Microworlds

workmanlike mediocrity from promising originality, not lump these together, for such a “democratic” proceeding in practice equates the dross to the good metal.

Let us admit, however, that the charms of Dick’s books are not unalloyed, so that it is with them somewhat as it is with the beauty of certain actresses, whom one had better not inspect too carefully at close range, on pain of being sadly disillusioned. There is no point in estimating the futurological likelihood of such details in this novel as those apartment and refrigerator doors that the tenant is forced to argue with. These are fictional ingredients created for the purpose of doing two jobs at once: to introduce the reader into a world decidedly different from the present-day one, and to convey a certain message to him by means of this world.

Every literary work has two components in the above sense, since every one exhibits a given factual world and says something by means of that world. Yet in different genres and different works the ratio between the two components varies. A realistic work of fiction contains a great deal of the first component and very little of the second, as it portrays the real world, which in its own right — that is, outside the book -does not constitute any sort of message, but merely exists and flourishes. Nevertheless, because the author makes, of course, particular choices when writing a literary work, these choices give it the character of a statement addressed to the reader. In an allegorical work there is a minimum of the first component and a maximum of the second, seeing that its world is in effect an apparatus signaling the actual content — the message — to the receiver. The tendentiousness of allegorical fiction is usually obvious, that of the realistic kind more or less well concealed. There are no works whatsoever without tendentiousness; if anyone speaks of such, what he actually has in mind is works devoid of expressly emphasized tendentiousness, which cannot be “translated” into the concrete credo of a world view. The aim of the epic, for example, is precisely to construct a world that can be interpreted in a number of ways — as the reality outside of literature can be interpreted in a number of ways. If, however, the sharp tools of criticism (of the structural kind, for instance) are applied to the epic, it is possible to detect the tendentiousness hidden even in such works, because the author is a human being and by that token a litigant in the existential process; hence complete impartiality is unattainable for him.

Unfortunately, it is only from realistic prose that one can appeal directly to the real world. Therefore, the bane of science fiction is the desire — doomed from the start to failure — to depict worlds intended at one and the same time to be products of the imagination and to signify nothing — i.e., not to have the character of a message but to be, as it were, on a par with the things in our environment, from furniture to stars, as regards their objective self-sufficiency. This is a fatal error lodged at the roots of science fiction, because where deliberate tendentiousness is not allowed, involuntary tendentiousness seeps in. By tendency we mean a partisan bias, or point of view, which cannot be divinely objective. An epic may strike us as just that objective, because the how of its presentation (the viewpoint) is for us imperceptibly concealed under the what; the epic, too, is a partisan account of events, but we do not notice its tendentiousness because we share its bias and cannot get outside it. We discover the bias of the epic centuries later, when the passage of time has transformed the standards of “absolute objectivity” and we can perceive, in what passed for a truthful report, the manner in which “truthful reporting” was at one time understood. There are no such things as truth or objectivity in the singular; both of these contain an irreducible coefficient of historical relativity. Now, science fiction can never be on a par with the epic, since what the science-fiction work presents belongs to one time (most often the future), whereas how it tells its story belongs to another time, the present. Even if imagination succeeds in rendering plausible how it might be, it cannot break completely with the way of apprehending events that is peculiar to the here and now. This way is not only an artistic convention; it is considerably more -a type of classification, interpretation, and rationalization of the visible world that is peculiar to an era. Consequently the problem content of an epic can be deeply hidden, but that of science fiction must be legible, otherwise the story, declining to deal with nonfictional problems and not achieving epic objectivity, slides fatally down and comes to rest on some such support as the stereotype of the fairy tale, the adventure thriller, the myth, the framework of the detective story, or some hybrid as eclectic as it is trashy. A way out of the dilemma may consist in works for which componential analysis, designed to separate what is “factual” from what forms the “message” (“seen” from a “viewpoint”), proves altogether impracticable. The reader of such a work does not know whether what he is shown is supposed to exist like a stone or a chair, or whether it is supposed also to signify something beyond itself. The indeterminacy of such a creation is not diminished by its author’s commentaries, since the author can be mistaken in these, like a man who tries to explain the real meaning of his own dreams. Hence I consider Dick’s own comments to be inessential to the analysis of his works.

