He was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.

He was born on May 10, 1886, the only son of William Clibbert Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said. He was educated at Abbotsholme School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA in Modern History in 1909 and a Master's degree in 1913.  After a brief stint as a teacher at Manchester Grammar School, he worked in shipping offices in Liverpool and Port Said from 1910 to 1913.

World War I

During World War I he served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium from July 1915 to January 1919. On 16 July 1919 he married Agnes Zena Miller (1894-1984), an Australian cousin whom he had first met in 1903, and who maintained a correspondence with him throughout the war. They had a daughter, Mary Sydney Stapledon (1920), and a son, John David Stapledon (1923).

West Kirby

In 1920 they moved to West Kirby on the Wirral, and in 1925 Stapledon was awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Liverpool. He wrote A Modern Theory of Ethics, published in 1929. However, he soon turned to fiction to present his ideas to a wider public. Last and First Men was very successful and prompted him to become a full-time writer. He wrote a sequel, and followed it up with many more books on subjects associated with what is now called Transhumanism.

Caldy

In 1940 the family built and moved into Simon's Field, closeby in Caldy. After 1945 Stapledon travelled widely on lecture tours, visiting the Netherlands, Sweden and France, and in 1948 he spoke at the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Poland. He attended the Conference for World Peace held in New York in 1949, the only Briton to be granted a visa to do so.

Anti-Apartheid Movement

In 1950 he became involved with the anti-apartheid movement; after a week of lectures in Paris, he cancelled a projected trip to Yugoslavia and returned to his home in Caldy, where he died very suddenly of a heart attack.

Influences

His influences include H.G. Wells, J.B.S. Haldane, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

His work directly influenced authors Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanislaw Lem, C.S. Lewis and John Maynard Smith and indirectly influenced countless others, contributing so many ideas to the world of science-fiction.

An Indifferent Universe

His fiction often represents the strivings of some intelligence that is beaten down by an indifferent universe, and its inhabitants which, through no fault of their own, fail to comprehend these lofty yearnings. It is filled with protagonists who are tormented by the conflict between their "higher" and "lower" impulses.  Although his work predated the appearance of the word "transhuman" in 1966, both the transhuman condition and the supermind (composed of many individual consciousnesses) became recurring themes in his work.

Philosophy

Their philosophy repelled C. S. Lewis, whose Cosmic Trilogy was written partly in response to a perceived amorality, although Lewis admired Stapledon's "invention, though not his philosophy" and described him as "a corking good writer".  In fact Stapledon was an agnostic who was hostile to religious institutions, but not to religious yearnings, a fact which set him at odds with H. G. Wells in their correspondence.

None of his novels or short stories have been filmed, although George Pal bought the rights to Odd John.

Castle of Frankenstein magazine reported in 1966 that actor David McCallum would play the title role.

University of Liverpool

Together with his philosophy lectureship at the University of Liverpool (which now houses the Olaf Stapledon archive), Stapledon lectured in English literature, industrial history and psychology.

He wrote many non-fiction books on political and ethical subjects, in which he advocated the growth of "spiritual values", which he defined as those values expressive of a yearning for greater awareness of the self in a larger context ("personality-in-community").

Overlooking the Dee Estuary

Olaf Stapledon was cremated at Landican Crematorium on September 6, 1950, aged 64; his widow Agnes and their children Mary and John scattered his ashes on the sandy cliffs overlooking the Dee Estuary, a favourite spot of Olaf's, and a location that features in more than one of his books.