Olaf Stapledon

Also known as William Olaf Stapledon, Stapledon

British novelist and philosopher (1886–1950)

Person · Open Library

Born: 1886-05-10
Died: 1950-09-06
Works: 101

Top works

Seven pillars of peace
Antología de la literatura fantástica
Latter-day psalms
Sirius
odd john a story between jest and ernest

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: Germany
Active from: 1968-03-14

schlager

Discography

Official site Discogs Stream

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Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 32
Total plays: 310

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Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation
· 2015 · cited 57,617x
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 41,733x
Accurate structure prediction of biomolecular interactions with AlphaFold 3
· 2024 · cited 13,426x
Complex network measures of brain connectivity: Uses and interpretations
· 2010 · cited 10,618x
Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO Collaborative Project on Early Detection of Persons with Harmful Alcohol Consumption‐II
· 1993 · cited 10,445x

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Quotes

“Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.”
“Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept again.”
“Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.”
“As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring peoples a genuine and even passionate will for peace and a united world. Out of the conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while, a spirit loftier than tribalism. But this fervour lacked as yet clear guidance, lacked even the courage of conviction.”
“In some minds the defence of the human spirit was sincerely identified with the defence of a particular nation, conceived as the home of all enlightenment.”
“The economic life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source of power; and as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than its coal store, and the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly uncontrolled and wasteful, a shortage was already being felt. Thus the national ownership of the remaining oil fields had become a main factor in politics and a fertile source of wars.”

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Key facts

Born: William Olaf Stapledon , ( 1886-05-10 ) 10 May 1886, Seacombe , Wallasey , Cheshire, England
Died: 6 September 1950 (1950-09-06) (aged 64), Caldy , Cheshire, England
Occupation: Novelist , philosopher
Genre: Science fiction , philosophy
Notable works: Last and First Men (1930), Odd John (1935), Star Maker (1937), Sirius (1944)

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Wikidata facts

Show 5 more facts

date of birth: 1886-05-10
date of death: 1950-09-06
start of work period: 1914-00-00
Commons category: Olaf Stapledon
name in native language: William Olaf Stapledon

Sources (2)

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~12 min read

Article

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.