Science fiction was created mostly by bright-eyed optimists intoxicated with the potential of technological progress. A grand new universe was, it seemed, only a hyper-drive leap away. Yet many of the most memorable writers in the field adopted a pessimistic tone The dystopian visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley drew on the potential of the sci-fi genre to generate scathing cultural critiques. Technology might progress, these authors warned, but its benefits were fragile, compromised by our corrupt institutions.
Stanislaw Lem also belongs in the pantheon of these pessimists. He once summed up his philosophy in a nut-shell: "People are terrible and the future is bleak." But Lem (unlike Orwell or Huxley) extended his critique beyond the psychological and sociological spheres. Even the pure nuts-and-bolts of science, he argued, was often suspect and unable to meet its stated goals.
The scientists in Lem’s work, are often dazed and confused. We are struck as much by their errors as their successes. The story behind the story is now what they know, but what they have failed to comprehend.
When Lem depicted the grand moments when humans confront intelligent life from another planet – the impetus for two of his finest novels, Solaris and His Master’s Voice --he avoids all of the clichéd scenes. His aliens are neither the hostile war- mongers of H.G. Wells, nor the peace-loving visitors of Spielberg’s E.T. They neither threaten nor cajole. They do not dominate or placate. No little green visitor proclaims “Take me to your leader.”
In Lem’s world, the struggle is merely to comprehend. Lem has discarded all of the anthropomorphic assumptions that have long permeated our imaginary encounters with the unknown. In his universe, an alien life form might look like part of the landscape, or communicate to us in patterns that we barely recognize.
His Master’s Voice describes one such encounter. A repeating signal has been picked up from the cosmos, and its structure suggests that the source may be an intelligent life form. The government sets up a top secret task force, akin to the Manhattan Project, in an isolated section of the Nevada desert, and enlist a team of 2,500 scientists to decipher the signal and understand its significance. Here are gathered physicists, linguists, engineers, psychoanalysts, mathematicians, chemists, humanists, anthropologists and other specialists and sub-specialists.
In the hands of another author, this would be the springboard for a conventional thriller. But Lem operates at a much higher level. In his hands, this story works at multiple levels. He forces the reader to question our epistemological certainties, reconsider our assumptions about the objectivity of science, and gain new appreciation into the compromises and ethical blind spots inherent in technological progress.
But even when Lem is most philosophical, he never lets the plot lag. The team deciphering the alien message slowly makes progress in unlocking the meaning of this possible signal from beyond, and Lem brilliantly conveys the tensions and rivalries that rise from their work. To give these proceedings a necessary veil of realism, Lem dishes out judicious doses of scientific concepts and hypotheses, and the skill and finesse with which he mixes in these ingredients is almost breathtaking at times. I’m not sure how much research a writer needs to undertake to achieve this level of believability, but I am astonished by the end result.
One of the most memorable passages in the book is a mere tangent to the plot. Peter Hogarth, the scientist narrating His Master’s Voice , encounters one of his colleagues reading science fiction novels--which he uses, he claims as a “generator of ideas.” Hogarth responds with his own view (which we can assume represents Lem’s own opinion): “The authors of these pseudo-scientific fairy tales supply the public with what it wants: truisms, clichés, stereotypes, all sufficiently costumed and made ‘wonderful’ so that the reader may sink into a safe state of surprise and at the same time not be jostled out of his philosophy of life. If there is progress in a culture, the progress is above all conceptual, but literature, the science-fiction variety in particular, has nothing to do with that.”
It is to Lem’s credit that he writes science fiction that is immune to these criticisms. In the place of truisms, clichés, stereotypes,” he offers us an open-ended vision of the universe that defies our best efforts to simplify and sterilize its meanings. In a genre that is too often constrained and demeaned by conventions, Lem offers us powerful examples of a type of sci-fi that can stand comparison with the finest literary fiction of our time.