Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator.

Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be "probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written", and Brian W. Aldiss called it "the one great grey holy book of science fiction".

A key idea is the formation of collective minds from many telepathically-linked individuals, on the level of planets, galaxies, and eventually the cosmos itself.

The climax of the book is the "supreme moment of the cosmos", when the cosmic mind (which includes the narrator) attains momentary contact with the titular "Star Maker".

The Star Maker is the creator of the universe, but stands in the same relation to it as an artist to his work, and calmly assesses its quality without any feeling for the suffering of its inhabitants.

Among its more famous admirers were H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, and Stanisław Lem.

[3] Some of Stapledon's contemporaries were appalled at the book's philosophy: in a letter to Arthur C. Clarke in 1943, C. S. Lewis described the ending as "sheer devil worship".