Line #8 Creator/OlafStapledon

Context Creator / OlafStapledon

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1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/olaf_stapledon_8.jpg]]
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3	William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was a British philosopher and academic who wrote a number of extremely influential ScienceFiction novels in the early part of the Twentieth Century.
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5	At a time when most SF was mainly focused on simple action and adventure, Stapledon wrote broad stories examining philosophical ideas based on the revolutions in science that were happening at the time. Although they were drenched in philosophy, they were written for a general audience, and were popular enough for him to become a full-time writer.
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7	His first novel, ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'' (1930), is a broad study of the future history of mankind, and its descendants, covering millennia in its few pages. Its sequel, ''Literature/StarMaker'', covered all of time and space. His most popular novel, ''Literature/OddJohn'', was one of the first serious studies of what it means to be more than human.
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9	Stapledon is credited with inventing the DysonSphere (Freeman Dyson admits he got the idea from Stapledon, and thought it should have been called a "Stapledon Sphere"). He was also one of the first writers to introduce the concept of {{Terraforming}} (although Creator/JackWilliamson is credited with naming it). His work has been cited as a major influence by many later SF writers, including Creator/ArthurCClarke, Creator/StanislawLem, and Creator/CSLewis.
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11	!! Works with a page on this wiki:
12	* ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen''
13	* ''Literature/OddJohn''
14	* ''Literature/StarMaker''
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16	!! Other works include:
17	* ''Last Men in London''
18	* ''Darkness and the Light''
19	* ''Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord''
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21	!! Tropes in his other works:
22	* InterspeciesRomance: In ''Sirius'', which is about a man who creates a super-intelligent dog. Of course turns out badly in the end.
23	* UpliftedAnimal: ''Sirius'' was one of the first attempts to seriously imagine what it might be like to ''be'' an uplifted animal--to try to get inside the head of such a creature. In this case, the first of its kind, a dog, named after the "dog star", Sirius.
24	* {{Xenofiction}}: ''Sirius'' was one of the first works to try to combine this with UpliftedAnimal, and try to get inside the head of a dog that had been given human-like intelligence.

Context Creator / OlafStapledon