Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was an English philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Stapledon was born in Cheshire, but he lived in Port Said, Egypt throughout his early childhood. Following his college studies, he worked in shipping offices in Liverpool and Port Said from 1910 to 1912. During the First World War, he served as a conscientious objector. Stapledon became an ambulance driver with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium from July 1915 to January 1919; he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery. His wartime experiences influenced his pacifist beliefs. Stapledon was awarded a PhD degree in philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925 and used his doctoral thesis as the basis for his first published prose book, A Modern Theory of Ethics (1929). However, he soon turned to fiction in the hope of presenting his ideas to a wider public.

Ideas such as a supermind composed of many individual consciousnesses form a recurring theme in his work. Star Maker (1937) contains the first known description of what are now called Dyson spheres. Freeman Dyson credits the novel with giving him the idea, even stating in an interview that "Stapledon sphere" would be a more appropriate name. Last and First Men (1930) features early descriptions of genetic engineering and terraforming. Sirius (1944) describes a dog whose intelligence is increased to the level of a human being's. Stapledon's work also refers to then-contemporary intellectual fashions (e.g. the belief in extrasensory perception). Stapledon is sometimes considered an intellectual forerunner of the contemporary transhumanist movement.