In early January 2019, the international media was flooded with major news - humans have detected repeated rapid radio bursts from the depths of the universe, and unlike natural phenomena, this time the signal is repeated and closer to the location of the Earth. For a time, people were full of speculation about aliens and whether to respond to the signals. Unlike the movie plot of the brave pioneering on the outer planet, in the face of the real mysterious signal, people began to feel fear, put forward the theory of the law of the jungle, and warned scientists to "never respond". Regardless of the authenticity of the alien existence, this time, humanity is really aware of its own smallness and narrowness, but if the source of the signal is not mysterious, if the celestial body that sends the signal, like some near-Earth planets, has no life and is just a rare resource, then what will be the human reaction? After human beings have a sufficient knowledge of certain things, can human beings maintain humility and prudence?
Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem has long given his own opinion on these questions - no.
Born in Lviv in 1921, Lem was not only a pioneering science fiction writer, but also a philosopher, such as deciphering extraterrestrial signals, which Lem has already written about in his novel The Voice of its Lord, and in the process of deciphering a neutrino letter, people realized the contingency of civilization and the evolution of random sequences into the laws of nature. In Lem's novels, human contact with alien civilizations often ends in failure, and the tragic characters in the story and the indifference of technology together strike at the essential flaws of human beings.
This article is from B01-B03 of the October 16 feature of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly, "Lem: A Pioneer of Polish Science Fiction".
"Theme" B01 丨Stanisław Lem: Polish science fiction pioneer
Theme b02-B03 | Imaginary boundaries and insurmountable humanity
"Theme" B04-B05 丨 Imaginary Atlas of Strange Life
"History" B06-B07丨The Birth of "Purgatory": The Pursuit of the "Happy" Ending
"Literature" B08 | "Future Memories" is a keen capture and extensive echo of the information of the times
Written by | Diptera
In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006), the introduction of series of Lem works in China was strengthened. Lem's science fantasies, futuristic writings, literary criticism, and philosophical essays are known for their deep speculation, intricate technique, interdisciplinary writing, and reflections on the Cold War, with early translations focused mainly on German and Russian, and only received attention in the mid to late Cold War. Because of the complexity of Lem's field, including science, technology, society, humanities, and even many major issues of Western philosophy, translating Lem's work is not an easy task. Lem himself consciously took an anti-phenomenological, non-Freudian, non-structuralist, and non-deconstructivist path. The current languages of postcolonialism, anthropocene, panmedia, dystopians, and even most of the study of technology or philosophy of technology do not fully apply to Lemme. Therefore, domestic research on the in-depth introduction of Lem or the theme of Lyme is still very rare.
His labyrinth of thought is so vast and profound that we have yet to find the right entry point to truly enter the world of Lem. The possibility of literary imagination must intervene in the evolutionary mechanisms of science and technology in order to construct a futurology with universal and practical significance.
Witty tone with pessimistic core
Bubble-blowing Lyme.
Lem understands the cutting-edge theories of science, philosophy, society, and history, and the micro-workings of evolution, cybernetics, biological mechanisms, and social institutions are his subjects. He affirmed the cognitive, real, and "scientific significance" of literature, and in a way, his rebellion against mainstream literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is full of curiosity about the development of knowledge and technology, and whenever he writes about scientific "ideas", he always stimulates the reading interest of "golden age" science fiction, so even in his most serious works, there is a witty and optimistic tone. His understanding of human or social existence is pessimistic. This may grow with age. He did not confuse the optimism of technology with the tragedy of human nature. The protagonists of many of his works are intelligent people who use and advance amazing science and technology, but in the end they cannot avoid the essential flaws of human existence. Technology magnifies human good or evil, but never tries to change human nature, human beings attribute their own evil to technology, always claim to reflect on technology, criticize technology, but rarely discuss their own limitations and destructiveness - this is the root of many problems in the twentieth century and even the twenty-first century.
Lem knew this. His literary works, whether serious or witty, seek to confront a certain transcendent question, namely, whether we can truly transcend the limitations of human nature in order to imagine "unthinkable" things. This is in fact an unavoidable problem of the poetic ontology of science fiction. Although, for Lem, human beings have gone through all kinds of hardships and will not reach the truth. But he is like an Enlightenment Kantist or a modern Sisyphus, constantly using his imagination to construct the power of mankind beyond itself.
