Stanislaw Lem - Microworlds

To such questions science fiction could make no answer as long as it exchanged reflection on the fate of reason in the cosmos for sensational stereotypes of interplanetary adventure. In this way, science fiction’s line of development — and this concerns the subject under discussion — became antithetical to that of science. At a time when scientists, beginning to discuss seriously the problem of how one might communicate with other civilizations in the universe, were formulating the hypotheses that Reason takes various forms and that not all possible manifestations of intellect need assume the human form, fantasy was already at the opposite pole from such thinking, driving the last remnants of realistic concepts out of its sphere through its undisguised borrowing from fairy tales. In its desire to furnish the aliens with ever greater power, it already ascribed protean abilities to them: such a being can, just by wishing it, transform itself into a tree, into part of a rocket, even into a human being. It can also take over a human body and control the human mind, thus in effect giving new life to a subject of old myths: possession by evil spirits. This fantasy destroyed intercultural barriers in short order, by ascribing some sort of telepathic omnipotence to the aliens; or, on the other hand, it formed the cosmic relationships between the planets on primitive, simplistic models of earthly origin (those, for example, suggested by colonialism, by the exploits of the conquistadors, or by the rules governing the creation of imperialistic coalitions). In so doing, it disregarded all possible objections both of a sociological and of a physical nature — objections that are contingent on the tremendous spatio-temporal distances in the cosmos. That handicap it did away with once and for all, by conferring on the star-voyagers the ability to move at any desired speed. In short, while in Wells’s modest effort the Martians — in accordance with the scientific data of his time — were at home in the real cosmos, science fiction now chose to locate its beings in a totally (i.e., astronomically, physically, sociologically, and — finally — psychologically) falsified cosmos. It practiced a ruthless exploitation, ransacking, in its search for inspiration, history textbooks and the Linnean system alike, in order to provide lizards, cuttlefish with grasping arms, crabs, insects, and so forth with intelligence. When even that had become threadbare and presently boring, the theme science fiction had run into the ground was in its teratological extremism taken over by the third-rate horror movie, which is perfectly bare of any thoughtful content.

American writers deny the validity of such a diagnosis of the facts, and they find allies in the book buyers, who have become used to an easily digestible, sensationalistic literature that pretends to be science fantasy. Yet the fairytale nature of this “fantasy” is obvious. Nobody questions why the dragons in fairy tales are so mischievously bloodthirsty or why the witches in them prefer to devour children rather than chickens. These are simple axioms of the fairy tales, whose world is fundamentally partisan: evil appears in it so that it can be defeated by good. It is therefore clear that such evil must be powerful; otherwise, the final victory of good would seem too easily gained. The world of science fiction, on the contrary, must be impartial; it must not incubate evil merely for the sake of allowing the united interplanetary forces of virtue to overcome it. Nor should it be a partisan world with a minus sign, an anti-fairy-tale world in which the beautiful, amiable, and morally upright good is bred in order to give the greatest possible pleasure to an evil incarnate which proceeds to gobble it up with relish. (Such a world, incidentally, was imagined by the Marquis de Sade, whom one could hardly take for an author of science fantasy.) The science-fiction world must be (to put it quite plainly) a real world: that is, one in which no one is privileged from the start, in which no fate is predetermined, whether in favor of good or of evil. Since men are not angels, there is no need to ascribe angelic traits to the aliens; since men, though they kill flies, do not exactly travel to the ends of the earth to do so, similarly the aliens, even if they should regard us as flies, should not go out of their way to seek earthlings to swat.

An author who describes a life form or type of intelligence different from the terrestrial variety is in an easier position than the one who depicts a cosmic invasion of earth. The former can — as, for example, I did in Solaris — restrict himself or herself to portraying phenomena that differ as much as desired from what humans are familiar with. The latter, proceeding from the “interventionist” premise, assumes that the aliens have come to earth and that, consequently, something or other must have dictated their literally astronomical undertaking. What could their motive have been? If it was not an impulse to fight or to steal, it must have been the urge either to learn or to play (they came in order to amuse themselves a bit with us…). There are, as we see, not many alternate possibilities. Thus the best strategy for dealing with this subject, too, is to preserve forever the aliens’ mysteriousness.

I would like to stress emphatically that this strategy is not founded, either entirely or primarily, on aesthetic criteria; that, in other words, the narrative must not preserve the aliens’ mysteriousness in order continuously to puzzle readers and hold them spellbound by the great unknown. The strategy does, of course, incline to conform to the fundamental directives of conflict theory. Thus, by way of example, future-strategists at military academies are required to impute to the enemy the most threatening intentions from the point of view of the strategists’ own side. In regard to cosmic aliens, such a dictate has a cognitive, rather than a military, purport. Yet visitors fitted with absolutely inimical intentions do not represent the worst of all possible eventualities. In this case, the enemy’s attitude is at least clearly defined. The situation is worse when we absolutely cannot understand the peculiarities of their strange behavior, when we cannot explain their alien proceedings.

The strategy of preserving the mystery, if it is to be optimal, requires a precise concretizing. One cannot manage it in the way that theology does its subject, by working with contradictions. One cannot ascribe mutually exclusive purposes to the visitors — for example, they cannot want to conquer and at the same time not conquer. Still, one can rouse the appearance of such a contradiction — for example, the visitors may believe they are helping us, though we may feel that their actions are pernicious — and here one enters the realm of what is promising from a dramaturgical perspective: misunderstandings occasioned by the drastic disparity between civilizations. One can find attempts in this direction in science fiction, but they are not followed through: the intercivilizational misunderstandings always stay extraordinarily primitive puerilities which do not merit serious consideration. The author must invest a certain amount of intellectual effort in the construction of the quid pro quo that perplexes the meeting of two disparate cultures. The more factors from various areas that contribute to such a misunderstanding, the better. One ought to keep in mind that such an encounter is not a duel between two heroes, but a very confused interplay in which collective social organizations take part, organizations that differ radically from each other and to each of which the structure, meaning, and purpose of the other’s actions are foreign.

The overwhelming majority of science-fiction texts can serve as examples of how not to tackle the theme of invasion. It is therefore all the more gratifying to come upon a work which, by and large, knows how to deal with the problem successfully. In Roadside Picnic, the Strugatsky brothers have employed the tactic of preserving the mystery to excellent effect; indeed, as they surpass the canon established by Wells, so, too, they transcend the science-fiction tradition.