Microworlds Read online

  If new concepts, those atomic kernels that initiate a whole flood of works, correspond to that gigantic device by which bioevolution was “invented” — i.e., to the constitutional principle of types of animals such as vertebrates and nonvertebrates, or fish, amphibians, mammals, and birds — then, in the “evolution of science fiction,” the equivalent of type-creating revolutions were the ideas of time travel, of constructing a robot, of cosmic contact, of cosmic invasion, and of ultimate catastrophe for the human species. And, as within the organization of biological types a natural evolution imperceptibly produces distinctive changes according to genera, families, races, and so forth, so, similarly, science fiction persistently operates within a framework of modest, simply variational craftsmanship.

  This very craftsmanship, however, betrays a systematic, unidirectional bias; as we stated and demonstrated, great concepts that alter the structure of the fictional world are a manifestation of a pure play of the intellect. The results are assessed according to the type of play. The play can also be “relational,” involved with situations only loosely or not at all connected with the dominant principle. What connection is there, after all, between the existence of the cosmologist who created the world and the fact that he has a beautiful secretary whom he beds? Or, by what if not by a retardation device will the cosmologist be snatched away before he fires the “chronogun”? In this manner an idea lending itself to articulation in a couple of sentences (as we have done here) becomes a pretext for writing a long novel (where a “cosmos-creating” shot comes only in the epilogue, after some deliverers sent by the author have finally saved the cosmologist from his sorry plight). The purely intellectual concept is stretched thoroughly out of proportion to its inherent possibilities. But this is just how science fiction proceeds — usually.

  On the other hand, rarely is a departure made from “emptiness” or “pure play” in the direction of dealing with a set of important and involved problems. In the world of science fiction it is structurally as possible to set up an adventure plot as a psychological drama; it is as possible to deal in sensational happenings as it is to stimulate thought by an ontological implication created by the narrative as a whole. It is precisely this slide toward easy, sensational intrigue that is a symptom of the degeneration of this branch of literature. An idea is permitted in science fiction if it is packaged so that one can barely see it through the glitter of the wrapping. As against conventions only superficially associated to innovations in the world’s structure and which have worn completely threadbare from countless repetitions, science fiction should be stimulated and induced to deviate from this trend of development, namely, by involution away from the “sensational pole.” Science fiction should not operate by increasing the number of blasters or Martians who impede the cosmologist in his efforts to fire the “chronogun”; such inflation is not appropriate. Rather, one should change direction radically and head for the opposite pole. After all, in principle the same bipolar opposition also prevails in ordinary literature, which also shuttles between cheap melodrama and stories with the highest aesthetic and cognitive aspirations.

  It is difficult, however, to detect in science fiction any improvement or outright redemption of this sort. An odd fate seems to loom heavily over its domain, which prompts writers with the highest ambitions and considerable talent, such as Ray Bradbury or J. G. Ballard, to employ the conceptual and rational tools of science fiction at times in an admittedly superb way, yet not in order to ennoble the genre, but, instead, to bring it toward an “optimal” pole of literature. Aiming in that direction, they are simultaneously, in each successive step, giving up the programmatic rationalism of science fiction in favor of the irrational; their intellect fails to match their know-how and their artistic talent. In practice, what this amounts to is that they do not use the “signaling equipment” of science fiction, its available accessories, to express any truly, intellectually new problems or content. They try to bring about the conversion of science fiction to the “creed of normal literature” through articulating, by fantastic means, such nonfantastic content, already old-fashioned, in an ethical, axiological, philosophical sense. The revolt against the machine and against civilization, the praise of the “aesthetic” nature of catastrophe, the dead-end course of human civilization — these are their foremost problems, the intellectual content of their works. Such science fiction is, as it were, a priori vitiated by pessimism, in the sense that anything that may happen will be for the worse.

  Such writers proceed as if they thought that, should mankind acknowledge the existence of even a one-in-a-million or one-in-a-billion chance — transcending the already known cyclical pulsation of history, which has oscillated between a state of relative stabilization and of complete material devastation — such an approach would not be proper. Only in mankind’s severe, resolute rejection of all chances of development, in complete negation, in a gesture of escapism or nihilism, do they find the proper mission of all science fiction that would not be cheap. Consequently they build on dead-end tragedy. This may be called into question not merely from the standpoint of optimism, of whatever hue and intensity. Rather, one should criticize their ideology by attempting to prove that they tear to shreds that which they themselves do not understand. With regard to the formidable movements that shake our world, they nourish the same fear of misunderstanding the mechanisms of change that every ordinary form of literature has. Isn’t it clear what proportions their defection assumes because of this? Cognitive optimism is, first of all, a thoroughly nonludic premise in the creation of science fiction. The result is often extremely cheap, artistically as well as intellectually, but its principle is good. According to this principle, there is only one remedy for imperfect knowledge: better knowledge, because more varied knowledge. Science fiction, to be sure, normally supplies numerous surrogates for such knowledge. But, according to its premises, that knowledge exists and is accessible: the irrationalism of Bradbury’s or Ballard’s fantasy negates both these premises. One is not allowed to entertain any cognitive hopes — that becomes the unwritten axiom of their work. Instead of introducing into traditional qualities of writing new conceptual equipment as well as new notional configurations relying on intellectual imagination, these authors, while ridding themselves of the stigma of cheap and defective science fiction, in one fell swoop give up all that constitutes its cognitive value. Obviously, they are unaware of the consequences of such desertion, but this only clears them morally: so much the worse for literature and for culture, seriously damaged by their mistake.