Lyme with dog Pegas.
Lem grew up experiencing the traumatic societies of World War I, followed by the deaths of people around World War II, and as an adult, he lived in the shadow of the Cold War for a long time, so from the beginning of his creation, he reflected on the roots of opposing regimes and the boundaries of human populations. His writings can be broadly divided into three categories: science fiction, fiction reviews, theoretical writings, and collections of essays. Lem's writing career can also be roughly divided into three stages. The first phase focuses on future outer space exploration and the discovery of alien civilizations, such as the forthcoming Memoirs of a Space Traveler and The Star Trek Diaries. The second stage is the high-yield period of Lyme. His well-known works are concentrated in this period, such as "Solaris Star", "The Voice of its Lord", "Invincible", "Eden" and so on. He has also written monographs on philosophy, technology, cybernetics, futurology, and science fiction literature, such as The Encyclopedia of Technology, Dialogues (1957), The Philosophy of Chance (1968), and Science Fiction and Futurology (1970). During this period, he deepened the themes of his early works at the level of philosophical speculation and social construction, especially the ontological structure of opposing forms. At the same time, he reflected on the prerequisites for cognition and nature in Western philosophy. He affirmed the reality of cognition and tended to take a non-relativistic approach to understanding literature and art. Around the 1980s, Lem's third phase of creation did not reveal twilight colors. He reflected on the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction on a practical level, completing prefaces or book reviews written for books that did not exist, such as Perfect Vacuum and Rhapsody of Lyme. The completion of the "Robot Master" series shows that his thinking and creative techniques are becoming more mature and free. The closing novel "Fiasco" summarizes the core theme of Lem's past: in the face of extreme unknowns and opposites, reason and imagination try to fill all possibilities, and push the extremes to more extremes.
A comprehensive translation of Lyme's writings
In 2021, following the full translation of "Robot Master", Yilin introduced Lem's series of works on human exploration of "boundaries". In addition to the well-known but difficult to read and read the Star of Solaris, the Futurology Conference, the Voice of the Lord, the Invincible, Eden, and The Fiasco also have excellent translations. Lem's series of works has not yet been fully translated into English. Chinese edition is in fact a ladder to climb Lemme's thought for readers who know foreign languages or do not understand foreign languages. Taking "Fiasco" as an example, in order to serve the theme, the first chapter of the novel, or the first chapter and the second chapter, more or less intentionally uses literary brushwork to construct a narrative barrier that is difficult for cognition and sensibility to enter. But the whole scene is not chaotic or divided, from the plot to the characters, Lem's description is very clear, very camera-like, but also full of logic, but always difficult to grasp. I was discouraged when I read the English version, and it was not until I read the Chinese edition that I found the right path. In the early years Chinese the world only had translations of Solaris Star, Robot Master and Perfect Vacuum, and after this year, readers will be able to contact Lem more comprehensively on the one hand, and on the other hand, they can find other perspectives to re-understand the published works.
"Robot Master", author: Lem, translator: Mao Rui, version: Guomai Culture| Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, May 2021
Futurist Congress is lively and funny, much like Master Robot, with a baroque, layered story nest, a stumbling, passive but actionable protagonist, and a dazzling world. Its starting point is somewhat similar to the Chinese writer Han Song's "Hospital" trilogy: in the near future, we will enter the era of pharmacological domination, the senses and "reality" will be inseparable from each other, and people will continue to pass through the fog of fiction, but they will never reach "reality". Cyberpunk in the late twentieth century and early twentieth century used brain-computer interfaces to allow people's brains to enter the virtual world. Lem's various soothing schemes, such as the harmonizer, the violent agent, the lytol, the psycho diet, and the mental nutritionism, let the human brain and nervous system generate a virtual world on their own. So if cyberpunk criticizes late capitalism, where commerce and power merge completely to create a virtual or real "High Tech, Low Life"; Lem actually deals with (or self-deprecating) another problem, in his words, a "war between the old and the new brains." In the novel, the protagonist enters an era when the pharmacist replaces the priest, and the computer tells him that "the contradiction between the old brain and the new brain that man inherits from animals has torn man apart." The old brain is impulsive, irrational, arrogant and stubborn. When the new brain works hard in one direction, the old brain pushes hard in the other direction." Drugs are "conquests of the old brain" because "spontaneous emotions cannot be indulged." At the same time, "drugs are not foreign, but part of yourself". The old brain is the ancient brain, which brings the primitive emotional impulses shared by humans and mammals, and the new brain is the extra cortex of people, and it is said that human cognition and rationality originate from this, bringing about evolution. Although the Futurology Congress criticized the bright and dark sides of pharmacological domination: "For a harmonious and stable society, certain sacrifices are necessary", he deepened the problem from the social level to the differentiation of human sensibility and cognition. In short, the indulgence or hyperbaricity of social phenomena has a psychological cause, and this problem is not "pharmacological" to solve, but will only be amplified by drugs. All the stories of the Futurology Congress, whether they are quiet or moving scholars, the new era of 2039, the neuronal connections of the heart (from psychochemistry), may be the product of the protagonist's own brain. So it cannot be said that Lem is only ironic in society, he went a step further, solemnly self-deprecating the deep split between the old brain and the new brain. In other words, Lem's social criticism often involves human cognition and existence. He has had personal pain, so his brushwork is not lacking in empathetic bystander perspective. He didn't have a lofty position. If the highest level of irony is self-deprecation and reflection, Lem has done just that. He always asked why humanity had come to such a position.
