to be found in United States. His words date from the fifties. From what I know of the state of things today, this difference has decreased insofar as American criticism has improved, insignificantly, and English publishers have become a bit less considerate.
5
This does not mean that the radius of effective action of a statement varies directly with the range of a medium — i.e., in our case, that this radius grows in proportion to the increase of circulation of the periodical in which this statement is printed. In regard to circulation, many highbrow literary periodicals are no better off than the high-circulation fanzines, and the literary and theoretical publications of university faculties sometimes have tiny circulations, as low as three hundred or four hundred copies. What I am saying is that the degree of attention paid by the public to a “message” (a normative judgment) is determined by quite different factors from those of circulation. So, in some countries, an extreme degree of public opinion is paid to several “underground” papers, though these pamphlets look shabby and are circulated in very tiny editions. The authority, the weight, of such statements belongs to the imponderabilities of civilization; the public must be aware in advance that somebody important has something to say; but the “inherently wise,” or even the “eggheads,” do not possess such authority and attraction in their own right. The channels that serve to disseminate information are not built by technical and material means (such as the number of copies of a periodical distributed). Instead, these copies find their own way and have their maximum effect only if they flow into a broader structure that strengthens the message. This is the case for the highbrow periodicals because they live at the peak of the cultural pyramid. It is an extremely important phenomenon, which has been almost neglected. In many circles of fandom, people believe that one could wake the “silent majority” of the public from its slumber if only one could bomb the public incessantly with beautifully made publications with mass circulations. Most probably the public would throw these fine pamphlets into the nearest wastepaper basket because this bombardment of mass-produced science fiction would still lack the necessary influence. Authority and influence are not acquired easily.
6
This applies only to the novels by Dick that I know:
7
Each society is stratified according to its own pattern. In each society there are powers of selection with local effects to attract and repel individuals. Among others, such mass processes give rise to different readerships for widely differing varieties of literature. If one compared the intelligence and level of education of the average science-fiction reader in the United States and in the Soviet Union, one would draw the conclusion that the Russians know more about literature and are more intelligent than the Americans. However, this would be a fallacy; the selection processes of science-fiction readership in Russia and in the United States have taken different courses, because of the different traditions that prevail in the two countries in regard to the broader questions of the duties and psychosociological status that literature, as a whole, must play in society. Certainly the United States has the same percentage of bright boys and girls as Russia has but intelligent readers there approach science fiction far less often than they do in Russia.
8
A lack of theoretical essays on science fiction was the reason for my career as a Robinson Crusoe; like the unhappy man on a desert island, I had to sweat for years, under the most primitive conditions, to produce the necessary (intellectual) tools by myself. My tactic concerning trash was to ridicule it — i.e., to blow up its model until its nonsense, multiplied many times, became ludicrous. But this is the simplest of tactics. On my own I thought there was no better way than to avoid trash and to remove all traces of it from my work.
9
The dates given in this essay are either for first publication, whether in serial or book form, or for serial/book publication. — R. D. Mullen.
10
Slonimski, born in 1895, was a Polish poet and essayist.
11
Bertaux is a Germanist, and he published the article quoted, “Innovation als Prinzip,” in German in the volume Das 798. Jahrzehnt (Christian Wegner Verlag, 1969). — SL. The passage given in German in Dr. Lem’s original text (from which the first sentence has been reduced to the bracketed phrase in our translation) reads as follows: “Unter ‘Diagonalwissenschaften’ (um den Ausdruck von Roger Caillos aufzunehmen) verstehe ich ungefahr das, was man auch ‘formalistische’ Wissenschaften nennt, also Disziplinen, deren Gebiet sich quer durch die herkommlichen Facher der Realwissenschaften zieht… Eine Zeitlang hat man hoffen konnen, der Ansatz zu einer ahnlichen Formalisierung der Humanwissenschaften sei vom Strukturalismus zu erwarten. Leider sieht es heute aus, als ob gerade die lautesten Vertreter des Strukturalismus ihn zu einer Mythologie hatten entarten lassen — und nicht einmal zu einer brauchbaren. Das Gerede, das jetzt den Namen Strukturalismus tragt, hat den ursprunglich in ihm enthaltenen wissenschaftlichen Ansatz wahrscheinlich todlich getroffen.” — Charles Nicol, R. D. Mullen, Darko Suvin.
12
Translated by Richard Howard (Cleveland/London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973) from Introduction a la litterature fantastique (Editions du Seuil, 1970). All quotations from Todorov are from the pages of this translation. — R. D. Mullen.
