Olaf Stapledon

I was surprised to find apparently the complete fictional works of the early science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, together with several works of non-fiction, online at the University of Adelaide website:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stapledon/olaf/


They include a remarkable history of the future of humanity, Last and First Men (1930), and an even more ambitious history of the entire universe and its creator, Star Maker (1937).

Just to emphasise the visionary nature of Stapledon's work -

I posted on another thread a link to an interview with Chris Fuchs, where he pointed out that Stapledon foreshadowed something very much like the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, as early as 1937, in "Star Maker":
“Whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were many creatures and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and all the possible courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sci...the-street

Mysterious Universe has an article by Brent Swancer recounting various "bizarre speculations" over the years about the possibility of life existing on the Sun:
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/12/b...n-the-sun/

Swancer cites several fictional speculations (and in fact one of them was published as early as 1942). But he doesn't mention Stapledon, who was again in the forefront. The idea that the stars themselves could be conscious was central to "Star Maker." But in 1947 he published a lesser-known work entitled "The Flames: A Fantasy," in which a race of telepathic intelligent beings from the Sun takes refuge on Earth:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stapled...index.html