question Stapledon confronts in Starmaker. That remainsnthe crucial question for “modern” man. Some writers, HkenApollo’s existentialists described in W.H. Auden’s “UndernWhich Lyre?” “declare that they are in complete despair,nyet keep on writing”; others pretend that they can happilyninhabit a world as cold and valueless as “science” says thenuniverse must be; yet others live by faith that things are notnquite what they seem. Stapledon attempted an agnosticnpiety, a determination to “bless what there is for being”neven when it almost froze the heart, an insistence that thentruth, despite appearances, will prove worth knowing.nThat truth matters to us is a sign that we do not quitenbelieve the nihilist. If we did, we should have every reasonnnot to face the truth. Stapledon’s most pitiable inventions,nthe disillusioned mystics oi Darkness and Light, have goodnreason to hide their eyes from the supramundane titans thatnthey glimpse, trampling carelessly across a snow-coverednlandscape that is hyperdimensional reality. Stapledon’s ownnpassion for understanding and a clearer sight was at onenwith his passionate impulse to worship, an impulse that henknew could not prove its own veracity and which wasninclined to issue in assertions that he knew could not benliterally true.nOne of the oddities of Stapledon’s writings, and a sign ofnthe extent to which this century has been cut off from itsnpast, is that he seems to have thought novel his ownndedication to what is technically “apophatic theology,” thenway of negation. For him it was something that needed antime-traveling Neptunian or an intelligent flame to propose.n”Surely you agree,” says such a flame in Flames, onenof Stapledon’s best-crafted works, “that the goal of all actionnis the awakening of the spirit in every individual and in thencosmos as a whole; awakening, I mean, in respect ofnawareness, feeling and creative action. Your human conceptnof’God’ we find useless. Our finer spiritual sensibilitynis outraged by any attempt to describe the dark Other innterms of the attributes of finite beings. We ourselves, Insuppose, may be said to ‘worship’ the Other; but inarticulately,nor through the medium of fantasies and myths,nwhich, though they aid worship, give us no intellectualntruth about the wholly inconceivable.”nIt is incidentally a nice touch that this high-minded (and,nto be honest, somewhat complacent) doctrine is abandonednby the flames themselves when they seem to encounter thensame sort of indifferent titans, or ghoulish Starmaker, thatnStapledon describes elsewhere, and the pose of open-eyednand agnostic adoration is maintained only by a lonely andnsoon-to-be-murdered madman. The position itself, however,nis a very familiar one: It is indeed heretical in almost anynreligious tradition to suppose that God, the One Incomprehensible,nhas any of the attributes of finite beings, or thatnthe stories we tell of it are anything but words needed tonevoke our worship. George Berkeley, writing in Alciphronnon Rhode Island well before he was a Bishop: The doctrinenof the Trinity is acceptable insofar as “it makes propernimpressions on the mind, producing therein love, hope,ngratitude and obedience, and thereby becomes a very livelynoperative principle, influencing [one’s] life and actions,nagreeably to the notion of saving faith which is required in anChristian,” even if every idea we form of the Trinity isnbound to be strictly false.nThe most simpleminded imitators of Stapledon haventried to reproduce the millennial vision of humankind’snexpansion and continual improvement. Throughout then1950’s, science-fiction writers wrote about the prospects forna harmonious society, controlled by the wielders of anpsychosocial science who would mold people “for their ownngood,” and for the greater glory of the human universe.nOddly enough, in Stapledon such psychosocial and geneticnengineering almost always ends badly, and even the LastnMen must return to their poor ancestors to learn somethingnof the courage of hopelessness before their end.nEven when Stapledon envisages a cosmic harmony innStarmaker, it is purchased at a high cost and will notnendure. More intelligent readers have retained just thensense of time’s passage nowhere in particular, in which bothnthe minnows and the minnow-watchers are alike deceived.nOn the surface, Stapledon describes races and cultures thatnfar surpass our own in intelligence and moral fiber, butneach one learns at the end that they are no closer to theninfinite and eternal One than were their poor predecessors,nthat each makes God over in his own image and finds thenimage useless in the end.nOne of Stapledon’s later fictions. The Flames, has not yetnbeen reissued, so that even those who know Stapledon’snother writings may not have encountered it. It is a brief andnwell-crafted fable which encapsulates many of his concernsnand characteristic ironies. Patrick McCarthy’s biography ofnStapledon correctly observes that “as an example of controllednand sustained irony. The Flames is without parallelnamong Stapledon’s works.” Thus, the positivistic criticnpresents and comments on the narrative of Cass, thenspeculative generalist. Cass, after years of seeking to see andnunderstand things “from the inside,” by telepathic ornmystical means, seems to himself to have been addressed byna living flame, hidden in a pebble plucked from a cold,nsnow-shrouded landscape. It turns out that there are suchncreatures, salamanders, born in the sun’s troposphere andncondemned to live out a cold and intermittent existence onnsolid earth since the planets were formed. The late worldnwar, and its manifold fires, have brought them out ofnhibernation in the dust of the air, and they sense thenpossibility of forming a symbiotic alliance with us: we tonprovide the environment within which they can live, theynto provide the mental stability and community awarenessnwe lack.nThis sort of symbiotic pattern is many times repeated innStapledon’s work. If we cannot agree, the flames’ othernoption is to instigate nuclear spasm: “Then at last, with thenwhole planet turned into a single atomic bomb, and all thenincandescent continents hurtling into space, we shouldnhave for a short while conditions almost as good as those ofnour golden age in the sun.” Cass is on the point of agreeingnto act as the flames’ ambassador, when he learns that hisnown marriage had been deliberately destroyed by the flamesn(and his wife driven to suicide) so that he might be a suitablynsingle-minded instrument of their purposes (the Neptuniannhero of Last Men in London had done the same, lessnviolentiy, to his victim, unrebuked, and the action ofnStarmaker occurs after a marital quarrel). Cass concludesnthat this proves the flames’ real ill will, destroys the flamesnwith a glass of cold water (the flames turn to revivable dust ifnnnDECEMBER 1986 /15n