Microworlds

by Stanisław Lem

  The patient would find himself in the same position as a paralytic, or maybe we should call it a situation much worse than that. His sense organs do not function, for only his brain can be supplied with blood; however, even if someone were ready to face such a cruel risk as near-death, even then he could not be helped. For we know that the idea of keeping intact the paraphysiological functions of an isolated brain is Utopian. When the normal flux of sense data to the brain ceases, and a state of sensory deprivation sets in, an ever-increasing decay of all, especially the higher, brain functions sets in. An isolated brain cannot function normally; therefore we meet a barrier even in this escape route.

  But all is not yet lost: if we succeed in creating a synthetic environment for the patient’s brain, he will continue to live, although not in our normal reality — he will live in a substitute reality. This pseudoreality is the common good (or bad, as you like) of all people in cold storage. The key question to answer is whether we can create a substitute world for those lying in cold storage, and if so, how? Now we cannot put into effect such an achievement at the moment, but the chances of doing so are quite good. Often during surgical operations on the brain the cerebral cortex has been irritated electrically and, circumstances permitting (with which I do not wish to deal here), this irritation may produce a series of hallucinations that the patient lives through as reality. The subject hears the voice of a dead acquaintance, sees him, witnesses whole scenes from his past, and so on. Please bear in mind that these are primitive experiments to which very little time was devoted, because the main purpose of the operation was to heal the patient, and one is not allowed to attempt tests that carry with them the slightest shadow of danger. Perhaps we will gain more knowledge, which will allow us to perfect this method. There must be machines, which we can call simulators or environment-producers, to which people lying in cold storage could be connected. The simulator becomes a source of information used necessarily to create a fictitious environment in the patient’s brain; it works according to a program attuned to the needs of each case and becomes a fountain of new facts and impressions previously unknown to the patient. (Even today we can bring about by irritation of the cerebral cortex not only sensory hallucinations, but also feelings, including, for example, erotic experiences.)

  In principle, the technical problem in the real world is soluble, and so we come to the next, untechnological, question: how much knowledge can the patient have about his true situation? Ubik makes the assumption that sane people in cold storage, such as Runciter’s wife, have been conscious of their situation for years, but also some people, such as Joe Chip, who was put on ice after an accident, and those placed there because of incurable disease, do not know about their situation. Somebody — and this happens to Joe Chip — meets with catastrophe, loses consciousness, regains it after a period of time and finds himself returned to his well-known environment without knowing that it is part of a pseudoreality to which he is condemned “for life” because this is the only way to save him.

  Morally it is quite questionable whether the false belief of these people that they are still living normal lives should be maintained — but this problem is irrelevant because a much more important one displaces it: i.e., his next-of-kin prefers the situation in which the patient lives to his death; though at the same time nobody could call it an agreeable situation. People are not content to keep the patient alive, because, from the point of view of people in the normal world, he is leading only a half-life isolated from the real world. They want to reach him, to talk to him, listen to him, etc. This is technically possible, but only under the most extraordinary conditions. Pseudoreality makes up an integral whole for the patient; therefore if someone who exists outside intrudes, the patient experiences this intrusion as an anomaly in his environment. The “quest” cannot reach into pseudo-reality in a fully plausible and harmless way. This is important if a patient such as Runciter’s wife is conscious of the situation. But it is extremely important if he or she does not know it — as in the case of Joe Chip.

  Two curious phenomena must still be explained: (1) the “mad” behavior of pseudoreality, and (2) the manipulation by one man in cold storage of the consciousness of his fellow sufferers. (In Ubik the problem is the curious relationship formed among Emily, Runciter’s wife, Joe Chip, and the strange man named Jorg.)

  The first phenomenon is a realistic presentation of a fictitious technology. We may, in advance, claim that whichever way the technology of reality-fission will be realized, it must be subject to certain malfunctions because no technology is invulnerable to malfunctions. The fact that at some time a breakdown in the production of pseudoreality will occur can be regarded as a realistic prediction, since none of today’s predictions can tell us what kind of mishaps will happen. Ubik’s author was justified in describing the “breakdowns” and “defects” of pseudoreality at his own discretion. Different types of disasters may occur.

  In pseudoreality certain anomalies of the flow of time and space might happen, and both have a dreamlike character, i.e., they resemble what we experience in dreams. This type of creation of “reality breakdowns” seems to be correct insofar as (according to what we said before) the main source of the information that makes up pseudoreality is the brain of the man lying in cold storage; in this way we can account for the fact that each relaxation of the direction of psychic processes by the simulator correlates with changed appearances in the mind of the patient. He will experience this as a change of environment, as if in a dream. (At this point I should like to remark that as a rule a dream is not recognized as such by the dreamer; for this reason Joe Chip also does not think of such an interpretation of the events around him.)

