Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

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] A lack of theoretical essays on science fiction was the reason for my career as a Robinson Crusoe; like the unhappy man on a desert island, I had to sweat for years, under the most primitive conditions, to produce the necessary (intellectual) tools by myself. My tactic concerning trash was to ridicule it — i.e., to blow up its model until its nonsense, multiplied many times, became ludicrous. But this is the simplest of tactics. On my own I thought there was no better way than to avoid trash and to remove all traces of it from my work.

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.