Stanislaw Lem
I discovered the book thanks to an online post that extolled Lem at the cost of my favourites like Asimov. The book was written in Polish in 1965 and translated in 1974. The introduction provides great context to the author, his work, and his relationship with his peers, especially the Americans. He was rebuffed by them, and apparently Philip K. Dick even contacted the FBI claiming Lem was a Communist agent.
The book is a collection of Lem’s stories most of them involving two constructors – Trurl and Klapaucius, who come up with things like “a machine that can create anything in the world, provided it starts with the latter ‘n'”. Now what happens if you tell it to create nothing? It’s definitely not by doing “nothing”. But I’ll let you read the story and find out.
One of my other favourites was a story within a story. In Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines – there is a character called Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph. One of his essays is The Evolution of Reason as a Two-cycle Phenomenon – a fascinating theory of how Automata and Albuminids create each other back and forth across eternity.
The stories, characters and expressions all actually sound quite silly (might remind you HGTG), though I enjoyed the play of words, which point to the intelligence beyond. But it’s when you scratch the surface and think about the underlying ideas and philosophy that you discover the genius of the author. They are deep and profound – sometimes a commentary on the society and politics of the time, and sometimes on the nature of the universe itself. A completely different take on science fiction from anything else I have read in the domain. Fascinating stuff.
P.S. A special note of appreciation for the translator, and you’ll know why after you read the verses and use of the English language. It cannot have been an easy job to reconstruct the ideas and their renditions in a new language.
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