SFiRAL - Science Fiction I've Read And Loved

[Nydex]

That being said, TFC is a bit confusing on purpose. If you read Memories Found in a Bathtub you will find a much better execution of a very strange story. In that one, the story is very strange but you're never confused about what's happening, only why (as is the main character). Give it a try!

Based on your recommendations I'll swap out TFC for MFIAB (glory to the acronyms!) The initial list I compiled was a recommendation by Gemini anyway, not something I've thoughtfully written down myself, so I'm 100% open to modifying it.

 

[The Traveler]

Recently finished this book, I think... possibly... just a bit above zero percent chance I probably did... probably... I think?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Nydex]

View attachment 111475

Recently finished this book, I think... possibly... just a bit above zero percent chance I probably did... probably... I think?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

That's literally next on my reading list hahaha will let you know once I probably finish it

 

[The Traveler]

That's literally next on my reading list hahaha will let you know once I probably finish it

Date: [REDACTED]
Subject: Civilian User "Nydex"

[Begin Log]

Nydex: "I've got a list of books to read y'now"

(Microphone picks up anomalous atmospheric shift; subject later reported a soft dampy velvet noise arriving around the right ear)

Unidentified Voice: "really?"

Nydex: "Yes! I have a.. a... list... what?"

(Subject reported a sudden rosy smell around the left nostril)

Unidentified Audio: Tsssshh ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓

Nydex: "Ah"

Unidentified Voice: "Pick it up ...."

Nydex: (Subject makes a tossing hand gesture in the air, seemingly dismissive of the anomaly)

...

[End Log]





Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Nydex]

Finished reading The Cyberiad, as recommended by @blig-blug, and I liked it quite a lot. It feels drastically different from other Lem works I've read so far, in that it's structured as a set of fables that heavily mix fantasy and science-fiction elements, all flavored in quite a simultaneously humorous and philosophical way.

The stories follow two legendary robotic "Constructors" - Trurl and Klapaucius - who travel all throughout the galaxy to build fantastical machines and employ obscure technology, sometimes for the sake of creating something impressive, other times because they got commissioned to do so.

In order to fully enjoy this work, one has to suspend their inclination to seek scientific logic and instead focus on the larger picture, which is often the focus of each of the "sallies" in this book. The stories frequently revolve around character traits like greed and envy - including that of the protagonists - and there's almost always a philosophical takeaway that concludes each story.

I quite enjoyed the humorous prose that Lem employs here - it's similar to Adams' hitchhiker, and Michael Kandel did a wonderful job translating this: no part of it read weirdly unlike The Invincible.

Spoilers ahead!
Some parts that stood out to me as particularly prescient considering this book was written in 1965 include "the versifier" in the beginning of the book - a machine that writes poems that are so profound and amazing that they completely transform the world. This draws a very direct and obvious comparison to today's LLMs and how they are still actively changing the field of writing, both recreational and otherwise. The machine in the story ends up, thanks to the constructor genius of Trurl, basically perfect, and one might be quick to dismiss the threat of LLMs because they are far from perfect right now, but one is then compelled to think ahead and remember that we still technically haven't hit the limits of this technology.

Another standout that was quite fascinating to read about was the "probability gun" used by the constructors, where it basically modifies the (im)probability that a certain event would occur. Its use to make things "not exist" as a central driving mechanism of the story was very odd and fascinating to go through.

And of course one of the funniest moments to me personally was the conclusion of the fifth sally, where Trurl uses dense bureaucracy to destroy a monster that is pestering the locals. As someone that lives in a country famous for its post-soviet bureaucratic processes, I felt that in my heart and it genuinely made me laugh.

Overall it's an interesting and easy read that will sometimes make you smile, other times will plunge you into deep thoughts about life and the current reality we inhabit. Thanks for the rec bliggy, thoroughly enjoyed that one.

Read on

 

[blig-blug]

Glad you enjoyed it! And thank you for the review, I always enjoy reading them.

where Trurl uses dense bureaucracy to destroy a monster that is pestering the locals. As someone that lives in a country famous for its post-soviet bureaucratic processes

This makes it more likely that you will like Memories Found in a Bathtub, as bureaucracy is one of its main topics. That's a more realistic book (less suspension of disbelief required) and a more serious one, but it still has plenty of humor.

 

[Nydex]

Glad you enjoyed it! And thank you for the review, I always enjoy reading them.


This makes it more likely that you will like Memories Found in a Bathtub, as bureaucracy is one of its main topics. That's a more realistic book (less suspension of disbelief required) and a more serious one, but it still has plenty of humor.

