & Co. London, 1946, 7/6 It is a source of regret, to me at least, that Dr. Stapledon's books grow shorter. No more the meaty volumes of well over 300 pages apiece--Last & First Men, Last Men In London, Star Maker, and Odd John (nearly 300)-- but Sirius(200) Darkness and the Light,(181),Old Man in New World but a booklet of 36 pages and now Death Into Life, containing 159 pages At the same time, I have a criticism to make of Death Into Live that I had not to make of his preceding books, except in small part Star Maker and Odd John: It did not completely capture my interest, did not spellbind me as say Darkness or Sirius. For in Death Into Life Dr. Stapledon is concerned primarily with that mystical, metaphysical thing, the spirit, and the affairs of the spirit seem th proceed at a more pedestrian pace than the considerations of body or brain. Actually, to quote the blurb on the interior of the jacket would be to pretty well tell all that the book has to say on 159 pages. It describes the sensation of dying; how the individual is aware of himself briefly as an individual, then coalesces with the nearest -- to it--newly released spirits, this multispirirted entity in turn combining with the spirit of Man, and so up the span to the Universal Spirit-- which yet yearns to know the dark, tyrant Other, the creater responsible for all that is, was and will be. The book does not have a story ;Stapledon plainly states at the beginning, "This fantasy is not a novel". Sandwiched in along with the spiritual spiral, as dead souls approach their goal, are homely interludes, 7 in all, of life among the living. These are italiciized pages occuring 2 or 3 at a time; they are not fantastic, and I do not especially see their relationship to the rest of the book; but they are nice. Stapledon displays only briefly the facet most appreciated by fans when he stands "at the foothills of eternity" and envisions Man's colonization of 5 planets, the distant disintegration of Luna into a Saturnlike ring around Terra, and the eventual explosion of the sun which annihilates the minded-life of the solar system. He uses a phrase I liked "beyond the starts and aeons", for our more familiar "space and time"; and he introduced me to a fascinating new world"sublunary", for under the moon. I can recommend the book only with reservations. I doubt it will be anybody's favorite Stapledon-- it's too repititious and eventless to charm me completely-- but it's one advanced thinker's guess at "life" after death, and what it might be like and is worth say a buck and a half, used.Don't let some money mad dealer try to convince you your life won't be worth living-- or death worth dying if you don't buy a copy from him for five bucks. Forrest J. Ackerman
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