Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

As a result, we are forced to strive for integration, to pretend that the work is a coherent whole.

Another factor in this context is that literature makes general use of the structures of indirect description or allusion. Whenever something is completely known — i.e., when it is fully rooted in a given culture — it can be understood or deduced from a single sign or allusion, and because of this, any given state of affairs can be made vividly present for the “culturally practiced” reader even through the remotest circumstantial reference. This indirect description is a method of structuring a work by “remote control” guidance of the reconstructive efforts of the reader’s imagination, not only in space, but also in time. Every description of a situation taken from the repertoire of culturally known situations invokes the repertoire of possible issues appropriate for it, and these issues are what the reader will anticipate. Within the framework of this structured anticipation, he will make his decisions by following directions given in the text, even when they are few, or barely present. (For instance, we can speak of blatantly erotic situations, or others which have hidden erotic content held in constant suspension.) Indirect, “remote control” description is dictated either directly by cultural norms (as, for example, the prohibitions against expressly naming and presenting what the culture considers too drastic), or by the author’s individual choices and thought. In the latter case the descriptive structures are generally full of gaps; they are either incomplete, or they are dim mirror images of completely different, unnamed, unarticulated, and thus merely intuited, structures. This displacement of description into circumscription can happen gradually, and, furthermore, either discontinuously or continuously. To transform circumscription into description, one can either move over into the as yet unnamed, untouched center of the problem by offending cultural prohibitions (by speaking plainly of things that had been previously forbidden, or by introducing obscene words into the vocabulary); or one can go in the opposite direction and attach to the culture’s generalized structures of reference still other references, whose proper territories are even further from the concrete events.

Because of this systematic refusal to speak plainly, the reader begins to feel unsure whether he or she really understands what the description is concretely about, and this gives rise to the semantic wavering that characterizes the reception of contemporary poetry. (Not all poetry, certainly: there is randomly composed poetry, but we can discern a high level of “systematic indirection” in the finest poems of Grochowiak, for example.) All these approaches have a common origin: as the level of the reception’s indeterminacy rises, the reader’s own personal determinations begin to waver. In practice, it is often impossible to determine whether a given narrative structure is only very indirect and elliptical, but essentially homogeneous, or one deliberately damaged by “chance noise,” or even perforated, softened, and bent by another, discordant structure. Furthermore, since one can also create multilayered structures, even the concrete quality of the described object or situation can be transformed beyond recognition and reshaped from one level of articulation to another. Thus, it is often impossible to determine categorically whether the basic structure of description is an image of order or of chaos. We cannot always distinguish the consequences of chance intrusions from the planned transformations of a particular creative design.

How do these methods and vocabulary bear upon science fiction?

In the first place, we consider the primary unsolved problem of science fiction the lack of a theoretical typology of its paradigmatic structures. Since writers of science fiction do not even recognize the existence of this problem, the structures they use most frequently are neither aesthetically nor epistemologically adequate for their chosen themes. An example of aesthetic inadequacy is the practice of authors who attempt to write mimetic (pseudorealistic) works, and yet model such phenomena as “contact with another civilization” or an invasion from outer space after the relationship between detective and criminal. (Two aliens in Hal Clement’s The Needle — a criminal and a detective — “hide” in the bodies of two humans; and the detective, the “symbiont” on the boy who has become his “host,” searches for the criminal “concealed” in the body of an unknown man.) This cognitive process results in antiempirical narrative. In the closed ecological system of Isaac Asimov’s story “Strike-Breaker,” the director of the planet’s sewage system is essential for the life of all. He is unexpendable, yet precisely because of his low social position he is the object of general contempt. The basic structural assumption is obviously antiempirical. Those who were of low status long ago, such as butlers, maids, or housekeepers, are today worth their weight in gold — and the relations between the housekeeper and her “masters” have changed radically. Nowadays, the housekeeper is almost the ranking member of the family; she is indulged, her caprices are respected, her whims attended to. Therefore, if we simply extrapolate this transformation of social conditions, we can see that, in Asimov’s society, the strike-breaker cannot be a man on whom the life of the whole community depends and still be treated as a pariah.

The choice of narrative structures can often be antiempirical even in works that otherwise pose interesting problems, such as Flowers for Algernon. The structure of such works, reminiscent of the curves of normal distribution (or the inverted letter K), originates with a certain type of tale. In the action of Flowers for Algernon , a retarded young man’s intelligence at first expands to an extraordinary degree, but no sooner does he experience the joy of intellectual creation than he regresses back to idiocy with terrible speed. The work is interesting psychologically, but it poses the problem of “intelligence expansion” as a “rise and fall” paradigm — which is not very plausible, precisely because its origin is in fairy tales; but, more important, it prevents the author from examining the socio-cultural dimensions of his hypothesis about the artificial increase of intelligence. He requires his newly intelligent hero’s sudden restupefaction for dramatic effect (for this curve of the action presents a personal drama, the tragedy of an individual’s fall from the heights of wisdom, arduously and barely achieved, and at the same time it creates the closed structure of events that automatically shapes the whole progress of the action). This extremely simple model would not be adequate to show the consequences of intelligence augmentation for the whole culture; and yet these consequences would be well worth treating. A university professor is a universally respected figure with a high social status, both because it is hard to become a professor (certainly not everyone who wishes to can become one) and because such specialists have a very important role in the culture (they are the ones who pursue creative research, and educate the host of specialists that make up the foundation of civilization). If, however, the augmentation of intelligence permitted anyone to become a university professor, and if this happened to become the easiest and most desirable solution for everyone, then society would have to defend itself against the destructive consequences of the situation. All those who would still be willing to be drivers, sewer workers, builders, or milkmen — in spite of the fact that it is within their power to attain the highest level of creative intelligence — would have to be generously compensated. They would come to be surrounded by the halo of noble renunciation of their innate potential for development for the sake of the community. If such a novel were written as a grotesque, the sewer worker would be the admired, respected, outstanding personage, the lofty spirit, whereas the professor would be merely a mediocre little man, a tiny gear in the great mechanism. (There would be, of course, many other consequences of such a “geniusification” process that we cannot consider here. They can be deduced with the proper reasoning. But an arbitrarily chosen closed structure of events, such as the paradigm taken from fairy tales, is certainly not appropriate for the task.)