The Flames
by Olaf Stapledon
The flame was Stapledon's last major work of art before his death. Narrowing its scope from the gigantic cosmic stories of The Last and First Humans (human history) and the Star Creator (the story of the universe, Dante's cameo from God at the end) to the earthly Odd John (superman) and Sirius (superdog), Flames reads it all like an attempt to push it all into a 50-page short story. The story consists of three parts, each of which cuts through the last. In the first, the sensitive narrator speaks with a "flame" in a burning stone that speaks of life on the sun and exile when the planets form, with a polite neutrality not far from the life of Hal Clement. Despite some obscene messengers, the revelation in chapter two is that the flames reveal that the flames, through mind control, if necessary, manipulate humanity through hell to help them prosper and achieve their spiritual goals. To this end, the flames show that he and his comrades forced the narrator's wife to commit suicide, so that the narrator can devote himself completely to training and make contact with the flames ...
