A familiar story! As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the sacred, but still powerful, prosperous. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. For machinery might bring profit to the owners bread would not. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. “In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. Propagating their little partial truths, they bewildered and misdirected their fellow mortals as much as they helped them.” Still fewer attained a clear and constant vision, even of some partial aspect of truth and their half-truths they nearly always took to be absolute. Only a few here and there, now and then, were solaced, goaded, or tortured by moments of true wakefulness. Like my own race, they never fully awoke from the primeval sleep of the subman. Nearly always they were intent merely on seeking for themselves respite from fatigue or boredom, fear or hunger. And even their intimate loving was inconstant and lacking in insight. Most were capable, at least in some humble degree, of the intimate kind of community which is personal affection but for nearly all of them a stranger was ever a thing to fear and hate. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.“In every one of these 'chrysalis' worlds thousands of millions of persons were flashing into existence, one after the other, to drift gropingly about for a few instants of cosmical time before they were extinguished. Some of the elements and themes in Star Maker prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations.

Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. Star Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937.

Star maker novel