It's on my Kindle ready to read after I finish up His Master's Voice which I'm reading right now and finding incredibly dense so far. Hopefully it's not so highly technical and sophisticated the whole way through because I can see it get exhausting after 100 pages of science paper level prose.

 

[blig-blug]

His Master's Voice

I read that one years ago, but I don't remember much of it. So I can't say much about how the rest of the book will be.
MFIAB is not dense at all, though, or at least that's my impression of it. It's written in the first person (those tend to be better when it comes to Lem) and something is always happening. The nature of that something may be more liked or disliked by different people, but that's a different matter

 

[universecannon]

Uh oh... Trav's glitching out again. @kikker , get the "spare parts from the future" bin

 

[Nydex]

Last night I finished reading Lem's 1968 novel "His Master's Voice" and I'm feeling so many ways about it. The novel is presented as the memoir of a frontier mathematician that took part in a highly-secretive government project tasked with decoding a repeating pattern spotted within a tight band of the ever-present neutrino emission that is bathing every cosmic body at all times. The pattern is called "the letter/code" and the project assumes the name "His Master's Voice".

One of the defining characteristics of the novel is its incredibly dense and complex prose that takes the form of weaving scientific concepts with those sourced from multiple schools of philosophy, all parsed through the protagonist's own perspective. It seems to me that a lot of the negative reviews from this book come precisely from the difficulty with which one is faced when reading it. It is not an easy read, especially if you're not paying much attention.

In economics and art alike, scarcity creates value. Lem employs this principle by using very carefully calibrated economy of dialogue, foregrounding, and quite masterful use of negative narrative space. The novel breaks away from the standard form so that there are long, dense sections of internal philosophical monologue that also serves as character exposition, followed by brief, potent sections of short dialogue. In this way Lem puts the spotlight on the dialogue and gives it so much more weight. People don't say much, but what they say is instrumental for understanding what's going on, and drives the plot forward. Not a single line of dialogue in this book is pointless or there for simple decoration. Part of this is owed to the format of the novel being that of a memoir, in which one would not expect large swathes of dialogue, but I'm 100% certain Lem purposefully employed this model, and did so quite successfully.

There are spoilers ahead!

The narrative pressure builds up to the point of bursting, at which point the next step in the story unfolds. Following this pattern, Lem masterfully guides the reader through what is ultimately an inconclusive ending, the path to which is heavily laden with exceptionally profound philosophical insights and ideas about life and the Universe at large that gave me shivers and sent my thoughts to very far and bizarre places.

The philosophy concluding the book revolves around the absolute limits of human cognition. Lem dismantles the anthropocentric assumption that the human sciences, namely logic, mathematics, and biology, are universal constants.

Hogarth - the protagonist - uses the analogy of ants crawling over a philosopher's manuscript. An ant might use the ink to build a nest, completely oblivious to the intellectual meaning of the words. Humanity interacted with the neutrino signal exactly like the ants: we extracted what was materially useful to our specific evolutionary needs - biological novelties and potential weapons - while remaining entirely blind to the sender's actual meaning. In this way, the neutrino signal - and the project at large - serves as a mirror. It reveals absolutely nothing about the alien senders, but it exposes everything about human nature. Placed in the context of the Cold War, the scientists and the military immediately assume a posture of paranoia, treating the unknown as an existential threat and attempting to militarize it. The failure to decode the message is ultimately a failure to transcend our own evolutionary baggage.

The broader implications for humanity largely center around a stark reminder that we need to learn humility in the context of the cosmos itself. It suggests that the evolutionary path that led to human intelligence is just one highly specific, isolated trajectory. The cognitive gap between us and an older cosmic intelligence is likely unbridgeable.

Above all, the novel argues that humanity is not yet mature enough to participate in a broader cosmic dialogue. Until we evolve past our instinct to dominate, weaponize, and project our own neuroses onto the universe, any encounter with advanced extraterrestrial intelligence will result merely in a reflection of our own flawed nature.

I am nothing short of impressed by the prose in this novel. Sure, it's very dense and at times quite difficult to read, but overall it represents a massive step up from anything of Lem's I've read so far. The sheer mastery with which complex philosophical ideas are conveyed is admirable. To give a few examples of why I feel the way I feel about this book, here are 5 of my favorite passages from it that made me properly appreciate the caliber of literary genius that Lem possesses:

Humanity is a hunchback who, in ignorance of the fact that it is possible not to be hunchbacked, for thousands of years has sought an indication of a Higher Necessity in his hump, because he will accept any theory but the one that says that his deformity is purely accidental.

