Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

In this version, then, we created the cosmos only in a mediocre fashion, and our own selves quite poorly. Obviously a work of this sort, in whichever variant, becomes ironical, independently of its basic notion (i.e., the “self-creative” application of the “maximal time loop”).

As one can see, what is involved here is an intellectual game, actually fantasy-making, which alters in a logical or pseudo-logical manner current scientific hypotheses. This is “pure” science fiction, or science fantasy, as it is sometimes called. It shows us nothing serious, but merely demonstrates the consequences of a reasoning that, operating within the guidelines of the scientific method, is used sometimes in unaltered form (in predicting the “composition percentage of paternity” we have in no way altered the scientific data), and sometimes secretly modified. And thus science fiction can be responsibly or irresponsibly plugged into the hypothesis-creating system of scientific thought.

The example of “self-creation” reveals first of all the “maximal proportions” of a self-perpetrating paradox: Peter gave birth only to himself, whereas in the universal variant, mankind concocted itself, and, what is more, perhaps not in the best manner, so that it would even be possible to use “Manichaean” terminology. Furthermore, this example at the same time demonstrates that the conceptual premise of essential innovations in the structure of the objective world presented is central to a science-fictional work (in the case of journeys in time, a change in causality is involved, by admitting the reversibility of that which we consider today as universally and commonly irreversible). The qualities of fictional material that serve a dominant concept are thus subject to an assessment based on their usefulness to this concept. Fictional material should in that case be an embodiment of a pseudo-scholarly or simply scholarly hypothesis — and that’s all. Thus “pure” science fiction arises, appealing exclusively to “pure reason.” It is possible to complicate a work with problems lying beyond the scope of such an intellectual game: when, for example, the “Manichaeism of existence” is interpreted as due to an error made by an envious physicist. Then an opportunity for sarcasm or irony arises as a harmonic “overtone” above the narrative’s main axis. But by doing this, we have forced science fiction to perform “impure” services, because it is then not delivering scientific pseudo-revelations, but functioning in the same semantic substratum in which literature has normally operated. It is because of this that we call science fiction contaminated by semantic problems “ relational science fiction.”

However, just as “normal” literature can also perform high and low services -produce sentimental love stories and epics — relational science fiction shows an analogous amplitude. As was noted, it is possible to interpret it allegorically (e.g., Manichaeism in relation to the creation of the cosmos), and this will be the direction of grotesque or humorous departures from a state of “intellectual purity” that is somewhat analogous to “mathematical vacuity.” It is also possible to overlay the history of creating the cosmos with melodrama, e.g., to make it part of a sensational, psychopathological intrigue (the cosmologist who created the universe has a wicked wife whom he nonetheless loves madly; or, the cosmologist becomes possessed; or also, faced with his deeds, the cosmologist goes insane and, as a megalomaniac, will be treated slightingly in an insane asylum, etc.).

Thus, in the end, the realistic writer is not responsible for the overall — e.g., the causal — structure of the real world. In evaluating his works, we are not centrally concerned with assessing the structure of the world to which they nonetheless have some relation.

On the contrary, the science-fiction writer is responsible both for the world in which he has placed his action and for the action as well, inasmuch as he, within certain limits, invents both one and the other.

Yet the invention of new worlds in science fiction is as rare as a pearl the size of a bread loaf. And so 99.9 percent of all science-fiction works follow, compositionally, a scheme, one of the thematic structures that constitute the whole science-fiction repertoire. For a world truly new in structural qualities is one in which the causal irreversibility of occurrences is denied, or one in which a person’s individuality conflicts with an individual scientifically produced by means of an “intellectronic evolution,” or one in which earthly culture is in communication with a non-earthly culture distinct from human culture not only nominally but qualitatively, and so forth. However, just as it is impossible to invent a steam engine, or an internal combustion engine, or any other already existing thing, it is also impossible to invent once more worlds with the sensational quality of “chronomotion” or of “a reasoning machine.” Just as the detective story unweariedly churns out the same plot stereotypes, so does science fiction when it tells us of countless peripeties merely to show that by interposing a time loop they have been successfully invalidated (e.g., Thomas Wilson’s “The Entrepreneur” [1952], which talks about the dreadful Communists having conquered the United States, and time travelers who start backward at the necessary point, invalidating such an invasion and dictatorship). In lieu of Communists, there may be Aliens or even the Same People Arriving from the Future (thanks to the time loop, anyone can battle with himself just as long as he pleases), etc.

If new concepts, those atomic kernels that initiate a whole flood of works, correspond to that gigantic device by which bioevolution was “invented” — i.e., to the constitutional principle of types of animals such as vertebrates and nonvertebrates, or fish, amphibians, mammals, and birds — then, in the “evolution of science fiction,” the equivalent of type-creating revolutions were the ideas of time travel, of constructing a robot, of cosmic contact, of cosmic invasion, and of ultimate catastrophe for the human species. And, as within the organization of biological types a natural evolution imperceptibly produces distinctive changes according to genera, families, races, and so forth, so, similarly, science fiction persistently operates within a framework of modest, simply variational craftsmanship.

This very craftsmanship, however, betrays a systematic, unidirectional bias; as we stated and demonstrated, great concepts that alter the structure of the fictional world are a manifestation of a pure play of the intellect. The results are assessed according to the type of play. The play can also be “relational,” involved with situations only loosely or not at all connected with the dominant principle. What connection is there, after all, between the existence of the cosmologist who created the world and the fact that he has a beautiful secretary whom he beds? Or, by what if not by a retardation device will the cosmologist be snatched away before he fires the “chronogun”? In this manner an idea lending itself to articulation in a couple of sentences (as we have done here) becomes a pretext for writing a long novel (where a “cosmos-creating” shot comes only in the epilogue, after some deliverers sent by the author have finally saved the cosmologist from his sorry plight). The purely intellectual concept is stretched thoroughly out of proportion to its inherent possibilities. But this is just how science fiction proceeds — usually.

On the other hand, rarely is a departure made from “emptiness” or “pure play” in the direction of dealing with a set of important and involved problems. In the world of science fiction it is structurally as possible to set up an adventure plot as a psychological drama; it is as possible to deal in sensational happenings as it is to stimulate thought by an ontological implication created by the narrative as a whole. It is precisely this slide toward easy, sensational intrigue that is a symptom of the degeneration of this branch of literature. An idea is permitted in science fiction if it is packaged so that one can barely see it through the glitter of the wrapping. As against conventions only superficially associated to innovations in the world’s structure and which have worn completely threadbare from countless repetitions, science fiction should be stimulated and induced to deviate from this trend of development, namely, by involution away from the “sensational pole.” Science fiction should not operate by increasing the number of blasters or Martians who impede the cosmologist in his efforts to fire the “chronogun”; such inflation is not appropriate. Rather, one should change direction radically and head for the opposite pole. After all, in principle the same bipolar opposition also prevails in ordinary literature, which also shuttles between cheap melodrama and stories with the highest aesthetic and cognitive aspirations.