Lem with his wife Barbara and granddaughter Corinne.
"The Voice of its Lord": Human nature can only retreat
The story also takes place on Earth, and the style of "The Voice of its Lord" is the closest to philosophical prose in the introduction of the series, as opposed to the Futurological Congress. Lyme also spoke to some extent about the philosophical schools that were popular at the time. He discusses the dark words in the field of humanities through the characters of different theoretical camps. He was ironic about Freudian theory (and even phenomenology). "What psychoanalysts offer is a childish, elementary-school childlike truth that we learn from it in a flash of astonishment and are drawn to attention," he said. Sometimes that does happen." In his eyes, this may be a common problem of scholarship, and it also confirms the bamboo basket water of the "Voice of its Master" plan. He recognized the picture of the child, but used cognition as a path rather than a Freudian traumatic and sexual instinct. Although the world of children is one-sided, for them, "reality is the superposition of a multitude of possibilities, each of which can be taken out individually and developed very easily, as if it were growing naturally" The novel compares human perception of the universe in this way. Human access to "outer space information", countless possibilities continue to stack. But "rigid coherence as man matures will destroy the initial richness." Humanity will not have a better ending in the face of the "Voice of Its Master" program.
Voice of its Lord, by Lem, translated by Yumi, edition: August 2021 by Yilin Press.
In the context of the Cold War, the participants in "Its Main Voice" are all excellent in mind and emotional intelligence, and even if their positions and interests are opposed, they can "cooperate" and constantly crack and approach the "Voice of its Master". Mathematics is the protagonist's tool to approach the truth. "The Voice of its Lord" does not excavate the subconscious of the individual or the dilemma of the individual's existence, but pursues the freedom of literary expression with mathematical deduction and probability, "this freedom does not need to be tested by any tangible.". The middle part of the novel is somewhat like Le Carré's repressed Cold War intellectuals. The protagonist and his colleagues have no choice and are trapped in a secret fortress. But the joy of reading novels also comes from their astonishing and rich deduction of "the voice of its master". Each hypothesis, while unreliable, seems to be presented quite realistically. The charm of mathematical fantasies and physical fantasies may lie in this, they seem to be able to transcend the relativity and limitation of individuals. "We have chosen one of the innumerable mathematical worlds that may exist; our history has chosen for us with its unique, irreversible rise and fall," Lem said. Like solaris, the "Voice of its Lord" plan is lost. Many wisdom and financial resources cannot understand the puzzles of outer space. Man may be able to "understand the fragmented sentences taken from philosophical works, but he cannot understand the whole book." In the face of the universe, human beings can only keep their own scaffolding.
The Futurists Congress and The Voice of its Lord are located on Earth, and Invincible, Eden, and Fiasco directly depict the history of exploration and failure in outer space. "The Voice of the Lord" does not describe personal emotions and existence much, it rationally denies that individual behavior can become a universal norm, rationally analyzes the inevitable failure of human conquest of outer space, and rationally discusses the history of Western philosophy "is an endless history of retreat", "beyond the limitations of experience, destroying the scope of yesterday's thinking, it is precisely science" - but none of this can really transcend the limitations of human nature.