At this point we might embark on an excursus about the origin of Dick’s science-fictional concepts, but let just one example from Ubik suffice: to wit, the name that figures as the title of the book. It comes from the Latin ubique, “everywhere.” This is a blend (contamination) of two heterogeneous concepts: the concept of the Absolute as eternal and unchanging order which goes back to systematizing philosophy, and the concept of the “gadget” — the handy little device for use on appropriate everyday occasions, a product of the conveyer-belt technology of the consumer society, whose watchword is making things easy for people at whatever they do, from washing clothes to getting a permanent wave. This “canned Absolute,” then, is the result of the collision and interpenetration of two styles of thought of different ages, and at the same time of the incarnation of abstraction in the guise of a concrete object. Such a procedure is an exception to the rule in science fiction and is Dick’s own invention.

It is hardly possible to create, in the way just noted, objects that are empirically plausible or that have a likelihood of ever coming into existence. Accordingly, in the case of Ubik it is a matter of a poetic — i.e., metaphorical — device and not of any “futurological” one. Ubik plays an important part in the story, emphasized still more by the “advertisements” for it that figure as epigraphs to each chapter. Is it a symbol, and, if so, of just what? This is not easy to answer. An Absolute conjured out of sight by technology, supposed to save man from the ruinous consequences of Chaos or Entropy much as a deodorant shields our sense of smell from the stench of industrial effluents, is not only a demonstration of a tactic typical nowadays (combating, for example, the side effects of one technology by means of another technology); it is an expression of nostalgia for a lost ideal kingdom of untroubled order, but also an expression of irony, since this “invention” of course cannot be taken seriously. Ubik moreover plays in the novel the part of its “internal micromodel,” since it contains in nuce the whole range of problems specific to the book, those of the struggle of man against Chaos, at the end of which, after temporary successes, defeat inexorably awaits him. The Absolute canned as an aerosol, which saves Joe Chip at the point of death — though only for the time being: will this, then, be a parable and the handwriting on the wall for a civilization that has degraded the Sacred by stuffing it into the Profane? Pursuing such a train of associations, Ubik could finally be seen as a take-off on Greek tragedy, with the role of the ancient heroes, who strive vainly against Moira, assigned to the staff telepathists under the command of a big-business executive. If Ubik was not actually undertaken with this in mind, it in any case points in such a direction.

The writings of Philip Dick have deserved at least a better fate than that to which they were destined by their birthplace. If they are neither of uniform quality nor fully realized, still it is only by brute force that they can be jammed into that pulp of materials, destitute of intellectual value and original structure, that makes up science fiction. Its fans are attracted by the worst in Dick — the typical dash of American science fiction, reaching to the stars, and the headlong pace of action moving from one surprise to the next — but they hold it against him that, instead of unraveling puzzles, he leaves the reader at the end on the battlefield, enveloped in the aura of a mystery as grotesque as it is strange. Yet his bizarre blendings of hallucinogenic and palingenetic techniques have not won him many admirers outside the ghetto walls, since there readers are repelled by the shoddiness of the props he has adopted from the inventory of science fiction. Indeed, these writings sometimes fumble their attempts; but I remain after all under their spell, as often happens at the sight of a lone imagination’s efforts to cope with a shattering superabundance of opportunities — efforts in which even a partial defeat can resemble a victory.

Translated from the Polish by Robert Abernathy

THE TIME-TRAVEL STORY AND RELATED MATTERS OF SCIENCE-FICTION STRUCTURING

Let’s look at a couple of simple sentences that logic, by virtue of a “disconnected middle” or by virtue of a tautology, asserts are always true, and let’s investigate whether there can be worlds in which their veracity ceases.