Reception
The novel is one of the most highly acclaimed in science fiction. Its admirers at the time of first publication saw it as one of the most brilliant, inventive, and daring science fiction books. Among its more famous admirers were H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Brian Aldiss and Doris Lessing. Borges wrote a prologue for a 1965 edition and called it "a prodigious novel". Lessing wrote an afterword for a UK edition. Freeman Dyson was also a fan, admitting to basing his concept of Dyson spheres on a section of the book. Among SF writers, Arthur C. Clarke has been most strongly influenced by Stapledon.
Critics of the novel tend to see it as full of interesting ideas but its writing as dry, characterless, difficult, as well as scientifically implausible at points. Indeed, some of Stapledon's contemporaries were appalled at the book's philosophy: in a letter to Arthur C. Clarke in 1943, C. S. Lewis described the ending as “sheer devil worship.”
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)