Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

The entanglement of real progress and economic laws constitutes a picture of a situation quite similar to that which reigns in the market of trivial literature. On principle, publishing houses like Ace Books could put on the market science fiction from the first half of the century exclusively, in ever-renewed reprints, because the number of this kind of book has already increased to such an extent that nobody could read even the better ones among them, even if he devoted all his time to this genre. Printing new books, ninety-eight percent of which are miserable products, published for purely economic reasons, makes many older works fall into oblivion. They die in silence, because there is no place for them on a clogged market. The publishing houses provide no filter to bring about a positive selection, because to them the newest book is also the best, or at least they want the customer to believe this, the justification for the well-known total inflation of publishers’ advertising. Each new title is praised as the best in the science-fiction genre. Each science-fiction writer is called the greatest master of science fiction after one or two of his books have been published. In the science-fiction book market, as well as in the whole market of trivial literature, we can perceive the omnipotence of economic laws. The literary market, moreover, has in common with the whole market the typical phenomenon of inflation. When all books and writers are presented as “the best,” then a devaluation, an inflation of all expressions of value is inevitable.

Compared with these carryings-on, with this escalation of advertising, the behavior of mainstream editors is quite shy and silent. Please compare the blurbs on the jackets of science-fiction books with those that serious publishers put on the jackets of a Saul Bellow or a William Faulkner. This remark seems to be banal, but it isn’t. Although instant coffee or cigarettes of every brand are always praised as the best in the world (we never hear of anything advertised as “second best”), Michelangelo’s frescoes and Tolstoy’s War and Peace are not offered, with the same advertising expenditure, as the best works of art possible. The activities of the publishers of trivial literature make us recognize that this literature is subject to economic laws exclusively and to the exclusion of any other laws of behavior.

Second: I must remark that a reader of trivial literature behaves just like the consumer of mass products. Surely it does not occur to the producer of brooms, cars, or toilet paper to complain of the absence of correspondence, fraught with outpourings of the soul, that strikes a connection between him and the consumer of his products. Sometimes, however, these consumers happen to write angry letters to the producer to reproach him with the bad quality of the merchandise they bought. This bears a striking similarity to what James Blish describes in The Issue at Hand, and, indeed, this author, more than five million of whose books have been printed, said that he received only some dozens of letters from readers during his whole life as an author. These letters were exclusively fits of temper from people who were hurt in the soft spot of their opinions. It was the quality of the goods that offended them.

Third: the market of trivial literature knows only one index of quality: the measure of the sales figures of the books. When an “angry young critic” snubbed Asimov’s Nightfall and Other Stories as old hat, Asimov put up the defense that his books, this year and for years previously, had sold excellently and that none of his books had been remaindered. Therefore he took literary merit for the relation of supply and demand, as if he were unaware that there have been world-famous books that have never been printed in large quantities. If we use this yardstick, Dostoevsky is no match for Agatha Christie. There are many fans of science fiction who have never read a novel by Stapledon or Wells in their lives, and with an easy mind I can assert that the silent majority of readers does not even know Stapledon by name. Blish and Knight agree that the public cannot distinguish a good novel from an abominable novel; and this is correct, with the proviso that they are talking about only the readers of the Lower Realm. If this generalization were valid for all readers at all times, we should have to consider the phenomenon of cultural selection in the history of literature as a miracle. For if all or almost all readers are passive and stupid beings, then who was able to collect Cervantes and Homer into the treasure troves of our culture?

Fourth: there are crass and embarrassing differences between the relations that link the authors of Upper and Lower Realms with publishers. In the Upper Realm it is the author who alone determines the title, length, form, and style of his work, and his right to do so is guaranteed unequivocally by the letter of his contract. In the Lower Realm, the publishers appropriate these rights. We can recognize from paragraphs of the printed contracts of large science-fiction publishing houses like Ace Books that it is the publishers who can, at their own discretion, change titles, length, and even the text of a book without express permission of its author, just as fancy dictates. Naturally, the editors of the Upper Realm also make encroachments. In practice these actions are quite different; they occur before the author signs the contract — i.e., first the editors propose to the author what they want changed, and only after he has agreed is the contract made, and not one syllable says that the original manuscript must be revised. The difference is because in the Upper Realm literary texts are considered in their integrity untouchable and taboo because they are almost sacred art objects. This is an old custom, in the spirit of the historical tradition of Western culture, though the practice of publishing, even in the Upper Realm, is not always so pious and fair as we are told. However, this difference between the two realms is of great importance.

In the Upper Realm one always strives at least to keep alive the appearance of intact virtue, in the same way as in high society women do not permit themselves to be called “prostitutes” although they indulge in open promiscuity. The “ladies” of the underworld do not have such pretensions, and it is no closely guarded secret that one can buy their favors at the appropriate price. Sad to relate, the authors of science fiction are quite similar in behavior to those “ladies,” and they do not feel the disgrace of making transactions, either, as part of which they willingly hand over their works to the publishers, who are allowed to revise the texts at will. Thus James Blish [4] It is quite difficult to shake off either a bad or a good tradition, once it is established. In The Issue at Hand, James Blish complains that English criticism surpasses American, and that this difference of level can be seen also on another plane — according to Blish, English publishers treat science-fiction authors with a consideration scarcely to be found in United States. His words date from the fifties. From what I know of the state of things today, this difference has decreased insofar as American criticism has improved, insignificantly, and English publishers have become a bit less considerate. tells us that his A Case of Conscience is only the length it is because his publisher at the time, owing to certain technical circumstances, could not produce a work of greater length! Just imagine if we read in the memoirs of Hermann Hesse that his Steppenwolf was only so long because his publishers… Such a disclosure would cause a shout of wrath from literary circles, but Blish’s words do not affect either him or any other author or critic because in the Lower Realm the station of a slave is taken for granted. Publishers are within their rights when changing the title, length, and style of science-fiction books as these encroachments are determined by economic considerations: they act like people who must find a purchaser for their goods, and they have a firm conviction that they work hand in glove with the author, like project leaders and advertising managers for Ford. Naturally, nobody thinks it strange that the project leader for a new model does not have the right to think up a name for it.