14 Facts About Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon was an English philosopher and author of science fiction.

Olaf Stapledon was educated at Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA degree in Modern History in 1909, promoted to an MA degree in 1913.

From 1912 to 1915 Olaf Stapledon worked with the Liverpool branch of the Workers' Educational Association.

Olaf Stapledon became an ambulance driver with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium from July 1915 to January 1919; he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery.

Olaf Stapledon was awarded a PhD degree in philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925 and used his doctoral thesis as the basis for his first published prose book, A Modern Theory of Ethics.

Olaf Stapledon wrote a sequel, Last Men in London, and followed it up with many more books of both fiction and philosophy.

In 1940 the Olaf Stapledon family built and moved into a new house on Simon's Field, in Caldy, in Wirral.

Olaf Stapledon supported implementing the recommendations of the Beveridge Report and spoke at the first public meeting of the Left Book Club's "Readers' and Writers' Group".

Olaf Stapledon held membership of the Merseyside branch of the Fabian Society.

Olaf Stapledon attended the Conference for World Peace held in New York City in 1949, the only Briton to be granted a visa to do so.

In fact Stapledon was an agnostic who was hostile to religious institutions, but not to religious yearnings, a fact that set him at odds with H G Wells in their correspondence.

Olaf Stapledon 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.

Olaf Stapledon himself named his spiritual values as intelligence, love and creative action.

Olaf Stapledon is considered one of the forerunners of the contemporary transhumanist movement.