A Perfect Vacuum Explained

Author:Stanisław Lem
Published:1971 (Polish)
Translator:Michael Kandel
Publisher:Czytelnik Publishing House
Subject:Fictitious criticism of nonexisting books

A Perfect Vacuum (Polish: Doskonała próżnia) is a 1971 book by Polish author Stanisław Lem, the largest and best known collection of Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexisting books.[1] It was translated into English by Michael Kandel. Some of the reviews remind the reader of drafts of his science fiction novels, some read like philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers, finally others satirize and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.

Contents

The book contains reviews of 16 imaginary books and one real book: itself.

The former consists almost entirely of tracking all the things that must have happened for the author (Kouska) to have been born: his father must have married his mother, which in turn depended on them meeting during the War, which in turn depended on multitude of other events. Here Lem argues for the butterfly effect: changing one thing has an almost infinite number of unimaginable consequences. De Impossibilitate Vitae is a fictionalized piece of Lem's own biography.[4]

The latter is an argument that futurology cannot be based on the probability theory, but rather of some other approach, quoting Lem: "namely, to quote Kouska, 'theory, based on antipodal axioms, of the distribution of ensembles in actual fact unparalleled in the space-time continuum of higher-order events.' (The quotation also serves to show that the reading of the work, in the theoretical sections, does present certain difficulties.)"[3]

Professor Kouska is the namesake of "Kouska's fallacy" in reasoning about concurrent happening of two highly improbable real-life events: in calculating of the probability of such a happening it is fallacious to assume that they are independent.[5] [6]

The translation of the faux review of Non Serviam was included into the 1981 collection of essays The Mind's I.

Reception

Influences

The 2008 edition of the book printed by Agora SA contained a supplement by Jacek Dukaj titled Who Wrote Stanisław Lem?, nominated for the 2009 Janusz A. Zajdel Award.[11] [12] It is a faux review of a book published in 2071, the book being a discussion of the activities of artificial intelligences, which simulated Stanisław Lem. In fact, Dukaj maintained a column of faux reviews, Alternative Bookstore ("Księgarnia alternatywna") in Polish magazine Science Fiction (from #14 (04/2002) to #33 (12/2003)). In an interview he claimed that it was not an intended continuation of Lem's work; rather he had a number of ideas he did not have time to develop in full.[13]

The collection Lemistry: A Celebration of the Work of Stanislaw Lem (2011) contains two more tributes to Lem of this kind. "'Every Little Helps' by Frank Cottrell Boyce, reviewed by Stanisław Lem" by Frank Cottrell Boyce is a pretend Lem's review of a nonexistent Boyce's story. "The Apocrypha of Lem by Dan Tukagawa, J. B. Krupsky, and Aaron Orvits, reviewed by Jacek Dukaj" is a faux review of a book about the literary works (and legal wrangles) of three post hominem Lems (postLems), which are three different posthumous computer simulations of Lem based on different principles.[14]

Bibliography

References

Notes and References

  1. http://english.lem.pl/index.php/works/apocryphs/a-perfect-vacuum Book's entry on Lem's official page, contains author's notes in English
  2. This story also appeared, in a slightly different form, under the title Parisia, in The New Yorker on September 18, 1978, pp 36-44.
  3. Stanislaw Lem, "Odds (A REVIEW OF “DE IMPOSSIBILITATE VITAE” AND “DE IMPOSSIBILITATEPROGNOSCENDI,” BY PROFESSOR CEZAR KOUSKA)", The New Yorker, no. 54, December 11, 1978, pp. 38-54
  4. Stanisław Lem,Mein Leben ("My Life"), Berlin, 1983
  5. Mark S. Lubinsky, "Kouska's fallacy: The error of the divided denominator", The Lancet, Volume 328, Issues 8521–8522, 27 December 1986, Pages 1449-1450
  6. Rob Forsyth, Richard W. Newton, Paediatric Neurology, p. 54
  7. The Experiment (A Review of "Non Serviam" by James Dobb), The New Yorker, July 24, 1978, pp 26-44.
  8. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0810117339/
  9. https://web.archive.org/web/20060904185308/http://nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-1733-9
  10. http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780156849050-0
  11. http://wyborcza.pl/1,75475,6762798,Kto_dostanie_nagrode_Zajdla.html "Kto dostanie nagrodę Zajdla"
  12. http://zajdel.fandom.art.pl/nominacje_200x.html
  13. http://dukaj.pl/JacekDukaj/KiedyTematBierzePisarzaZaGardlo "Kiedy temat bierze pisarza za gardło"
  14. Lemistry, 2013, p.160