a version of Kafka genetically reengineered to be able to see the funny side of life (Memoirs of A Space Traveller - Stanislaw Lem)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Memoirs of A Space Traveller - Stanislaw Lem
Date:	19/03/01 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; ringing the changes rather than the truly new- B+

Disadvantages: Characterisation; perhaps not sufficiently depthful; C-

When Arthur C. Clarke- like him or not, the man is seminal- said in the introduction to Sentinel that 'there are at least a dozen writers active today who can match all but the giants of the past (and probably one who can do even that, despite the handicap of being translated from Polish)' Stanislas Lem, the author of this work, is who he had in mind. Although I think he has lost the thread a little since the early nineties - face it, compare Tales From The White Hart to 3001 and ask yourself which is wittier, more adroit, more scientifically alert, more astounding? I think you'll agree that Harry Purvis beats Heywood Floyd every time. Nonetheless, his judgement from the early eighties is sound enough, and so is Stanislas Lem.

I would go so far as to say that Lem is almost Gogolesque. (For those of you who don't know what that means, think of Gogol as a version of Kafka genetically reengineered to be able to see the funny side of life.) Think of the sense of humour of someone who survived life under Communism. Lem has it. Or for the dedicated SF fans, he inhabits the same territory of parable cum parody as Douglas Adams, but manages to make Adams look in retrospect like a latecomer and self-satisfied dilettante.

This is as good a place as any to discourse on a minor theory of comedy. There may well be only six kinds of jokes, but there is at least one clear principle of differentiation; the intellience of the characters in the joke. The comedic value of extreme idiocy is obvious; it is the backbone of slapstick and most short jokes. As is the comedic value of extreme unkindness and extreme antiempathetic tendency- all most reprehensible, most life crippling traits. The comedy of intelligence is much, much rarer, and not terribly unakin to hysteria caused by cosmic angst. We laugh at our ridiculously petty limitations; but once in a while someone points out just how big the universe is, how awkward and hard to get a clear grip on r
eality is, and just how limited the best of us are by comparison. Yes, Minister is one good example. Philip K. Dick, also, was intimately familiar with this - in fact, he and Lem corresponded, and had a falling out once, over dues to be paid to the Science Fiction Writers of America association, that did neither of them any credit.

There is actually a great deal of literary connectivity between the two; similar scope, concerns, choice of topics. The real difference is in the attitude. Phil may have been that great rarity, an intelligent and sincere American; in his writing at any rate, he cared, about his characters and the questions he was asking, far too much for his own mental health. Lem - well, as they say in central Europe, it's fatal, but not serious. More lighthearted, less hysterical.

The Space Traveller in question is interstellar scout Ijon Tichy - who I don't think is anywhere actually described, letting the reader come to their own conclusions- and the Memoirs contain two voyages and various conversations with mad scientists and others of that ilk while on earth.

He opens with the big one; the Eighteenth Voyage is a tale of the grandest scale. The universe is a giant vacuum energy fluctuation; an artifact of chance, borrowing on cosmic credit that really isn't there. Like a giant meson - and the physics of everything except the cannon shot is accurate enough - it violates the rules, temporarily, but then must fall back under them. We could disappear at any moment. Something Must Be Done. Tichy comes up with the idea of creating the universe, retroactively, to ensure that it would actually exist. Think about that for a moment. From the inside? Crazed. But an exceptionally good story idea. (Also, according to Baxter - with asymmetric decomposition of GUT energies- possible.) Of course, Tichy cannot leave real enough alone, and determines to make improvements on the etched positron they fire at the dawn of time. A
much less wasteful universe, for one thing - fewer novae, no senseless waste of pulsar and quasar energy. Also evolution - so that people and all other forms of life would have leaves, and exist as photovores, not preying on one another. Of course it all goes wrong, disastrously so, in a very Gnostic joke whereby three characters with very suspicious names make a series of changes to the electron to be as they think the world should be. Saving human civilisation in the process. Lem's changes would, as we understand the world, lead to a universe without intelligence. Even so, it's a good story.

The Twenty-Fourth Voyage is the other, and depicts a society, populated by Phools and much like the ancien regime (pre-1789 Europe), overrun and changed by very modern industrial machinery. The workers starve - because the law forbids the Eminents (nobility )to give succour - not unknown here on Earth; the rule outside Europe and China- and as unemployed as they are, of course, they earn nothing to buy the products of the factories with. So they build a newer, larger machine to rule them all fairly and viably- which it does by reducing them to nonsentient giant frisbees. Screams 'parable' at you; uncomfortably accurate.

The Further Reminiscences are a mixed bag; all very well done, but mostly tales of failed or futile progress; ranging from a mechanical proof of solipsism, through an artificial soul, a Frankenstein's monster who switches places with his maker, a tragically non- tunnelling time machine, and the fifth is an absolute classic, a tragically unrewarded tale of sentient appliances gone rogue, nonsentient politicians gone cybernetic, and a man who turns himself into a stellar body five hundred miles across, apparently for fun.

The last long story is a tale of a man and his fungi, also gaining a clever revenge by turning the tables on the character in the first story- doing the same to him as he had to his own creations
. Neat, and the rest is good - something the rest of the wold should have realised long ago. This is genuine scientific criticism. He is trying to create spontaneity in machines, the character - Tichy is as ever a spectator - and it needless to say does not go according to plan. The closing letter on interstellar conservation is funny, pre-Pratchettian and displaying the same sense of things as the .303 bookworm, but not a fit swan song.

On the whole, the passivity of the central character is annoying at times, and his description of so many of the people he encounters as 'mad, brilliant children' is essentially accurate. Nonetheless, it is funny, witty, and highly recommendable.

Imagination; ringing the changes rather than the truly new- B+
Science; accurate in it's day and nuts and bolts, squiffy on macro scale; B
Scene- setting; never really tries to paint a picture-sound sequence of vignettes; C
Characterisation; perhaps not sufficiently depthful; C-

Overall; a cut- or particle beam- above most; B

Summary: