Microworlds

obstacles while striving toward a highly valued treasure. Furthermore, Redrick knows that the approach to the Golden Ball is barred by a mysterious “grinder” (4:130), which one must “satiate” by bringing it a human sacrifice. That is why he lets Arthur be the first to approach the sphere — and in fact Arthur dies before his eyes, and his death momentarily breaks the evil spell, so that Redrick in his turn can then reach the Golden Ball. At that point, the authors break off the table and subscribe the word “finis.” This, however, is a way out which merely attenuates the shape of things without altering it.

The authors claim — and I have discussed this point with them — that the convergence in the Golden Ball of fairy-tale motif and the Horrific originates solely in the human mind and is a product of chance and human fantasy. Yet, as we have previously stated, one must not arrange all too many “coincidences” that all point in one and the same direction; for it then becomes incredible that they came about by chance. Besides, the last expedition into the Zone does not have the generic attributes of science fiction. The realistic frame for the events transforms itself into that of a fairy tale,[21] because the “coincidences” following one upon the next amount, as we have already observed, to the stereotypic quest for the accursed treasure, though they ought not be identical with any stereotype. The mystery is not consistently preserved to the very end; behind it, the truth keeps shimmering through, since we no doubt have an idea about who the visitors are: they are, once more, monsters, albeit invisible monsters.

The authors attempt to distract the reader from this thought, which flatly forces itself upon us. They stress, for example, that the Golden Ball seen from a distance gives the impression that an unknown giant has accidentally lost it. That, however, is not the correct tactic. It is not the authors’ commentary that should divert us from the structurally obtrusive solution, but the events themselves in their objective unfolding. Then, too, the strong impact the epilogue makes spoils the outstanding impression the book makes overall.

Max Frisch transposed the Oedipus myth into our contemporary reality in his novel Homo Faber, wherein the father as unknowingly enters into an incestuous relationship with his daughter as Oedipus did with his mother. Frisch managed the events of the novel in such a way that each possesses a normal, realistic verisimilitude, while together they structurally correspond to the Oedipus myth. The difference between Homo Faber’s affinity for myth and Roadside Picnic’s for the fairy tale lies herein: that Frisch had in mind the achieved similarity while the Strugatskys by no means desired it. That is the very reason why I say that they “have defeated their own purposes,” because only discretion in the arrangement of events could have guarded the end of the story against an unwanted connection with the main plot and hence with the ethos of a fairy tale.

A theologian would have had no difficulty preserving the mystery in Roadside Picnic, for he can employ contradictions. But since science does not have such a recourse, it is not an exaggeration for me to say that the difficulties of a fantasy writer who sides with science are generally greater than those of a theologian who acknowledges the perfection of God… .

Translated from the German by Elsa Schieder and Robert M. Philmus

Bibliography

Essays

“About Myself,” Poland, no. 124 (December 1964): 12-13.

“About the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic” (“Poslowie”), Afterword to Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Piknik na skraju drogi (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1977); in English: Science-Fiction Studies 10, no. 31 (November 1983): 317-331.

“Cosmology and Science Fiction” (“Science Fiction und Kosmologie”), Science-Fiction Studies 4, no. 12 (July 1977): 107-110. Reprinted in Science-Fiction Studies: Selected Articles on Science Fiction 1976-1977, ed. by R. D. Mullen and Darko Suvin (Boston: Gregg Press, 1978), pp. 214 -217.

“Culture and Futurology” (a chapter from Stanislaw Lem’s Summa Technologiae), Polish Perspectives 16, no. 1 (1973): 30-38.

“A Kind of Credo” (“Eine Art Credo”), Quarber Merkur 31 (July 1972); in English: The Yale Literary Magazine 150, no. 5 (1984), pp. 1-2.

“Looking Down on Science Fiction: A Novelist’s Choice for the World’s Worst Writing” (“Science-fiction oder die verungluckte Phantasie”), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (February 22, 1975); in English: Science-Fiction Studies 4, no. 12 (July 1977): 126-127.

“Metafantasia: The Possibilities of Science Fiction” (“Zakonczenie metafantastyczne”), from Stanislaw Lena’s Fantastyka i futurologia, tom II (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1970); in English: Science-Fiction Studies 8, no. 23 (March 1981): 54-70.

“On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction” (“Eine strukturalistische SF-Betrachtung”), Quarber Merkur 23 (May 1970); in English: as “Introduction to a Structural Analysis of SF,” Science Fiction Commentary, no. 9 (February 1970): 34-44. Reprinted in Science-Fiction Studies I, no. I (Spring 1973): 26-33, and in Science-Fiction Studies: Selected Articles on Science Fiction 1973-1975, ed. by R. D. Mullen and Darko Suvin (Boston: Gregg Press, 1976), pp. 1-8.

“Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans” (“Poslowie”), Afterword to Philip

K. Dick’s Ubik (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1975); in English: Science-Fiction Studies 2, no. 5 (March 1975): 54-67. Reprinted in Science- Fiction Studies: Selected Articles on Science Fiction 1973-1975, ed. by R. D. Mullen and Darko Suvin (Boston: Gregg Press, 1976), pp. 210-223.

“Planetary Chauvinism: Speculation on the ‘Others’ “ (“Stimmen aus dem All”), Playboy (German edition), August 1977; in English: Second Look I, no. 10 (August 1979): 5-9.

“Poland: Science Fiction in the Linguistic Trap” (“Polen: Science Fiction in der linguistischen Falle”), Quarber Merkur 20 (August 1969); in English: The Journal of Omphalistic Epistemology, Supplement No. 1 (August 1969): 1-6. Reprinted in Science Fiction Commentary, no. 9 (February 1970): 27-33, and in Science Fiction Commentary, no. 19 (January-February-March 1971): 89-94.

“Reflections for 1974” (“Refleksja 1974”), Kultura, no. 26 (1974); in English: Polish Perspectives 17, no. 10 (October 1974): 3-8.

“Reflections on My Life” (“Mein Leben”), as “Chance and Order,” The New Yorker, January 30,1984, pp. 88-98. Reprinted as “Stanislaw Lem, 1921- “ in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, ed. by Cedria Bryfonski (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984), I, 255-266.

“Remarks Occasioned by Dr. Plank’s Essay ‘Quixote’s Mills,’ “ Science-Fiction Studies I, no. 2 (Fall 1973): 78-83.

“Robots in Science Fiction” (“Roboter in der Science Fiction”), Quarber Merkur 21 (November 1969); in English: The Journal of Omphalistic Epistemology, no. 3 (January 1970): 8-20. Reprinted in Science Fiction Commentary, no. 19 (January-March 1971): 117-130, and in SF: The Other Side of Realism, ed. by Thomas D. Clareson (Bowling Green, Ohio: The Popular Press, 1971), pp. 307-326.

“Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case — with Exceptions” (“Science Fiction: Ein hoffnungsloser Fall — mit Ausnahmen”), Quarber Merkur 29 (January 1972); in English: Science Fiction Commentary, nos. 35-37 (July-September 1973): 7-35. Reprinted in Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd, ed. by Bruce Gillespie (Melbourne: Norstrilia Press, 1975), pp. 69-94. “Appendix: Ubik as Science Fiction” reprinted, as “Science and Reality in Philip K. Dick’s