Michael Lind on the power of science fiction to expand the mind and forever shape your view of the world:
When I was in junior high, I came across his first novel, Last and First Men (1930), an imaginary history of the future in which our descendants evolve into numerous successive humanoid species on Earth and on other planets. My reaction was that of the late science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote, "No book before or since has ever had such an impact upon my imagination: the Stapledon vistas of millions and hundreds of millions of years, the rise and fall of civilizations and entire races of men, changed my whole outlook on the universe and has influenced much of my writing since."
From Last and First Men I moved on to Star Maker, which applied the same technique on a grander -- indeed, the grandest -- scale: the evolution of our universe and others. In form Star Maker is a dream vision, in which the unnamed character's mind leaves his body in interwar Britain and journeys into space and time. First the narrator visits a rather crudely allegorical Other Earth, in the weakest section of the book. Then he witnesses the rise and fall of intelligent species in many worlds, including exotic hive minds, plant men, "nautiloids," and intelligent stars.