  We may assume that the “overgrowth” of one consciousness by another occurs because a lot of people are lying in cold storage and, for economic reasons, not everyone is allotted a separate simulator. Rather, a handful of people is always connected with a multichannel machine. Even if one circuit is insulated from the others, it may happen that electrical impulses flash across, or cause the induction of another current; subjectively, this may be experienced as the “devouring” of one consciousness by another, neighboring, one.

  The last question to be answered is: who is really lying in cold storage: Runciter or Joe Chip? Because of all the facts found in Ubik, one may conclude that both men lie in cold storage — that all the men on the moon were killed by the explosion and subjected to cold-storage treatment.

  Quod erat demonstrandum — and in several places we have “filled” the gaps left in the novel. But it would not be correct to speak in earnest about such “gaps.”

  First, an author need not necessarily describe the technological details in a novel. As is well known, writers of contemporary novels do not describe the principles that underlie the functions of refrigerators, radios, and cars, and in these novels we would look in vain for the information that all the main characters are “vertebrates” and “mammals.” The basic assumption of Ubik is a technology of split reality, and it is not particularly important what kind of technology caused this split, so it need not be described in detail. It can occur in many ways; the technological details have secondary importance. The most important detail is that in a world where split reality has already been realized, its inhabitants face new, previously unknown dilemmas and must solve problems having the greatest impact. The existence of such a technology changes the ontological perspective of life and, as Ubik shows convincingly, the problem is not just that of people put in cold storage because they are severely injured. In principle, anyone can be incarcerated in a pseudoworld for his whole life. Whether this is legal or illegal is a problem of jurisprudence, not philosophy. In a world with split reality, general knowledge shows that, as well as the normal level of reality, other levels may exist, levels that may exist for some other people — or for everybody. As always, this is a question of the price to be paid for so-called progress (in Ubik, progress in the battle against death).


  At any rate, the point set out above is a perspective from which the novel may be seen as a science-fiction work that depicts the human consequences of a biotechnological revolution. Perhaps it is not superfluous to remark in the second place that observers who watch the spectacle of a highway catastrophe do not usually indulge in reflections that call into question the facts of civilization and the history of technology; when people are looking at destroyed cars and maimed bodies they do not think about the price that has been exacted in human lives because Otto once invented the four-stroke engine and other inventors put this motor into the body of an old coach. So we may doubt whether the above technological exegesis is really necessary and whether we may think that Dick should of his own accord fill the gaps in technological detail that I have tried to fill.

  Rather, I believe that Dick left no gaps in the novel, and in fact that the technological explanation is superfluous. It pursued only one object: I wanted to demonstrate that the novel is coherent as science fiction as well and that contradictions and loose ends in its structure are not in question. If technological details abounded in Ubik they would interfere with our reading; they do not add anything relevant to the text, and they can only rationalize it in a way that the author does not like. From the point of view of an artist, he is correct, for this novel is not “futurological” science fiction, though it may be read as such. However, Dick has taken a different point of view: he renounces all “empirical justifications” and “scientific” foundations. Primarily Ubik is a poetic achievement; we may draw this conclusion from the fact that the biotechnological premise, as outlined above, could also be the basis of a novel whose factual details were impeccable but, despite all this, a blind shell as a work of art. The contradictions in Ubik need not be defended at all costs by appealing to technological authority. The novel has neither gaps nor signs of the author’s negligence. The “contradictions” form a mode of expression that serves to expose to full daylight the messages that are stressed by affection and a special philosophy of life. In a word, they are metaphors that should not be examined for empirical content, even if that seems possible. As I could show, even if they withstand logical and scientific tests, this is not their main value as an experience that can be exchanged with the currency of practical knowledge. This experience is called catharsis.

  POSTSCRIPT

  The laws of science fiction form a dynamic structure at a balance of flow. Translated into the language of a futurologist, there are long-term, complex trends. There is no hope that they will be reversed. However, there are real possibilities that these trends will creep gradually into the Upper Realm of Literature, because of the ongoing explosion of information. The premise of selection that filters values implies a filter of sufficient capacity. But even today the capacity of this filter — the critics — as a value-selecting system is overtaxed by the quantity of books on the market. Generally, one is unaware of this situation. Consequently, the career of each literary work reminds us less of a directed trajectory than of something that takes on the motion of a Brownian particle — i.e., order becomes chaos. From the viewpoint of a critical filter, this chaos is not perceived easily, because a selection process is still taking place. But the fact that it takes place at all is no longer due to the filtration of the whole quantity of all the works that come onto the market, but to the random collision between prominent books and prominent critics. Since the number of books flowing onto the market increases continually, in the course of time the books form a kind of umbrella — i.e., they form a shield against the critics — and they frustrate an encompassing selection, something the critics do not realize for a long time because they are still fishing the “best” titles out of the stream of the market. However, they do not see those books that, although they are just as good as the ones picked out, or even better, remain unknown to them.

  Selection no longer encompasses the whole quantity of published material, and this cultural area converts itself into a blind lottery. But this lottery takes only a marginal part in the selection of values. In due course, we can see that true values in abundance can have the same effect as a devastating flood. If they abound, these values begin to destroy themselves because they block all the filters intended to select them. Thus the fate of literature as a whole can become quite the same as that of trivial literature. Perhaps culture itself will be drowned in the Great Flood of information.

