whether Karel C
ˇ apek, Philip K. Dick or Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
What else? There are of course some interesting novels, both
classical and contemporary, and a variety of short stories in various
countries. Knowledge of foreign SF has much increased since 1973,
but mostly on a scholarly level. Peter Nicholls and John Clute’s
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) provides much useful information
on foreign SF, but the useful section on foreign SF to be found in the
3rd edition of Neil Barron’s Anatomy of Wonder (1987) has been
dropped from the 4th edition, due to a lack of interest on the part
of the users. The Americanization of SF has progressed, most specta-
cularly in Eastern Europe, and the appearance of translated SF in the
English language is a greater rarity than ever before.
I will not argue here that there is such a thing as a unique
Europeanness of SF, some common characteristics that set it apart. I
think it is nonsense to attribute national characteristics to literature; strictly speaking, there is only one literature, and all writers, no
matter where they are creating and in what language, have to
stand on their own. Genre boundaries are mostly marketing cate-
gories of popular literature. This makes me pessimistic for a general
acceptance of European SF in the world. The only way that a writer of
European SF can really become successful is by transcending genre
boundaries. Only literary publishers are willing to expend the money
and care necessary to ensure good translations; a care that nobody
takes with genre writers anywhere in the world.
Thus I am afraid that European (or Japanese, or Chinese) SF will be
restricted, in English and most other translations, to special antholo-
gies like this one, and they can only provide some hopefully inter-
esting sidelights to the enormous corpus of science fiction, some tiny
additional dots on the SF map. But it would be possible to put
together, given good translators, some more very good compilations
of new stories from Europe.
POLAND
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
STANISL
/
AW LEM
One evening the famed constructor Trurl, silent and preoccupied,
dropped in on his good friend Klapaucius. Klapaucius sought to divert
him with a few of the latest cybernetic jokes, but Trurl shook his head
and said:
‘Please, frivolity cannot dispel my melancholy, for the thought that
has taken root in my soul is, alas, as undeniable as it is lamentable.
Namely, I have reached the conclusion that in all our long and
illustrious career we have accomplished nothing of real value!’
And he cast a look of censure and disdain upon the impressive
collection of medals, trophies and honorary degrees in gold frames
that graced the walls of Klapaucius’s study.
‘A serious charge’, observed Klapaucius. ‘On what grounds do you
make it?’
‘Hear me out, I shall explain. We have made peace between
warring kingdoms, instructed monarchs in the proper use of power,
fashioned machines to tell stories and machines to serve as quarry, we
have defeated evil tyrants as well as galactic bandits that lay in
ambush for us, yet in all this we served only ourselves, adding to
our own glory—achieving next to nothing for the Common Good!
Our efforts to perfect the lives of those poor innocents we encoun-
tered in our travels from planet to planet never once produced a state
of Absolute Happiness. The solutions we offered them were make-
shift, stopgap, jury-rigged—so if we have earned any title, it is surely
Charlatans of Ontology, Subtle Sophists of Creation, and not Abol-
ishers of Evil!’
‘Whenever I hear anyone speak of programming Happiness, I am
filled with foreboding’, said Klapaucius. ‘Come to your senses, Trurl!
Don’t you know such noble enterprises invariably end in tragedy and
despair? Can you have so soon forgotten the pitiful fate of Bonhomius
the hermetic hermit, who attempted to make the entire macrocosm
happy with the aid of a drug called Altruizine? To be sure, one may in
some measure alleviate the cares of life, see that justice is done,
rekindle dying suns, pour oil on the troubled gears of social mechan-
isms—but in no way, by no machinery known create happiness! We
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can only nurture the hope of it in our hearts, pursue its bright,
inspiring image in our minds on a quiet evening such as this . . . A
man of wisdom must content himself with that, my friend!’
‘Content himself!’, snorted Trurl. ‘It may well be’, he added after a
moment of thought, ‘that to make those who already exist happy in
any plain and unequivocal way is indeed impossible. Still, one might
construct new beings, beings whose sole function and faculty was to
be happy. Think of what a wonderful monument to our constructor’s
skill (which Time, you know, must some day turn to dust) would be a
planet shining in the firmament, a planet upon which the multitudes
throughout the universe could gaze and proclaim: ‘‘Verily, attainable
is happiness and never-ending harmony within reach, as great Trurl
has shown—with some assistance from his close companion Klapau-
cius—for lo!, the living proof endures and thrives before our very
eyes!’’ ’
‘I confess that I too have entertained the notion’, said Klapaucius.