As a subject, believing he sees in the colored blotches angels or birds of ill omen, in reality fills in the vagueness of the thing shown with what is 'on his mind,' so did we attempt, behind the veil of incomprehensible signs, to discern the presence of what lay, first and foremost, within ourselves.

Literature, from the very beginning, has had a single enemy, and that is the restriction of the expressed idea. It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?

The urge to destruction is deducible from thermodynamics. Life is a fraud, an attempt at embezzlement, seeking to circumvent laws otherwise inevitable and implacable; insulated from the rest of the world, it immediately enters the path of decay, and that inclined plane leads to the normal state of matter, to the permanent equilibrium that is death. In order to continue living, life must feed on order, but because there is no order - none highly organized - other than life, it is condemned to consume itself. It must destroy to live, must take its nourishment from systems that are nourishment only to the extent that they can be ruined. Not ethics but physics determines this law.

The Metagalaxy is a limitless throng of psychozoic enclaves. Civilizations deviating from ours by a certain number of degrees, but, like ours, divided, mired in internal quarrels, burning their resources in fratricidal struggles, have for millennia been making - and still are making, again and again - readings of the code, readings as unsuccessful as our own. Just like us, they attempt to fashion the strange fragments that emerge from their efforts into a weapon - and, just like us, they fail. When did the conviction take root in me that this was the case? It is hard to say.

I told only those closest to me - Yvor, Donald - and before my final departure from the compound I shared this private property of mine with the acrimonious Dr. Rappaport. They all - a curious thing - at first nodded with the growing satisfaction of comprehension, but then, after some thought, said that for the world as it was given to us, my idea made too pretty and complete a picture. Perhaps. What do we know of civilizations "better" than ours? Nothing. So perhaps it is not suitable to paint such a panorama, in which we figure somewhere in the frame as a blot on the Galaxy, or as one of the embryos stuck fast in labor contractions that go on for centuries; or, finally, to use Rappaport's metaphor, as a fetus, quite handsome at birth, but strangling on its own umbilical cord, the cord being that arm of culture which draws the vital fluids of knowledge up from the placenta of the natural world.

To conclude, I can confidently say that His Master's Voice is definitely my favorite work of Lem so far. If you read Solaris and you liked it, then this will feel at least equally as good, or in my case - even better. It is not just a philosophical book wearing the thin coveralls of science fiction, because the several interpretations of the code are in and of themselves ideas of enormous creative value that I don't think I have encountered in another book until now. Enormous props to Michael Kandel for what I would assume is near perfect translation as well.

And because I remember @blig-blug saying he hasn't read HMV - treat this as a hearty recommendation, my friend. Next on the list - Memoirs Found In a Bathtub.

Read on

 

[blig-blug]

Thanks for the recommendation! I've seen there's a relatively recent translation into Spanish, so I may get that one. What edition did you read? As it does sound like a pretty good translation.

Based on what you say about the philosophical aspects of HMV, you may also like Perfect Vacuum and Imaginary Magnitude. The first is a book containing book reviews, and the second is a book of prologues. Both are about or from nonexistent books. Each is used as a pretext to go into some philosophical aspect. I found them very stimulating because they make you not only reflect about the topic but also imagine how such a book would be, as often part of its contents is only hinted at.

 

[blig-blug]

Literature, from the very beginning, has had a single enemy, and that is the restriction of the expressed idea. It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?

Excellent quote. It applies even more to our times, unfortunately.

 

[Nydex]

Thanks for the recommendation! I've seen there's a relatively recent translation into Spanish, so I may get that one. What edition did you read? As it does sound like a pretty good translation.

Just make sure it's not a double translation, i.e. from Polish to English and then from English to Spanish as that would definitely degrade it. The edition I got is the 1984 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich one, translated by Michael Kandel.

Based on what you say about the philosophical aspects of HMV, you may also like Perfect Vacuum and Imaginary Magnitude. The first is a book containing book reviews, and the second is a book of prologues. Both are about or from nonexistent books. Each is used as a pretext to go into some philosophical aspect. I found them very stimulating because they make you not only reflect about the topic but also imagine how such a book would be, as often part of its contents is only hinted at.

I'll note these down, thanks!

 

[Nydex]

Excellent quote. It applies even more to our times, unfortunately.

All the more impressive considering this book was written nearly 60 years ago. Quite prescient of Lem, really.