Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (British, 1937)

Summary:
An unnamed narrator and protagonist is enjoying on a quiet afternoon the view from up a hill and meditating on how commonplace his life is when his conscience is transported out of his body, out from Earth and the Solar System. While travelling through outer space he quickly learns that he is not bound to strand. He discovers that if he focuses on a planet, he is able to travel—or at least his mind—to that planet. Once he finds a planet he deems similar enough to Earth, he immerses himself into the alien civilization he has found. He observes those who inhabit that Other Earth lack hand palms, two fingers, and noses, but possess a more developed sense of taste, to the extent that the media appeals to it while the success of sexual and romantic relationships rely heavily on personal flavours and preferences.
 After a while, the narrator finds he can merge intellectually with the planet’s inhabitants, having access to their thoughts and memories. Most of those mental hosts regard the narrator’s own voice as a mental illness, akin to what the protagonist’s peers label schizophrenia. Bvalltu, a philosopher from Other Earth, manages to recognise the narrator’s presence as that of an otherworldly individual; considering this foreign mind non-threatening, Bvalltu actively participates in an intellectual exchange with his unnamed invader, yet he refrains from actually sharing the totality of his thoughts. The narrator continues travelling to other planets and commenting on its civilizations, how they all are at different stages within a never-ending cycle that encompasses an era of evolution and self-improvement, a period of stability and a last phase of decline and obscurity. He then encounters the Star Maker, the creator of this and other universes. This conscience responsible for all life existing or that ever existed allows the protagonist to witness It at work while creating the Ultimate Cosmos, the most advanced and mature universe It has ever created. Once the narrator has observed the birth of a new universe he is transported back home, to the exact same moment he had left Earth.

Another summary:
We follow an unnamed male protagonist through a journey across different scales of time, space and consciousness as he discovers non-human civilizations and beings from the places in unknown parts of the universe he visits. The story begins on Earth: on a normal night, the main character is able to detach his mind from his body and get outside the planet, defying every physical limitation such as the speed of light. As he starts his quest for the discovery of the universe, he gets to know the aforementioned cultures from other solar systems.
 
 During these stops, the narrator provides a thorough description of the societies, although always through the lens of human culture and making judgements about their state as civilization and ways of living; for example, societies in which, through time and despite war conflicts, the inhabitants of the world are able to establish a worldwide consciousness network, and societies in which consumerism and the ruling of the dominant classes eventually derives into hopeless disaster and extinction. Same situation with the ideologies presented in some of the visited worlds.
 
 As the protagonist travels and gets acquainted with members of these worlds, a process of fusion in a collective consciousness begins. In this collective mind, however, there is place for both the individual and the collective. Like a snowball effect, the consciousness group grows and eventually meets the Star Maker, a being who is in control of the entire universe and has little interest in it, for he is able to create more of them, analyse them with a cold eye regardless the feelings of its creatures, all for the sake of creating the ultimate and perfect universe. In the end, our protagonist gets back to his body and resumes his life.

Another summary:
We are in England with an unknown character, the only thing we know about him is that he is married. One night he goes out for a walk when he begins to have an extracorporeal journey through the galaxy, little by little he begins to see Earth far away, he even sees the other planets and their characteristics. After a long journey, he arrives at a place he decides to name Other Earth because it looks a lot like Earth, plus it has a civilization he decides to name Other men because they also look like humans. He discovers that the only way to communicate with them is telepathicly. Here he makes a friend, Bvalltu, because he used to spend a lot of time in his mind. Other Earth comes to an end, as the civilization couldn't survive any longer due to revolutions and some other problems. Bvalltu and our narrator manage to continue their travel. They find other planets with other kinds of ”humans” some are penguin-like, some others are birds like, and some others even have feathers. However, one that catches their attention is the ”Echinoderms” a species that resemble centaurs. They are one of the most civilized worlds out there, they began to manage through supertribes and were on the rise, nonetheless, they witness the destruction of all the Echinoderm worlds since they couldn't come to terms of who would be their leader. 
 Then they move to another planet and meet the Natuloids, some marine organisms that have the form of a starfish. They are peculiar because they were a more civilized society and their masters and workers were thinking about the new evolution of their species, yet this way of thought only leads them to their destruction. 
 The more they go through the worlds, the more they realize that all of them came to their destruction despite being planets with a lot of potential. This led Bvalltu and the narrator to want to meet the creator, because, even if he seems to be detached from his creation, he is still providing them with goods, so, in his way, he must love them. So they come to the conclusion that love is eternal life, so they have to be devoted to plants and to the creator, and without love, the work would decay. 
 This way they go out seeking other planets and arrive at an aquatic world which they name Ichthyoids and they look a lot like a fish and another kind that looks a lot like arachnoids. They are constantly fighting between them, however, they come to an agreement in which they would complement each other. The arachnoids are now the ruling party and have decided that technology is the key to their growth. The Ichthyoids do not agree with this and go back to fighting. After several years of war, they come to good terms once again and now agree to be better, they now call themselves ”super-ichthyoids” and with time they develop telepathy. 
 Once again Bvalltu, and the narrator along with some others that had joined them on their way set out to look for more planets. They found another planet in which insects rule and have more technology than any other planet, this planet does not have human development, yet with the time this world and the previous one die. Then they see that all the planets again have something in common; they communicate telepathically, they grow and have developed however one way or another they die. Then the narrator finds out that he can travel through time and space because he saw the dawn of a planet, he saw a super developed world and saw how they disappear with his finding chaos came. Planets wanted to invade other planets and conquer them, but with this, a lot of destruction came, there was no longer telepathy among the civilizations, empires began to form, but they also began to murder. 
 This is how he comes up with the idea of a planet where diversity must exist, a closer contact among the one who lives in there and everyone should act as a spiritual exercise. He longs for his home, however, he has the chance to see how a new galaxy has begun and along with it new worlds, but also he comes to terms that everything that begins has to come to an end. He then began to see the stars as something living, as the memories on time and how despite how much we want to change the past it is impossible yet we can learn from it. This is how he meets the Starmaker, the one that he used to perceive as something grater than cosmos, it turns out to be the brightest star in the universe, not only that it was the first star or planet ever in the universe. Behind was the sense of love and respect, now there was only fear because they found out that the star-maker was disconnected from everyone. Since the star-maker is conceived as something living and growing, he discovered that the first planets he had visited were mere experiments and that he didn't care about the outcome, he even thinks that the star-maker used to enjoy when a planet was destroyed, but also, when he grew, his conceptions of planets changed with him. In the end, it was a thing of good vs bad and how to build a perfect place, a perfect civilization. 
 After this discovery, our narrator along with the ones who had joined him in his journey go back to their places, he then returns to Earth and finds out that nothing has changed. He is in the same place where he was before his travel, the time is still the same is just as if he had gone for just a minute or two. He goes back with his wife and with the last thought that stars and community will always be together, every event would be written in the stars and would be a memory.

Future projections: Any hope or attempt for a better future is discarded. If there’s still a remaining trace, it ends up in a new kind of despair or loss of faith
Ideology:  It’s either the polarization of an ideology or an absurdist exaggeration of unfortunate or odd circumstances
Characters, plot and writing style: Black humor and satire are employed to expose, criticize or shame individuals or the society itself into improvement.
Classification: Dystopia