Microworlds

by Stanisław Lem

  Thus it must be; for if it were otherwise, this essay would be entirely superfluous. Why should I talk in so complicated and obscure a manner about a theme, if this theme may be put into clear and simple words? That which you can say briefly and intelligibly you need not describe with long and unintelligible words. For this reason, every authentic work of art has its depths, and the possibility that such a work of art carries a message about existence for subsequent generations of readers, although in society, in civilization, and in life there is endless change, bears witness that the transitory things that do not disappear in a masterpiece are buried in its semantic variability. Out of the glaring clichés of trash, behind which yawns a horrible vacuum for every science-fiction artisan, Dick makes for himself a set of messages — i.e., a language — just like somebody who puts together from separate colored flags a language of signals according to his own judgment. Science-fiction criticism could help Dick to collect the colored flags, but not to put together sensible entireties from this crude material, because in practice it denies the existence of semantic depth.

  Those science-fiction readers who are keenest of hearing feel that Dick is “different”; however, they are unable to articulate this impression clearly.

  Dick has adapted to the science-fiction milieu — with positive as well as negative effects. He invented a method to express, with the aid of trash, that which transcends all trash. But he was unable to withstand to the end the contaminating influence of this quite poisonous material.

  The most striking lack is the lack of penetrating, detailed, and objective criticism. The critical books by Blish and Knight are an exception to this rule; the book by Lundwall (Science Fiction: What It’s All About, 1970) is not a piece of criticism or a monograph, but is merely a traveler’s guide to the provinces of science fiction. The innocent sin of Blish and Knight is that they only and simply reviewed current science-fiction production, paying attention to all the authors. In their length and detail, the negative, destructive critiques written by Knight are totally superfluous, because it is impossible to help authors who are nitwits, and, as I said before, the public does not give a damn about such disqualifications.

  Literature has no equality of rights: the day laborers must be dealt with in one sentence, if not with scornful silence, and a maximum of patience and attention is due to the promising author. But science fiction has different customs. I am no enthusiast; I do not believe that shrewd critiques would make author Dick into a Thomas Mann of science fiction. And yet it is a pity that there has been no critical selection among his works (although this state of affairs is consonant with the lack of selection in the whole science-fiction field). Unfortunately, the work of Dick praised above also has its reverse side. One is used to calling such work uneven. The contradictions in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik (and also partly in Solar Lottery) are of a fleeting nature. These seeming contradictions constitute the claim of completeness — the semantic value of the work (as I tried to show very briefly). Therefore the local contradictions are meaningful messages that direct the reader’s attention to the problems that underlie the works. The novel Galactic Pot-Healer is only negligible. Every author is free to produce works of different value; there is no law against a great epic master allowing himself a novel of pure entertainment.

  Our Friends from Prolix 8 and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are not unimportant literature, but they cheat the reader. Especially in the latter do we see the sad picture of an author who squanders his talent by using brilliant ideas and inspirations to keep up a game of cops and robbers. This is far worse than putting together a valueless whole from valueless parts. The idea of the “Pen-field apparatus,” with which one can arbitrarily change one’s own mental disposition, is a brilliant one, but it does not play a role in the novel. In order to unravel the logical mystery that makes up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a whole study would be necessary, but it would have to be written with the embarrassed feeling that it is wholly superfluous.

  But I must say this without furnishing proof. The first premise of the plot is that a policeman may kill on the spot everyone who is discovered to be an android, because on earth only androids kill their masters. (This premise does not hold good in the face of what is written later in the book.) We get to know that some androids do not know their true nature, because they have been filled with the incorrect information that they are normal humans. The police system has been undermined by androids who, disguised as humans, kill policemen in order to bear false witness that the dead human has been unmasked as an android. At the same time, we discover that some policemen have the same type of android nature — i.e., with an artificially implanted consciousness that they are humans. But if somebody does not know himself whether he is an “android replica” or a normal policeman, in what sense is this “infiltration”? If an android has a synthetically “humanized” consciousness with a falsified memory, for what is he called to account? How can one be responsible for that which one has no knowledge of? With these actions did Dick intend to present a model of discrimination, such as the kind of persecution of the Jews administered under the label “final solution”? But then (1) the androids are innocent victims and should not be depicted as insidious creatures, something that the novel does in places, and (2) people who are persecuted — e.g., persecuted because of their race — are certainly conscious of their innocence but at the same time conscious of their identity, which is not the case with the androids. In other ways the parallel is not valid. It remains obscure whether every android is killed on the spot because of what he once did (he is supposed to have killed his master) or because of what he is. As I have shown, the claim that every android is a murderer because it is unthinkable there is an android without an owner is not valid. Why are there no humans, masters of androids, who die natural deaths in their beds? As for the difference between human and android, we hear that it is almost impossible to distinguish between humans and androids with one hundred percent accuracy. To do this one needs a psychological test that measures the suspect’s reactions with a psychogalvanic apparatus. The test is nonsense; besides, on another occasion we hear that androids have a life span of only a few years, since the cells of their tissue cannot multiply. Therefore it is not child’s play to discover the difference by means of an organic examination of a microscope slide preparation of cell tissue, a procedure that takes about three minutes.

