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Already the author notes that immensity is not in itself a good thing. Enormous in ambition, but despite this surprisingly dull as a reading experience
I was the struggling embryo in the cosmical egg, and the yolk was already in decay.

Star Maker is definitely a grandiose work, but much more a documentary than a novel. Olaf Stapledon takes us on a journey from the solar system to a multiverse, through time and space. Despite brilliant concepts I found the overall execution of the book bland, even bordering on boring, while I do love SF in general. The approach feels alike to the documentary Alien Planet or The Future is Wild, spin-offs from Walking with Dinosaurs. Or like the space scenes in The Tree of Life movie:

Some theories that were very novel at the time, an expanding universe, redshift from the speed of light, the value of earth seen from above Apollo mission style, come back prominently. Other conjectures have proven to be false, like planets being rare.
A prescient view of society falling into war and racial hatred again and again, and radio/virtual reality being used to control the populace, reminds the reader a bit of George Orwell.
However in essence many of the descriptions of alien societies are all quite reflective of the age the writer forms part of, with class warfare and exploitation recurring.

In some choices the author is very progressive: a symbiotic species of crab and ichthyosauruses, tree people being intelligent (hello there Ents!) and bird swarms that share a group mind and are bisexual.
The variety in exoplanets and imagined life on those is immense and puts anything Star Wars and Star Trek serve (another dessert planet, another icy moon) to shame.
There is an atomic engine to make planets move their orbit and nova weapons to wipe out star systems by inducing a supernova, things that come back much later in the work of Liu Cixin.
There are reservations for unenlightened species, governed by a league of super intelligent species that keep themselves far from galactic affairs. Artificial ring worlds on the brink of becoming Dyson spheres, organic spaceships, sentient stars with fire cloud salamanders as parasites, there is telepathy and mental development - the imagination of Stapledon is to be lauded. He is very far reaching, with his vision culminating in something similar to this movie:

Despite this scale and everything, intelligence and life is not insignificant in the view of Star Maker: A living man is worth more than a lifeless galaxy is a quote from the near the end of the book.
I see clear and obvious qualities but still I found this a really dry book and quite a hard reading experience overall - 2.5 stars rounded down.