Eden: Depersonalized Microscopic Expressions
If Solaris discusses sensibility and sees love as a way for human beings to transcend their own existence, then solaris ends with the finiteness of individual existence and the absolute unknown of the universe. "Solaris Star" is the most widely circulated, precisely because it describes human emotions, allowing readers to share the relationship between lovers and the universe through the protagonist's "love" clues. Of the series introduced by Yilin, only "Eden" is more or less close to "Solaris Star". The character relationships in Eden are somewhat similar to those of The Voice of its Lord, where intelligent and diverse scientists come together to solve problems. The first half of the story of Eden and Invincible is similar, like a horror thriller adventure that takes place on an alien planet. The second half of "Eden" reveals the characteristics of the story.
Eden, by Lem, translator: continuation, edition: Translation Lin Press, August 2021
The Creature of Eden is a twin with a small face that walks up and pulls and crumpls, divided into two parts, large and small. It's cute and not like aliens, it's beautiful because of its grotesqueness. From personality to perception, the twins are reminiscent of highly endearing animals such as dogs, dolphins, and even octopuses. Lem depersonalized the systematized genocide of World War II, with the twins as direct victims. Foucault's micro-power strategy is directly demonstrated in Lem's pen, and Lem pushes further afield. At this time, artificial and non-artificial, controlled and non-controlled, free and non-free are indistinguishable.
Lem describes the twins sympathetically. Paradoxically, he did not write them as aliens that humans could not communicate. In the barbaric atmosphere, humans and twins completed "contact". In a sense, "contact" is successful, warm and touching. The twins were once wise, but degenerated. They know their situation and have been living noblely and making their own choices. They are the souls of humanity crushed by war and confrontation. The cancer of society devours civilization, and "contact" cannot recover the declining intellectual and life picture. At the end of Eden, the crew leaves a planet with nothing in common with their world. Lem described it as an irresistible force. Still, Eden gives hope, and in the Lem series, the twins shimmer with real, Eden colors, "... The small torso on the rubber mat stretched out slowly, and on its wrinkled monkey face, the glint of rational light moved away from the blackboard and looked at the physicist as if inquiringly..."
The theme of "contact" in Invincible is similar to that of Eden, but the overall setting is similar to some kind of rehearsal of Fiasco. At this point, the micro-control system itself "seems" to begin to take on life. The exploration and collapse of "Invincible" is from the inside out, and "Fiasco" is from the outside in. The former belongs to Lem's earlier works, and the latter is Lem's final work. Both narratives are very fictional, and both deal with the existence of non-emotional, more rational human beings. The former's narrative and character endings are more colloquial; the latter uses a variety of narrative methods, dealing with many of the themes that Lem has written, more precisely, speculatively and grandly. The former is a novel, while the latter is a purely literary work. Neither is suitable for spoilers, and exposing the dots can easily cut the polysemis of the text. Lem confronts the multidimensional dimension of possibility, which is not a blur of meaning, but on the contrary, every image, every technology, every strategic deduction, and even every metaphorical story with the nature of a Russian matryoshka doll is accurate. Perhaps for him, in the face of the cruelty of the world, playing the human world or devoting himself to mysticism is still a kind of escape. His novels confront the cruelty of real society and human existence, but they are not martyrs, bloody, and bitter and vengeful. He demanded that he first possess enough intelligence, and then challenge the finiteness of man and the infinity of the universe.
Illustration of Lyme's novel.
The desire to assimilate others is never-ending
The unknown aesthetic of Solaris Star can be seen as the background to Fiasco: "It never had a purpose, nor has it ever benefited anyone". The barren but incomparably magnificent universe is the field where human beings seek communication, but human beings may not really seek communication, and truly seek the commonality of civilization. When intelligent beings, through their own technology, change the biosphere, communication constitutes only an aggressive "peaceful" shell, and the desire to find opposites and assimilate dissidents is never-ending (perhaps Lem is a true anti-Hegelian). Therefore, "Fiasco" is both a fiasco of human journey and a fiasco of human nature. However, Fiasco summarizes Lemme's creative themes.
