Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Magnificent. An extraordinary narrative first-person imagining of:

+ the variety of biologies in the universe;
+ the variety of intelligent beings in the universe;
+ their lives and loves and conflicts and ways of making meaning;
+ the variety of collective intelligences in the universe;
+ the nature of the creator, and the possibilities there are for other
universes

It's an attempt to evoke the possibilities latent in creation. Not just in this universe, but in all possible universes

It would be churlish to criticise; the book is a great achievement. However, I cannot resist noting three possibilities if someone was to attempt something in a related vein today:

+ the book was published in 1937; today we have a much richer background commons of ideas to draw upon;
+ the book engages relatively shallowly with each topic; I wonder if there is the potential to zoom in on a select few elements, to different degrees of zoom, with the idea that the parts will illuminate the whole;
+ a curious underlying assumption is that there is comprehensible meaning and order everywhere; I wonder at evoking the truly incomprehensible more

A challenge I've had repeatedly with both this book and Stapledon's "Last and First Men" is that I will sit down to reread parts, and can only read a page or two before it stimulates some line of thought which completely distracts me from the book.