Daydreaming in a Perfect Vacuum – Reading Lem's Perfect Vacuum

This book adopts the same writing style as "Rhapsody of Lyme", to the fictional writing book review, unlike conventional novels, "Rhapsody of Lem" still retains the characteristics of science fiction, and most of the 16 works of "Perfect Vacuum", most of them are far away from the routine of science and technology and fantasy, and have become philosophical speculations that reflect and satirize human society , revealing the mistakes of culture and the absurdity of the world, with a full sense of reality, stirring up the sensitive nerves hidden in the depths of the soul in the overall numb state of human beings, and repaying the sneer.

In all of Lyme's previous works, I have summarized the themes into one word: Solaris Star – Memory, Futurological Congress – Prospect, Eden – Contact, Invincible – Respect, Voice of Its Lord – Reflection, Fiasco – Despair, Rhapsody of Lyme – self-blackening. "Perfect Vacuum" has reflection, self-blackness, and despair, how to summarize it? Yes! This time it was summed up in three words, and Lyme's own assessment was quoted—daydreaming.

Dreams have a thousand knots. We don't have to be as inquisitive as Freud did, we have to give a realistic interpretation of the dream, we may as well relax and follow Lem in the perfect vacuum, and have a colorful daydream.

- Anti-satirical dreams. Looking at the 16 works, Lem seems to have found an outlet to express his views on the universe, human beings, life, culture, etc., and uses virtual book reviews to play freely, and the most prominent of them is the reflection and ridicule of human behavior, which arouses people's deep thoughts in laughter and anger. "Sexual Explosion" tells the story of human beings from indulging lust to impotence and loss of desire, and finally evolving into asexual creatures. "Squad Leader Louis XVI" is about a Nazi who fled to South America and established a small independent kingdom full of cunning, deception, ferocity, and eventually to its demise. "Homemade Books" is a criticism and satire of the indiscriminate transformation of historical and cultural heritage and the proliferation of worthless books. Odysseus of Itaka points out poignantly that the geniuses who have left their mark on history are only second-class geniuses, and that the top geniuses are far from human beings. "You" satirizes literature to please readers or deliberately fool readers, arguing that "the only truly consistent form of writers rebelling against literary service uprisings is silence." "Life Co., Ltd." is to imagine that the process of life is all controlled by computer algebraic operations, from matter to spirit, all are goods that can be purchased, and life is no longer accidental and unpredictable. In these exaggerated atmospheres, it is not difficult for you to find that the projection of real society, reality and magic, are always connected, and should be a relationship of mirrors to each other.

------------------------ "Robinson Family" is like a dream of Nanke, the protagonist Selquishi fell to a desert island, lived Robinson's life, successively met a ghostly servant and a little girl called "Wednesday", in a environment accompanied by people but difficult to hide loneliness, he thought about "let the dream serve the waking state, colonize the waking state with the dream", and finally, he realized that "in the waking that will never let us go, there is no other way to wake up except death." While repeatedly stressing that the author of the book did not take the usual path, the book review assumed a traditional way of writing novels, saying that the protagonist "seems to be the one who entered someone's dreamland, and thanks to the dreamer he exists temporarily." This is still a philosophical reflection on the mutual verification of dreams and reality, and Zhuang Zhou Mengdi a road number, thousands of years have passed, what bothers mankind is just those old questions: Who am I? Where am I from? Where are you going?

------------------------ A fictional work is triggered by a masterpiece, which appears three times in this book. "Robinson Family" is derived from Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, "Gigamesh" is a tribute to Joyce's "Ulysses", and "Idiot" is undoubtedly caused by Tovon. Originating from famous works and breaking through famous works, it is the characteristics of these three strange texts. The desire of the protagonist of "Robinson Family" is obviously more than that of Robinson in the original work, and the breakthrough and struggle of ideas seem to be stronger. Some of the more filthy ideas of Giogamesh are more than the last chapter of Ulysses, but they try to express the ultimate meaning of "the fate of man, as a battle, inevitably leads to defeat." "The Idiot" talks about love, about creation, and attacks Dostoevsky. It can be said that in the intersection of affirmation and negation, Lem used these masterpieces as tools to tell his dream words.