  There is no unequivocal answer to all these questions. Situations to shock the readers must be multiplied at all costs. A trial to identify a suspect is far less shocking than the situation in which two policemen, working hand in glove, may kill one another if either of them should suddenly be unmasked as an android. This is all the more thrilling if neither of them, subjectively, knows who he really is, android or human. Then, both are subjectively innocent, both could be androids, or only one, or none — all of which heightens the tension, but at the same time increases the nonsense. In order to shock us when applied, the differentiating test must be applied fast and surely, but then suspense is lost if it is not coupled with the uncertainty of whether the suspect is an android or not, but with uncertainty of whether the test itself might fail, which causes somebody’s death instantly, in error. Because the author did not want to do without these logically exclusive alternatives, the test must be at the same time reliable and unreliable, the androids must act at the same time with malice aforethought and in complete innocence; as an android one is at the same time conscious and unconscious of one’s nature; a girl who has slept with a policeman is sentenced to death because it is forbidden for androids to sleep with humans; however, at the same time the girl does not know she is an android, etc., ad lib. The problem that is spelled out originally and begins to unfold, of human conflict with humanlike creations endowed with spirit by humans themselves, is torn to shreds, while the game of cops and robbers continues merrily. This nonsense, offered by the author of Ubik, can be construed as an offense to the reader, an
offense which, however, evaporates without trace in the highly concentrated thoughtlessness of the science-fiction milieu.

  We cannot deny this: the author of Ubik knew quite well what he was doing. But did criticism catch him red-handed and hold him responsible? I do not jest: for he who could write Ubik must understand the fraudulent character of his work. Criticism only took offense at his novel for being, in a way, insipid — i.e., not as full of suspense as the best of Dick. Such a brew of trite remarks is held out as criticism in science fiction.[8]

  Dick set me right, and for that reason — as a guidepost — his work is so important. With the tactics I was using I could write only humorous (or grotesque) works: this is worse than if one remains in earnest all the time. It is worse because humor shows up the rich ambiguity of an earnest way of narration in but a lesser degree. The reader must recognize that an example has been ridiculed, or else the reader and writer are as much at cross-purposes as when somebody does not grasp the point of a joke; one cannot misunderstand a joke and savor it at the same time. Therefore humorous prose is assured of a more ready reception than complex prose that wants to be taken seriously. Because of Dick’s method of “transformation of trash,” I have found a third (just this) tactic of creation. A novel by Dick is not bound to be — and often is not — understood, because of its peculiar maximum span of meanings; because trash is not ridiculed; because the reader can enjoy its elements and see them isolated from reciprocal relationships within the same work. This is better for the work, since it can survive in different ways in the reader’s environment, either correctly or incorrectly understood. Similarly, one can recognize a humorist at first glance, but not a man who makes use of Dick’s tactics. It is far more difficult to grasp the complexity of the work in its entirety, and in no other way can we deal with the “transformation of trash.”

  Only a complete lack of a theory of science fiction makes it comprehensible why the New Wave of science fiction did not pick Dick as their guiding star. The New Wavers knew that they should look for something new, but they did not have the slightest idea what it could be. Surely there is no more diffuse definition of anything than that of the New Wave, which is supposed to be represented on the one hand by Spinrad, on the other by Delany, and on a third by Moorcock. Until now the New Wave has succeeded well in making science fiction quite boring, but this is the only characteristic in which it is approaching the state of modern prose in the Upper Realm. Repressed but powerful inferiority complexes are constantly at work, and we can detect this because all the experimenters seem to believe from the bottoms of their hearts that the medicine and models for redeeming science fiction can be found only in the Upper Realm. Out of this belief came Farmer’s Riders of the Purple Wage (no mean piece of prose, but of a markedly secondary, or even tertiary, character to Farmer’s model, Joyce’s Ulysses, which is itself modeled on The Odyssey) and Stand on Zanzibar, which, as we all know, was written by Brunner on the model of Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passes. The New Wavers seized expressionism, surrealism, etc., and so they completed a collection of old hats; it becomes a race backward which still arrives in the nineteenth century before they know it. But a blind search can give only blind results; just “blind shells” (duds).

  As I said, I believe that a writer can either make a caricature of trash, and ridicule it, or throw it away. Dick found out how to blaze a third trail, a discovery that was important not just for himself, but that remained unnoticed. The newness of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness was observed instantly because it is localized in the action, but the more volatile discovery by Dick was misjudged because it cannot be localized and can be described only with the utmost difficulty for the reasons I have set out. It is not sufficient, milords critics, to enjoy a book, and criticism is not a cry of joy; one must not only know how to prove that one was delighted but also know how to explain by what one was delighted and charmed.