‘But it does raise some difficult questions. You remember, I see, the
lesson of Bonhomius’s misfortune and therefore wish to bestow hap-
piness upon creatures who do not as yet exist — that is, you would
create happiness from scratch. Consider, though: is it at all possible to render the non-existent happy? Personally, I doubt it. First one would
have to prove that the state of being is in every respect preferable to the state of non-being, even when that being is not especially pleasant.
Without such proof, this felicitological experiment with which you
seem to be obsessed may well backfire. That is, to the great number of
unhappy souls that already occupy the universe you would be adding
your own freshly created unfortunates—and what then?’
‘Yes, there is that risk’, Trurl reluctantly admitted. ‘But we must
take it. Mother Nature, they say, is impartial, works in a random and
therefore even-handed manner, supposedly bringing forth as many
good individuals as bad, as many kind as cruel. You’ll find, however,
that it’s only the vile and the wicked who inherit the earth, their
bellies bloated with the pure and the just. And when these scoundrels
become aware of the unseemliness of their actions, they plead
extenuating circumstances, invent some higher necessity: the evil of
this world, for instance, is but the spice that whets one’s appetite for
the next, et cetera. Let us put an end to this imbalance, Klapaucius.
Mother Nature is by no means vicious, only terribly obtuse; as always,
she takes the line of least resistance. We must replace her and
ourselves produce beings—beings of dazzling virtue, beings whose
miraculous appearance in the universe will cure our every existential
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
3
ill, thereby more than making up for a past that is haunted with
screams of agony, screams we fail to hear only because sound will not
travel far enough in time or space. Why, why must all that lives
continue to suffer? Oh, had the suffering of every victim ever born
only possessed the least momentum, carried the least impact—even
that of a single raindrop—I assure you our world would have been
torn asunder centuries ago! But life goes on, and in the crypts and
empty dungeons the dust maintains its perfect silence; even you, with
all your cybernetic art, will find in that dust no trace of the pain and
sorrow that once plagued those who now no longer are.’
‘It’s true the dead have no cares’, agreed Klapaucius. ‘Which
happily shows that suffering is a transitory thing.’
‘But new sufferers keep entering the world!’, cried Trurl. ‘Don’t you
see, it’s simply a matter of common decency!’
‘One moment. How will this happy being of yours—assuming you
succeed—ever make up for the countless torments that have been as
well as those that continue to beset our continuum? Can today’s calm
Really, you talk nonsense, Trurl!’
‘Then according to you, it’s better to fold our hands and do
nothing?’
‘Not at all. The point is, even if you manage to correct the present,
you can never compensate the victims of the past. You think that
filling the cosmos with happiness will alter one iota of what has
already taken place within it?’
‘But it will!’, insisted Trurl. ‘One cannot, of course, extend a helping
hand to those who are no more, but the whole of which they form a
part—that may be changed! And on that day the peoples will say:
‘‘These bitter trials and heinous crimes, these wars and genocides—
they were but a prelude to the real adventure, a preliminary to the
present reign of Goodness, Love and Truth! And it was Trurl, that
most excellent Trurl, who realized that one may use an evil heritage
to build a flawless future. From misfortune did he learn to forge good
fortune, from despair he knew the worth of joy—in a word, it was a
hideous universe that drove him to construct Loveliness!’’ Klapau-
cius, this present phase is both an inspiration and a preparation for the bliss to come! Now do you understand?’
‘Beneath the constellation of the Southern Cross there lies the
kingdom of King Troglodyne’, said Klapaucius. ‘The King delights in
landscapes dotted with pillories and gallows, defending this predilec-
tion with the argument that his wretched subjects can be governed in
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no other way. He would have served me in similar fashion upon my
arrival there, but soon discovered he was no match for me and so was
seized with fear, considering it only natural that, as he was unable to
crush me, I should certainly crush him. To placate me, he summoned
his advisers and wise men, and they promptly wrote up a doctrine of
tyranny for the occasion. I was told that the worse things are, the
more one longs for improvement and reform; consequently, he who
makes life unbearable actually hastens the day of its perfection. Now
this harangue greatly pleased the King, for as it turned out, no one
had contributed more to the ultimate triumph of Good than he, his
black deeds helping to spur the melioristic dream to action. And
therefore, Trurl, your happy beings should raise up monuments to
honour Troglodyne. Indeed, you owe him and others of his kind your
undying gratitude. Is this not so?’
‘A cynical, malicious parable!’, growled Trurl. ‘I had hoped you
would join me in this venture, but now I see your poisoned
sophistries would only mock my noble purpose. There is, after all, a
universe to save!’