- Thinking deeply into dreams. As a science fiction everyone, thinking about the future has become a habit of Lem, and the result of contemplation often becomes a waybore for futuristic exploration. "Forgiveness and Non-Service" is about artificial anthropology, and the thinking about artificial "humanoids" echoes the later work "Clay Man XIV", which is a preconceived work for the development of artificial intelligence. Lem used this article to express his views on "humanoids": "It will also be perfect in creation and decision-making, but it cannot become human, because it lacks the 'mysterious depth' of human beings, the 'complexity' of human beings, the labyrinthine nature of human beings..." "The New Theory of Deepening the Universe" is written in the form of a Nobel Prize winner's speech, which is the most science fiction work in this book, and the article believes that the universe had its first life more than 12 billion years ago, the fruits of the labor of early civilization of mankind. It's all around humans, and we just don't realize it. Unlike the Earth civilization, which is in the embryonic stage, which requires technical tools, the 1 billion-year-old civilization does not use any tools, "and its tools are what we call the laws of nature." This view of Lem echoes the chaos of ancient Chinese philosophy and the nature of Taoism, and has the poetic meaning of Li Bai: "Today's people do not see the ancient time and the moon, and this month once looked at the ancients." If the ancients and today's people are flowing water, they see that the bright moon looks like this. ”

- Madmen dream. "Quasi-Apocalypse", "Culture is Wrong", "The Impossibility of Life" these three articles are a bit of rap, there is reflection, there is irony, like a madman who is not accustomed to the world, a fool, who speaks the long way, the knower knows himself, and is not afraid of passers-by laughing at me. In the view of the Apocalypse, the so-called fruits of civilization are mostly a pile of useless garbage, "the terrible machine of civilization, after activation, became the mechanical milking device of the muse." "Culture is a Mistake" is even more a collection of the achievements of human culture, the book bluntly said: "The human collective created culture because of errors, flaws, failures, faults, fallacies and misunderstandings." "People use culture to build walls for themselves, distort the picture of the world according to the setting of culture, and thousands of years later find that they are not very comfortable in this prison." Slogans such as "culture is wrong" and "Down with evolution" are becoming more and more mad. "The Impossibility of Life" will definitely make you look upset, a person's birth, there is indeed a great deal of chance, but when the author from the protagonist's parents meet to start to move forward, the personal, family, social, historical and other accidental influencing factors are carefully pulled together, a person's birth becomes an endless contingent of accidental lines, pulling and not clearing, life makes you dizzy, listening to the idiot's sermon, the listener eventually becomes a fool.

I rarely read any contemporary Chinese science fiction works, so I might as well compare them with ancient works about dreams. In Chinese Ming and Qing dynasty literature, the theme of dreams is innumerable, such as Tang Xianzu's "Four Dreams of Linchuan", "Painting Wall" and "Xi Fangping" in "Liaozhai Zhiyi", etc., of course, there is also the dream-themed "Dream of the Red Chamber". These novels are all played through dreams, reflecting the pain and helplessness of reality, and incorporating the concepts of cause and effect, reincarnation, and inaction of the Buddhist Tao. "Perfect Vacuum" and "Rhapsody of Lem" are based on God and science fiction as the longitude and latitude, reflecting on the past and looking forward to the future, religion and science are generally incompatible, but in these fictional works of Lem, the two reach the greatest harmony, becoming the base of Lem's brain hole, igniting, firing, and letting the mind fly to the infinite distance.

Daydreaming, dreaming as a horse. Lem's thoughts are always so imaginative, and when they say them, they are like mercury pouring down, like a dream flower that never fades in a perfect vacuum.

Let's fall asleep with Lemme.