In the first sentence of A Perfect Vacuum, Lem acknowledges his debt to Jorge Luis Borges. He doesn't acknowledge the full extent of it (he merely says that Borges is among those who've tried the review-of-fake-books concept before). Knowing it would impede my enjoyment of the book, I couldn't help but compare these stories to Borges', and given Borges' godlike talents, the comparison was not favorable. Like Borges, Lem uses each story to explicate an idea. Most of Lem's ideas, though, are simply post-modernism in various guises. Social construction of reality is a major theme, contributing Robinsonades, Gruppenfuhrer, Idiota. Derrida's deconstructionism is evident in Gigamesh. Others explore some philosophy of science issues (which I associate with post-modernism because I listened to a philosophy of science lecture series as I began the book, and that course focused heavily on po-mo critiques of scientific epistemology in around Lem's era), including a critique of Adelard of Bath's "natural explanations for natural phenomena" principle in New Cosmogony, and a critique of induction (rather grasping and extensive, not philosophically valid like Hume's) in De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi. Rien du Tout is an Oulipo-esque attempt to do all the possible permutations of fiction. These stories lack life. Unlike Borges, whose love of literature infuses character and setting into the imaginative concepts he explores, Lem's book review format pushes him to a narrow focus on ideas. And while many of the ideas become convoluted and slippery in the reviewer's voice, this is an unsubtle disguise by mangling, not a balanced bouquet of ideas and story. A few of Lem's ideas are certainly very creative and imaginative (the New Cosmogony, but many of them feel bland and obvious (U-Write-It; I think Being, Inc. is essentially a retelling of Borges' Lottery in Babylon; Non Serviam is just the Matrix but with computer programs rehashing every Christian v. Atheist debate).
A delightful idea, that surely ought to appeal to habitués of this site - a collection of reviews for books that don't exist! My favorite was the one about the guy who thinks that there are three kinds of genius. Third-class geniuses do what everyone else does, but just get there quicker. They are very popular. Second class geniuses do stuff other people don't do yet - they are ignored for a while, but when the world catches up they also get their share of glory. But what about the first class geniuses, who are so brilliant that the world never catches up with them? The hero of the (fictitious) book sets out to find evidence of first-class geniuses. It's such a pity that no one has yet managed to write this novel; Lem gives a precis of the plot, which has a wonderfully satisfying ending.Some of the other books would be distinctly harder to write. There's the one constructed with computer assistance, which takes buried allusions to their logical extreme, so that, for example, the commas used in Chapter 4 form a floor plan of Notre Dame cathedral. Another one I liked was the novel in which everything is negated. It starts, innocently enough, by saying that she was not on the train, and then gradually proceeds to reveal that the train didn't exist, and neither did she. In fact, nothing happens at all, and we only learn what didn't happen. Lem's reviewer comments that people often describe the book as pornographic, but that this is unfair. It would be impossible for a book to contain less sex; it's just unusually explicit about specifying which acts did not occur. Some of the ideas don't work quite as well, but each chapter is self-contained, so it's easy to skip the few duds. This is a fun read!
What do You think about A Perfect Vacuum (1999)?
Stanislaw Lem is a genius. This is especially visible when he didn´t write novels. The ideas in this book are simply great and it is so fun to read the reviews, just a pang of regret that the books don´t exist or that Lem hadn´t written them. For me, the idea alone is amazing and the reviews are so well written. It´s a definite must-read for every Lem fan and those who want to become ones.
—Nevaeh
So if I were to try to tap into my contact MLIS degree, I would probably say that this book is recommended if you liked Pale Fire or I dunno, probably House of Leaves (although it's really not the same thing) or just generally anything involving writing about books that don't exist.But yeah if you only read one book of reviews of nonexistent books (and that seems likely), make it this one. Some of the reviews allow Lem to explore some interesting sci-fi ideas that might have made good actual books or short stories, making them sort of a second-hand short short story. Others are a little more playful and/or pomo (like, for example the first review, which naturally is of A Perfect Vacuum (so I guess it's the exception)). One might be inclined to say that this book has everything: crackpots and crackpots who were right, weird Robinson Crusoe pastiche, and that thing where explicitly created beings independently develop real-world arguments for and against the existence of God. I didn't have a good weird name for that, which kinda ruins it, I know. I also think that I'm 2/2 w/r/t using a list with a goofy/unusual final element when discussing a Lem book. So --
—Hunter
A brilliant idea to review books that don't exist, and to thus play with varied ridiculous literary and scientific plots and ideas without writing the whole novel -- these are very clever, and I confess, a little soporific.Funnily enough having just read another book by Humberto Eco, I felt that many of these books may well have already been written by him.... We are speaking here of literature as spiritual prostitution because, to write it, one must serve. One must ingratiate oneself, pay court, display oneself, show off one's stylistic muscles, make confession, confide in the reader, render unto him what one holds most dear, compete for his attention, keep alive his interest, in a word, one has to suck up to, wheedle, and wait upon, one has to sell oneself. Disgusting! When the publisher is the pimp, the literary man the whore, and the reader the customer in the bawdyhouse of culture, when this state of affairs reaches one's awareness, it brings on a bad case of moral indigestion. (114)And Fichte? But I must deny myself the pleasure of digression, which is all the more difficult for me in that I am not a German. (128) [Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel, 1979, London: Mandarin]
—Andrea
