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This chapter highlights Olaf Stapledon's endowing of the narrator/protagonist of Star Maker with markedly robust theory of mind and traces Stapledon's modification of the binary opposition between self (usually human) and other (usually nonhuman) by introducing a tripartite model in which individual A fuses with individual B in order to more effectively penetrate the mind of C or minds of Cs. Star Maker is shown to embody worlds and minds of increasing complexity, the understanding of which requires some mystical experience or what Richard Maurice Bucke calls "cosmic consciousness." The chapter closes with an analysis of Stapledon's narrator/protagonist's final confrontation w ith the actual Star Maker in which, as so often in science fiction, the emphasis falls on understanding ("lucidity"), on theory of mind rather than empathy.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137399120_4

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