SF Commentary 22

F COMMENTARY STANISLAW LEM’ TRANSLATED by F-ranz Rottehsteiner, and edited for publication by Sex In Science Fiction Bruce Gillespie. Original publi cation in German - QUARBER NERKUR, No 25, January 1971, Copyright 1971 Stanislaw Lem and Franz •r Rottensteiner. •:> iwvj. • r' • ’ (AUTHOR’ 5 INTRODUC_ _________TI ON . This essay is a revised version of passages which appeared partly in my hook PHILOSOPHY OF CHANCE (Cracow!, 1963),in and partly in my monograph on s f (SCIENCE FICTION AND FUTUROLOGY - Cracow 1970), which was published in January 1971. I had to cut these passages Severely, sometimes to the disadvantage of the clarity of my arguments • I had to treat the theoretical parts in particular with ’’enlightened force1', so that pome of my arguments appear here without the necessary proofs. - SL) ! I Literature classifies the subject of sex as an erotic, biological, and cultural phenomenon. Writers of ’’normal" literature make the tacit assumption that their readers and their characters share the same biological and cultural environment. When we find descriptions of alien behaviour, as in the works of Somerset Naugnam, we find that writers like him don't make penetrating studies in cultural anthropology. Instead, such writers make distinctions between Europeans and natives merely so they can create an atmosphere of mystery and misunderstanding. The cognitive value of such works is dubious. Only in science fiction does a writer have room to vary biological and cultural phenomena so that they extend beyond the reader’s experience. S' f writers can also include the usual erotic material, but they imitate "normal literature when they do so. Erotic literature is erotic because the sphere of intersexual relationships interests and excites us.1 It comprises a broad spectrum, with, in our culture, the platonic-sublime at one end, and the pornographic at the other. II The "pornographic value1' of a piece of literature can only be determined in relation to the reader's attitude. Lach reader receives a different supply of information, and during this process he must make a successive number of categorical-conceptual decisions. These decisions are only partly determined by the work. Lften the reader is unaware that the work exerts a compulsion over him, so he feels he has understood only what the work says directly. But the reader also weighs the value of a work by the knowledge he brings to it, but which it does not contain in itself. We always try to guess the author's intention, and ws evaluate our reading (often quite automatically; by our own "detective work". Ue may interpret quite differently two works which are identical word for word, depending on whether we take the work as fiction or fact. Therefore the reader sees what he has read in the light—of contexts which ie considers "adequate" to the text. This interpolation is particularly important in the field of sex. In this realm the writer cannot adopt neutral methods of description which could be read with out evaluation. Some trifle may be quite, sufficient to give, to a typically "innocent" description the odour of sexual connotations. A portrait’ of ’Jean- •- Jacques Lequeu shows a noble lady wearing a low-necked dress.' A fly sits on one of her half-bare breasts. Thic •' "^rge black fly, sitting still on the woman’ S F COMMENTARY NUMBER 22- JULY 1971 ------------------- 50 pages CONTENTS SEX IN SCIENCE FICTION (Stanislaw Lem) (2) * I MUST BE TALKING TO NY FRIENDS (The Editor; Franz Rottensteiner) (11) * PRELUDE TO CLARKE (David W Boutland) '(15) * THE OLD DARK HOUSE: THX 1138 (Barry Gillam) (19) * THE ORIGINAL FICTION ANTHOLOGIES - . PART TWO (Bruce R Gillespie) (27) * COVER .(Aubrey Beardsley and Bruce Gillespie) * BACK COVER No 21 (Stephen Campbell) * EDITOR BRUCE R GILLESPIE, GPO BOX 5195AA, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA 3001, AUSTRALIA, who also types, publishes, and prints this issue, SUBSCRIPTIONS A letter of comment, review, article, traded fanzine, or $3 for 9. USA; $3 for 9 surface mail; $8 air marl-, -from Bha-p-lie~& Dena Brown, 2078 Anthony Avenue, Bronx, New York 10457. England £1.50 for 9 surface mail; £4 air mail, from Malcolm Edwards, 28 Kinch Grove, Wembley, Middlesex HA9 9TF. Elsewhere: Equivalent of $3 for 9 in local currency. No cheques please, AGENCIES I am agent for Hal Hall's useful SCIENCE FICTION BOOK REVIEW IN DEX; Si each * EUROCON 1, the first European S F Convention, Trieste 1972. $4 non-attending membership * Charlie & Dena Brown's LOCUS, the s f newsmagazine. Fortnightly; airmail. S3.50 for 10; $8 for 26 * SPECULATION, and QUICKSILVER, Eng land's leading magazines about s f; S2 for 5; S2 for 6. breast,, disturbs us, although we cannot claim that it is indecent for a kitchen fly to sit on the breast. So what happens to the viewer? If we were looking at a photograph, we