  Translated from the German by Werner Koopmann

  PHILIP K. DICK: A VISIONARY AMONG THE CHARLATANS

  No one in his right mind seeks the psychological truth about crime in detective stories. Whoever seeks such truth will turn rather to Crime and Punishment. In relation to Agatha Christie, Dostoevsky constitutes a higher court of appeal, yet no one in his right mind will condemn the English author’s stories on this account. They have a right to be treated as the entertaining thrillers they are, and the tasks Dostoevsky set himself are foreign to them.

  If anyone is dissatisfied with science fiction in its role as an examiner of the future and of civilization, there is no way to make an analogous move from literary oversimplifications to full-fledged art, because there is no court of appeal for this genre. There would be no harm in this except that American science fiction, exploiting its exceptional status, lays claim to occupy the pinnacles of art and thought. One is annoyed by the pretentiousness of a genre that fends off accusations of primitivism by pleading its entertainment character and then, once such accusations have been silenced, renews its overweening claims. By being one thing and purporting to be another, science fiction promotes a mystification that, moreover, goes on with the tacit consent of readers and public. The development of interest in science fiction at American universities has, contrary to what might have been expected, altered nothing in this state of affairs. In all candor it must be said, though one risk perpetrating a crime laesae Almae Matris, that the critical methods of theoreticians of literature are inadequate in the face of the deceptive tactics of science fiction. It is not hard to grasp the reason for this paradox: if the only fictional works treating of problems of crime were like those of Agatha Christie, then to just what kind of books could even the most scholarly critic appeal in order to demonstrate the intellectual poverty and artistic mediocrity of the detective thriller? Qualitative norms and upper limits are established in literature by concrete works and not by critics’ postulates. No mountain of theoretical lucubrations can compensate for the absence of an outstanding fictional work as a lofty model. The criticism of experts in historiography did not undermine the status of Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, since there was no Polish Leo Tolstoy to devote a War and Peace to the period of the Cossack and Swedish wars. In short, inter caecos luscus rex — where there is nothing first-rate, its role will be taken over by mediocrity, which sets itself facile goals and achieves them by facile means.

  What the absence of such model works leads to is shown, more plainly than by any abstract discussions, by the change of heart that Damon Knight, both author and respected critic, expressed in Science-Fiction Studies #3. Knight declared himself to have been mistaken earlier in attacking books by van Vogt for their incoherence and irrationalism, on the ground that, if van Vogt enjoys an enormous readership, he must by that very fact be on the right track as an author, and that it is wrong for criticism to discredit such writing in the name of arbitrary values if the reading public does not want to recognize such values. The job of criticism is, rather, to discover those traits to which the work owes its popularity. Such words, from a man who struggled for years to stamp out tawdriness in science fiction, are more than the admission of a personal defeat — they are the diagnosis of a general condition. If even the perennial defender of artistic values has laid down his arms, what can lesser spirits hope to accomplish in this situation?

  Indeed, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Joseph Conrad’s elevated description of literature as rendering “the highest kind of truth to the visible universe” may become an anachronism — that th
e independence of literature from fashion and demand may vanish outside science fiction as well, and then whatever reaps immediate applause as a best seller will be identified with what is most worthwhile. That would be a gloomy prospect. The culture of any period is a mixture of that which docilely caters to passing whims and fancies and that which transcends these things — and may also pass judgment on them. Whatever defers to current tastes becomes an entertainment, which achieves success immediately or not at all, for there is no such thing as a magic show or a football game which, unrecognized today, will become famous a hundred years from now. Literature is another matter: it is created by a process of natural selection of values, which takes place in society and which does not necessarily relegate works to obscurity if they are also entertainment, but which consigns them to oblivion if they are only entertainment. Why is this so? Much could be said about this. If the concept of the human being as an individual who desires of society and of the world something more than immediate satisfactions were abolished, then the difference between literature and entertainment would likewise disappear. But since we do not as yet identify the dexterity of a conjurer with the personal expression of a relationship to the world, we cannot measure literary values by numbers of books sold.

  But how does it ever happen that something which is less popular can, in the historical long run, hold its own against that which scores prompt successes and even contrives to silence its opponents? This results from the aforementioned natural selection in culture, strikingly similar to such selection in biological evolution. The changes by virtue of which some species yield place to others on the evolutionary scene are seldom consequences of great cataclysms. Let the progeny of one species outsurvive that of another by a margin of only one in a million, and by and by only the former species will remain alive — though the difference between the chances of the two is imperceptible at short range. So it is also in culture: books that in the eyes of their contemporaries are so alike as to be peers part company as the years go by; facile charm, being ephemeral, gives way at last to that which is more difficult to perceive. Thus regularities in the rise and decline of literary works come into being and give direction to the development of the spiritual culture of an age.