Fiasco, by Lem, translated by Chen Zhuo, edition: August 2021 by Yilin Press
At the narrative level, he takes a roundabout tactic, with a complete foreshadowing story, two complete metaphorical stories, one of which is nested in virtual reality. At the technical level, he progressively depicts the exploration of the solar system and the exploration of large-scale travel in long-distance deep space, with grand scenes and subtle clues, such as the porcelain shock of ceramic powder and the "stagnant space-time" using the gravitational shock of black holes. At the civilizational level, Lem distinguishes between bioconservatism (which does not have a high priority in connection with other civilizations) and the unconserved line of autonomous evolution. Over-mature civilizations may only engage in advanced information exchange (light-speed communication) within groups and ignore others. At the level of artificial intelligence, DEUS is somewhat like a kind version of Hal (HAL9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey). Throughout, it cedes decision-making power to humans, but it is well versed in probability and strategy making.
We have no way of knowing whether it sees itself in a mythological light. Lem even directly quotes the perfect vacuum article on the question of probability: whether probability is related to physical existence. In the second half of the story, when humans arrive at Quinta and constantly try to get close to Quinta, intelligent computing becomes similar to imagination. No one can "draw a clear dividing line between certainty and conjecture." However, Lem said, "Physics is a line drawn in the abyss that cannot be understood by the human imagination." As mentioned earlier, Lem will not stop at rhetorical irony, "fiasco" from the level of physics, probability, technology, intelligence and human nature, meticulously approaching the core of the problem: fiasco is also a fiasco, because there are some limitations that cannot be crossed.
Although the characters of "Fiasco" have their own personality problems, on the whole, they are still the ideal configuration for outer space exploration. Their interactions and situations are somewhat similar to Those of Eden, except that the twins' patterns of behavior can be embedded in the human perception system, and the two worlds can communicate with each other somewhat. Fiasco faces dead silence, cold communication, or some kind of "meaning" attack. The overall consensus of the crew became centralized: either the Quinta civilization had entered the Second Stone Age, that is, the illiteracy of the whole (somewhat similar to the twins), and they did not necessarily understand extraterrestrial contact, or imagined a set of extreme situations with opposing thinking: "It is neither war nor peace, but a permanent struggle that binds the parties together and constantly consumes their resources". "Ephemera lives only one day, and civilizations do the same", this knowledge drives the crew to constantly force contact Quinta. Lem's depiction of "contact" is very systematic, and he does not waste a little narrative language and logical speculation until the last shot, the last sentence.
Balcony with Thomas Lem in the vines.
Contemporary world writers Tokarczuk, Kazuo Ishiguro, and McEwan have re-explored the literary imagination of technology from the perspective of mainstream literature. And for Lem, Snow (C. Snow) P· Snow's "two cultures" divide may have long since crushed the power of artistic flourishing. For much of the twentieth century, art lost its power to express historical logic and social ontology, lost the frontiers of human exploration, and lost the revelatory moments depicted by Poe. Lem's writing is directly about bridging the practice of "two cultures" and transcending contemporary interdisciplinary perspectives, so that the integration of "two cultures" touches the ontological level. His science fiction and scholarly writings consciously reflect on the core issues since the scientific revolution and Western Enlightenment philosophy, such as the boundaries of reason. The cognitive factors of imagination, the "backsliding" nature of utopia, and the relationship between artistic creation and scientific (technological) creation. He has a creative consciousness of the modernity, literature and social significance of science fiction. The Voice of its Lord mentions, "A clear mind is a point of light in the endless darkness." It is not so much that the genius mind is a lamp, but rather that it is always aware of the darkness around it. And its typical cowardice is that it only immerses itself in its own brilliance and avoids looking beyond the boundaries as much as possible. Lem's talent and self-realization may be fully manifested here. His work has always looked as far as possible to the outside of the boundary, and he seems to have written about the dead end of mankind, but even by reading Lem's most desperate works, we can still gain the clarity, wisdom, and power of reason:
" Human pain, fear, and suffering will disappear with the death of the individual, and those ups and downs, orgasms, and pains will not leave any residue— a commendable gift from the evolutionary process to us..."
"It is true that it is precisely because of death that they have a chance to exist. If a single organism does not die, then billions of years of species change, emergence and extinction cannot happen "...
Written | Diptera
Edit | Miyako
Proofreading | Xue Jingning