wouldn't waste another thought on the fly. We would assume that its presence in the picture was pure chancei However, we know that the portrait was painted by an artist, and so he intentionally placed the fly on the breast of the woman. We realise this intention, and this realisation gives us a small shock. Because we notice this effect, we cannot assume that this is a typical example of a portrait. The fly signifies the "indecent", although we would be hard put to determine precisely the source of this "indecency". Within .the range of sexual literature, many works may provide the starting points of "indecent" situations, although the authors intended no such thing, as in textbooks of sexology (which include case histories of perverse sexual behaviour), some Bible passages, or even, if we look zealously enough, in children's fairy-tales, which we may call (superficially- coded) sadistic and erotic literature. I These are extreme cases, but we cannot define the problem precisely for the whole audience because so much depends on the reader's personal reactions. When we also consider that some people may even be sexually stimulated by an umbrella, we may recognise that inevitably all judgments in this field are relative. And it is still an open question, when we consider the sexual connotations of his reading matter, whether the "wholly'normal" or "truly average" reader exists at all. I mention this problem before I start, because one of the tasks undertaken by generation after generation, with indefatigable zeal, is the attempt to solve insoluble problems. Quarrels about 3 F COMMENTARY XXII 3 matters like this _o f _tg.ru.av-er srrcjtfow ETie fates of” f afflous'-iiterary works. I I can .-^f^-y~glVeTa~”rulje-of-thumb which is operationally effective. 1 /hai iz' -Tvirv’i rrn p i The values contained in a work of literature do not operate within a closed system, but always have references outside the work. The greater the effort the reader needs to make an integrated understanding of a literary text, (the greater the chance that the reader will overlook those things which he fipds difficult to integrate, except in those cases where he .has been trained (pay, by ,his\ .education) to make such an integration. Only then can such a reader•behave as..if he has made the necessary integration. Flore frequently the reader''has simply been told how he must understand a piece of literature. As well ds the text, he is supplied with a commentary which has been integrated beforehand. A reader untrained in such matters most easily notices those descriptions tend values which have a distinctly local character. He will notice at once that Lady Chatterly’s lover shows her his erected genitals. He can also see that ’the man committed sodomy with the lady. But he will hardly notice that LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER, as a whole, has some cultural meaning, because it fight^ against certain social taboos, A reader can quite"easily understand sexudl details as they are described, but he-may find it much more. difficult to seje the unity ofctHe whole text. -t ■ :! J However, there—a're—other works which the reader cannot understand both wholly and as culturally relevant unities, because they are written only as substituted for the satisfaction of desire. We do not always find it' an easy matter to 'differentiate between these two types. - • : ... II p»‘ ■ * a III ’ The writer of -"normal" literature accepts as inviolable the hinlra^ihal data of the field of sex. He uill_u^t--^--TrrgTTomrnantlv interested in the anatiimicair-rrriti^hv’sioToqical aspects of sex, unless he specifically --OTifes pornography. (There may. be exceptions to this. rule. For instance, I can think of stories that make such a contrast between the public and private manifestations of sex that - as happened in Victorial times - the wedding night gains an aspect of the tragicomical. The virginal bride, with her total lack of sexual1 knowledge thinks that her- husband’ perpetrates some horror upon her.) But-, , althoug^Vj^ccep ^biofogical data of sex as unchangeable, the 's f writer can perhaps make these facts into a basis for his speculations. In this way he constructs fantasies or hypotheses which may have an experiential validity. But I_ am of the opinion that:nearly all variations of biological sex found in s f are mor.; fantasies. On a metaphorical graph we could distribute all exis’ting pieces of literature. At one end of the axis lie all the works which merely stimulate sexually, but take the camouflage of "s f". At the opposite end of the axis we find scientifically plausible hypotheses. Consider MEMOIRS OF A SPACE WOMAN, by Naomi Hitchison. This- book makes rather dull pornography, because the author operates in the sexual .sphere, under the guise of s f.

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