  Translated from the Polish by Thomas H. Hoisington and Darko Suvin

  METAFANTASIA: THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCIENCE FICTION

  Let us demonstrate three possible types of science fiction by way of three fictional examples. Our first example is a work about a system for preventing earthquakes. It has recently been discovered that spraying water under high pressure into geological strata that lie under immense tectonic stress induces a series of harmless, microseismic movements in the earth. As the water penetrates the fissures of the deep-lying strata, it acts like lubricating oil, and helps the soil layers to slide away from one another. This preventive spraying facilitates the gradual reduction of tectonic stress, so that the pent-up seismic energies need not be released in the tremendous, destructive earthquakes that accompany the fierce shifts of geological formations. On the basis of this hypothesis, already verified in reality, one might write a science-fiction novel about the successful elimination of the catastrophes that threaten people living in earthquake-prone regions. This is a variation on the theme of “humanity’s game with nature”; our stance concerning it would be unequivocal, since we would not have to re-evaluate or reorient our cultural norms to conclude that the prevention of earthquakes is a good thing and a worthwhile goal for which to strive.

  Our second work might describe what happens when the use of a certain chemical that separates the sensations of pleasure from sex spreads throughout the earth. One
possible rational motive for the use of the drug might be the desire to check the population explosion. Or there might also be a hostile motive: the drug might be a secret weapon in a covert military operation. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences. Since no one wants to indulge in sex of his own free will any more — after all, it is simply hard physical labor, totally devoid of pleasure — humanity is threatened with extinction. To prevent this disastrous eventuality, governments are forced to experiment with strategies for saving the human race, First, they try propaganda. But quickly they are forced to realize that the very same drawings, photographs, and movies whose distribution they had been obliged to prohibit not so long before no longer interest anyone at all now; on the contrary, they produce general disgust, since they are no more arousing for either sex than a picture of a washtub is for a washerwoman, or a photo of an ax for an exhausted woodcutter. These seductive devices fail for a very simple reason: once the act itself has lost its attraction, no amount of hinting, alluding, and suggesting can create a desire for it. Since the promotion of sex proves ineffective, governments resort to more pragmatic methods. They mobilize material incentives: rewards, premiums, decorations, extraordinary honors, social benefits, privileges, and magnificent titles with honorary diplomas. In the meantime, several industries go under: the cosmetics industry, part of the publishing industry (after all, who will read erotic literature when all it calls to mind is drudgery?), the film industry, as well as advertising — since they have been based on sex. The clothing and underwear industries are faced with a crisis greater than they have ever faced. Women’s breasts now only remind people that humans are mammals; legs, that people can walk; and a painted mouth seems as bizarre as if someone had decided to glue an artificial ear on his bald head.

  Naturally, researchers work feverishly to find an antidote that will neutralize the catastrophic effect of the drug; but in vain. As the new state of affairs stabilizes, new models of beauty emerge, models that provide security against every kind of erotic danger (for it can happen that one resigns himself to procreating to gain a medal or a title, only to find the potential partner repelled by the invitation; others may try to shirk their social responsibilities by making the illusion appear to be the reality, and thus supervisory committees are established to verify that everything is taking place as the social good demands; men declare that they deserve greater rewards because they have to put more work into it, while women protest that this is out of the question, and so forth). Under these conditions, perfect security lies in the companionship of someone visibly incapable of the sexual act (and so, not likely ever to suddenly demand it). Gray hair, potbellies, wheelchairs, and similar “antisexual” characteristics are accorded universal interest and respect as symbols of erotically disarmed paralysis.

  A work of this sort would posit a certain anthropological hypothesis about the role of sexuality in the totality of human behavior.

  The third example is of an entirely different order. It is a popular scientific book published in the mid-twenty-first century detailing the history of cosmological views, including the most recent theories. The author begins, naturally, at the beginning: long, long ago, humans, basing their thought on their relationships to their own products, conceived of the universe as an intentional object, like a pot or a table; there was a Someone who had created it, intentionally, and by design. The battle of ideas went on for centuries, until science appeared to establish that natural phenomena are not intentional objects. Thus, the trees, stones, atoms, clouds, oceans, rivers, and beyond them the planets, the sun, the stars, and the nebulae that constituted the objects of scientific inquiry were products of the natural processes of a heterogeneous evolution not conceived or designed by a personal being. Science discovered a series of objective regularities in these phenomena, and named them the fundamental laws of nature. Physics and astrophysics led the field, and the other branches of science queued up behind them.