‘And you would be its saviour?’, said Klapaucius. ‘Trurl, Trurl! I
ought to have you put in chains and locked up until you come to your
senses, but I fear that that might take forever. Therefore I have only
this to say: be not overly hasty in your engineering of happiness! Try
not to perfect the world in one fell swoop! Of course, even if you do
create happy beings, there will still be those already in existence,
which is bound to give rise to envy, resentment, conflict, and—who
knows?—some day you may be faced with a most unpleasant choice:
either surrender your precious creatures to the envious, or else have
them cut down their nasty, imperfect neighbours to a man—in the
name of Universal Harmony, of course.’
Trurl jumped up in a fury, but quickly controlled himself and
unclenched his fists: knocking Klapaucius to the ground would
hardly constitute an auspicious beginning to the Age of Absolute
Happiness, which he was now more determined than ever to bring
about.
‘Farewell’, he said coldly. ‘Farewell, O miserable agnostic, un-
believer, slave to the natural course of events! Not with words shall
I defeat you, but with deeds! In time you will behold the fruit of my
labours and see that I was right!’
*
*
*
*
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
5
Returning home, Trurl was quite embarrassed: his argument with
Klapaucius suggested that he had a definite plan of action in mind,
but this was not exactly the case. To tell the truth, he hadn’t the
faintest idea where to begin. First he collected an enormous pile of
books that described innumerable civilizations in the utmost detail;
these he proceeded to devour at an incredible rate. But as this method
of supplying his brain with the needed facts was still too slow, he
dragged up from the cellar eight hundred cartridges of mercuric,
plumbic, ferromagnetic and cryonic memory, connected them all to
his person by cable, and in a few seconds had charged his psyche with
four trillion bits of the best and most exhaustive information to be
found anywhere, including planets of burnt-out suns inhabited by
chroniclers of indomitable patience. The dose was so prodigious that
he was rocked from head to toe, turned pale, went rigid, then was
seized with a fit of trembling, as if he had been hit not with an
overload of historiography and historiosophy, but with a genuine bolt
from the blue. He pulled himself together, took a deep breath, wiped
his brow, steadied his still quivering legs and said:
‘Things are a great deal worse than I imagined!!’
For a while Trurl sharpened pencils, replenished inkwells, arranged
stacks of white paper on his desk, but nothing came of this activity, so
he said with a sigh:
‘I shall have to acquaint myself, it seems, with the antiquated work
of the ancients, a chore I always put off in the conviction that there
was nothing a modern constructor could learn from those crusty old
fogies. But now . . . well, so be it! I’ll study all the primeval pundits, if only to protect myself against Klapaucius, who, though he surely
never read them either—for who has?—might secretly cull their
works for quotations, just to make me look ignorant!’
And Trurl sat down and actually began to pore over the most
decrepit and crumbling tomes, though he hated every minute of it.
Late that night, surrounded by volumes tossed impatiently to the
floor, he delivered the following soliloquy:
‘I see that not only is the structure of thinking creatures in sore
need of repair, but what passes for their philosophy as well. Now, the
cradle of life was the sea, which duly threw up slime upon the shore;
then there was a blob of mud, macromolecular and highly irregular,
and the sunshine thickened it, and the lightning quickened it, and
soon the whole thing had soared to form a sort of cheese, biopoly-
meric and quite esoteric, which in time decided to head for higher and
drier ground. To hear its prey approach, it grew ears, then legs and
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teeth to pursue and consume—else it would serve as prey itself.
Intelligence, then, is the child of evolution. And what of Good and
Evil, and what of Wisdom? Good is when I eat, Evil when I am eaten,
and similarly with Wisdom: the eaten is not wise, being eaten when
he should be eating; indeed, he is not anything when eaten, for,
eaten, he no longer is at all. But whosoever would eat everything
must starve, there soon being nothing left to eat, and so we have
continence, self-restraint. After a while this intelligent cheese, finding itself rather too watery in consistency, began to calcify, just as sapient hominoids later sought to better their disgustingly viscous selves by
discovering metal—but all they did was reproduce themselves in iron,
for to copy is always easier than to create; as a result, true perfection was never attained. H’m! Had we evolved the other way—from metal
to bone to an ever more glutinous and subtle substance—how
different would our Philosophy have been! Clearly, it is spun from
the very structure of its creators, only in a hopelessly contrary
fashion: living in water, one envisions paradise on land, or if one
lives on the land, it is somewhere in the sky; those with wings find
blessedness in fins, and those with legs add wings to their likeness and