  There is no justification for this primitive dalliance; there is only an explanation, of a general character, which transcends the work itself. Ross Ashby proves that intelligence is a quality that does not foster survival under all possible variants of environments. In some environments stupidity serves better the drive for self-preservation. He spoke of rats; I would like to apply this claim to that part of literature called “science fiction.” For in science fiction what does it matter if Ubik is a piece of gold and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a counterfeit coin? I don’t know what an average reader thinks while reading these two novels. If we could reproduce his thoughts as they correspond to his behavior as a library borrower, we must conclude that he has an extremely short memory; at the utmost he can remember what is printed on one page. Or he does not think at all; an alternative that scares me so much, however, that I’d prefer to drop it.

  The problem remains that all science-fiction books are similar to one another -not according to their content, but according to the way they are received. Innumerable imitations of each original work appear, so that the originals are buried beneath mountains of trash, like cathedral towers around which garbage has been dumped for so long that only the spires project out of the rubbish that reaches toward heaven. In this context the question arises as to how many gifted beginners have insufficient power to preserve their individuality as writers — unless by way of compromise, like Dick — in spite of the equalizing trends of science fiction.

  Probably the pressure of trivial literature has crushed many highly talented writers with the result that today they deliver the products that keep highbrow readers away from science fiction. This process brings about a negative selection of authors and readers: for even those writers who can write good things produce banalities wholesale: the banality repels intelligent readers away from science fiction; as they form a small majority in fandom the “silent majority” dominates the market, and the evolution into higher spheres cannot occur. Therefore, in science fiction, a vicious circle of cause and effect coupled together keeps the existing state of science fiction intact and going. The most intelligent and most demanding readers, who form a small minority, still long for “better” science fiction and feel ill at ease when reading its current production, showing their uneasiness in their letters of comment and essays in fanzines. The “normal” reader — i.e., the silent majority and their representatives in fanzines — gains the impression somehow that the others are tense, scurrilous, and even malicious creatures just like — I wrote something like this once in a private letter — missionaries in a whorehouse — i.e., people who feel that they are doing their duty but at the same time are conscious that their efforts at conversion are powerless and that they seem out of place. The missionaries, ready to make the greatest sacrifices, can just as little change a whorehouse into a temple as “genial” readers can change science fiction into a fully qualified citizen of the Upper Realm of Literature.

  I’ll close this essay with one last remark: the disfigurement of Dick’s work is the price that he had to pay for his “science-fiction citizenship.” Dick owes his exuberant growth, as well as his own peculiar downfalls, to this circle of life, which, like a dull teacher, cannot distinguish its brightest pupils from the plodding grinds. This circle of life, like such a teacher, strives to treat all its subordinates in the same way, a way improper in schools, and disastrous in literature.

  APPENDIX

  Ubik as Science Fiction

  In Science Fiction Commentary 17, George Turner wrote: “In Ubik we are given the living and the half-living; the half-living are actually dead but exist in another version of reality until their vestigial remainders of consciousness finally drain away. Their “reality” is subject to manipulation by a strong personality among the half-living, which piles complexity on complexity, until inconsistencies begin to stand out like protest posters. The plotting is neat, but cannot override the paradoxes. The metaphor fails because it cannot stand against the weight of reality as we know it.”

  Now I am ready to prove that there is a r
ational viewpoint from which Ubik can be seen as a novel based on scientifically sensible notions. Here is the line of proof.

  In Ubik dying people are put into a state of “half-life” if medicine does not know how to heal them. The critically ill are placed in “cold packs” in which their bodies are intensively cooled down. At a very low temperature, their life functions decelerate so that death cannot occur. This is not fantasy. We know today that at temperatures close to 0° Kelvin for all practical purposes the growth of cancer cells stops, and even deadly poisons no longer destroy cells. Therefore an analogue of the process mentioned in Ubik can be realized today, except that it would be regarded as senseless to carry it out. Although cooling (better known as hibernation) will delay death and stop agony, one cannot speak of saving the patient: he is unconscious, he cannot be allowed to be warmed up to consciousness again, because then the death that has been delayed will occur. People speak of freezing a man and preserving him in this state of cryogenics until medicine discovers a method of healing this special case after years or centuries. We do not know yet whether reversible cold death, the idea of which lies at the base of this opinion, can be realized, because until the present day, experiments performed on mammals have shown no positive results; freezing and later defreezing wreaks irreversible damage on all tissues. Ubik presupposes that reversible cold death cannot be realized — something considered by specialists to be plausible or even highly probable. Thus hibernation can be regarded as useless, and freezing at low temperatures as unobtainable. But there is one escape route, viz., one could keep the body of the patient in a state of continuous hibernation and supply his brain with warm blood with a suitable apparatus (artificial heart and lungs), so that the patient will regain consciousness.