Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future ( 1930), Stapledon's first novel – which initiates the Future History/Last Men sequence of daunting Scientific Romances – caused something of a sensation. It was this last conviction which provided the springboard for the writing of his fiction all of it, by some speculative device or other, strives to overcome the congenital deficiencies of the ordinary human being. There was a gap of fifteen years before his next book, A Modern Theory of Ethics: A Study of the Relations of Ethics and Psychology ( 1929), articulated the philosophical underpinnings for all the major ideas that would appear repeatedly in the fiction: moral obligation as a teleological requirement ecstasy as a cognitive intuition of cosmic excellence (see Transcendence) personal fulfilment of individual capacities as an intrinsic good community as a necessary prerequisite for individual fulfilment and the hopeless inadequacy of human faculties for the discovery of truth. Stapledon began publishing essays as early as 1908, though his first book was Latter-Day Psalms (coll 1914 chap), a small volume of privately printed verse remarkable only for showing a preoccupation at the outset with one of the themes that would engage him for the rest of his life: the irrelevance of a Religion based on hopes of Immortality and the hypothesis of an evolving god. He took a doctorate in philosophy at Liverpool University in 1925. His service with the Quaker-funded Friends' Ambulance Unit in World War One, for which he received the Croix de Guerre, helped him formulate his pacifism and also provided material for Last Men in London ( 1932).

There is scattered evidence that the international flavour of Port Said influenced his complex ideas about 'true community'. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, he worked for a short period without enthusiasm in the family shipping office in Port Said, an experience he used in his highly autobiographical last novel, A Man Divided ( 1950). The name Olaf does not indicate foreign antecedents: his parents had been reading Carlyle's The Early Kings of Norway (coll 1875) when he was born. In Waking World ( 1934) he admitted that he lived 'chiefly on dividends and other ill-gotten gains'.

(1886-1950) UK author and philosopher, born in the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool, where he spent the greater part of his life.

Odd john stapledon