  But by the mid-twentieth century, theoretical views in the scientific world had come into grave conflict with one another. On the one hand, physics, planetology, astronomy, and evolutionary biology preached that the birth and development of life, which is crowned by the appearance of intelligent beings, is, in cosmic terms, normal, typical, average, and therefore a phenomenon belonging to the order of things. On the other hand, despite years of serious effort not a single trace had been discovered of any great, stellar-scale constructs that might have signaled the existence of a highly developed civilization, either in our own galaxy, or elsewhere. The persistence of this intolerable situation — produced by the contradiction between scientific expectations and the empirical data that had actually been gathered — swept the natural sciences, primarily biology and astronomy, into an ever-deepening crisis, until at last the inevitable ensued, and science resigned itself to the painful labor of restructuring its theoretical foundations.

  Since we are here gathering in a nutshell something that itself amounts to a summary of an entire epoch’s work (i.e., in our proposed popular scientific book) we cannot delve into the biographies of the learned people who set human thinking, including cosmogony and cosmology, on a completely new track. The first tentative hypotheses proposed by certain pioneering scientists were given the worst possible reception by the community of inquirers. But when the evidence of the “negative facts” became incontestable (i.e., the total absence of signs of “astrotechnical” constructs or traces), an extraordinary reversal occurred. Through their common efforts, scientists shaped new approaches and new models of the cosmos one after another, and the broad outlines of a new image of the universe began to unfold as follows.

  Astrophysicists already know today that our sun and its planetary system belong to the so-called second stellar generation; the solar system is approximately five billion years old, while our whole galaxy is close to ten billion years old. Clearly then, the first generation of stars came into being before the formation of our solar system, in the remote mists of the cosmic past. With them came the planets, and on these planets life emerged. This was the first stage in the history of cosmic civilizations. When they attained a sufficiently high degree of scientific development they applied astrotechnics in an ever wider sphere of activity. For creatures at lower levels of development, the laws of nature are immutable attributes of being, but for those who have reached the higher planes of cognition, the laws of nature are no longer absolutely binding. Certain changes can be effected on them; the constant of gravitation, for example, can be reshaped, as well as the constants of electrical charges, the constant of maximum velocity, and so on. Since enormous distances separate the most developed civilizations from one another -distances of several hundred million light-years’ magnitude, at the very least — they do not communicate with each other directly. They only infer the existence of their neighbors from certain observed facts: from certain gradual, noticeable changes in the laws of nature. Some of these transformations may benefit a given civilization, others may not. Therefore, each civilization approves and augments the former, and obstructs the latter, through its own astrotechnical activities. Thus begins the cosmogonic game played by the most developed civilizations of the universe.

  This cosmogonic game is not military in nature, since the partners do not use weapons and do not aim to annihilate one another. Rather, it is a co-operation justified by considerations beyond ethics: the annihilation or conquest of the partners would benefit no one, while by co-operating the partners help to sustain the trend of cosmogonic transformation most beneficial to everyone. Nor is the game a form of interstellar dialogue. Civilizations so advanced have nothing to say to one another — the less so when we consider that a dialogue in which the reply is separated from the question by a billion years is utterly irrelevant. Intelligent discussions might be held about which natural laws should be transformed and in what manner, but the time spent waiting for an answer would be too long for any effective action. The situation might be described like this: a certain ship,
battling a storm, is so large that the machinist and navigator cannot coordinate their actions through a dialogue, since they must act too quickly for orders or replies. Every message is thus hopelessly late in relation to the actions that have already been initiated; as they arrive, the messages always refer to something no longer relevant. Similarly, communication in the universe occurs on the level of action, not in articulated messages. The civilizations do not fight, since it would do them no good; nor do they converse, since that would be meaningless. Gradually, over millions of years, their cooperation has become harmonized and synchronized. In the beginning, surely, confusions did arise when they misunderstood one another’s creative work; traces of this can still be observed by astronomers. But that time is long past. Now, the exalted partners do their work wrapped in energetic silence, and realize their plans of cosmic stabilization or transformation so well that hardly any part of the primal universe that existed seven to eight billion years ago remains untouched. In the course of time, they transformed the entire universe in accordance with the strategy of the exalted civilizations, and everything within it — stars, dust clouds, galaxies, nebulae, as well as the laws directing them -originated in the game of this coalition. The evolution of matter is governed by collective reason, which is embodied in the multitude of the highest civilizations.