1967 (original Polish); 1974
(English translation); 295 pages. New
Author? : Yes. Genre : Humorous Sci-Fi;
Anthology; Fantasy; Polish Literature. Overall
Rating : 5*/10.
Let’s
hear it for that great constructor, Trurl!
Hip-hip-hoo-huh? Wait, you’ve never heard of Trurl?!
He’s only the most fantastic constructor in the galaxy, that’s all. Wait, you don’t know what a constructor is?! Jeez, okay, let’s start with that.
A
constructor, well, constructs things.
Mostly machines that are programmed to do seemingly magical stuff, but sometimes other things
like robots, demons, and computers. Trurl is the best in the universe at this,
which puts him in high demand by nearby (measured in light-years)
kings who can afford such things.
The second-most skilled constructor in the galaxy is Klapaucius, who just happens to
be a neighbor of Trurl’s, and who might not agree about who’s the top constructor. Sometimes the two of
them collaborate on building a machine; sometimes they compete. No matter.
The kings who send them requests for some coveted never-been-built-before machines are always impressed.
Alas, those who wear the royal crowns are notoriously stingy.
Building a fabulous machine is one thing. Collecting payment for it is quite another.
What’s To Like...
The Cyberiad Stories (hereafter called “Cyberiad”) consists
of 15 tales, of varying lengths, but mostly short stories that, with one
exception, all feature either Trurl or a Trurl-plus-Klapaucius team My personal favorites are:
05.) Trurl’s Electronic Bard
07.) The Dragons of Probability
11.) How Trurl and Klapaucius Created a Demon of the Second
Kind to Defeat the Pirate Pugg
15.) From the Cyphroeroticon or Tales of Deviations,
Superfixations, and Aberrations of the Heart
#5
stands apart from all the rest.
Stanislaw Lem shows off his masterful wordplay, which is even more
impressive since this is a translation from the original Polish. My hat’s off to Michael Kandel, credited in
the forward as the translator. To boot, there are
all sorts of made-up words in the book; I am completely mystified as to how one
goes about translating such things. The
first excerpt below is an example of Stanislaw Lem's linguistic levity.
It’s
fun to see what machines are created by our hero(es) in each tale, and the cosmic, comic consequences (usually unintended) that ensue. Some of
these constructions are: a.) one that grants your every wish; b.) one
that can create anything that starts with the letter “n”; c.) the world’s stupidest computer; d.) one that generates poetry; e.) one
that can make a person “fall out of love”.
Stanislaw
Lem often incorporates “fancy” words from some technical field into the
tale. One time it’s chemistry, another
time it’s physics, still another time it’s statistics. Being a chemist, I loved it; although readers
with a non-technical bent may find this a bit tedious.
Also, since I’m a crossword puzzle fanatic, I delighted in the brief nods to acrostics and
anagrams, as well as the oft-used crossword puzzle phrase "lèse majesté".
Since this is a collection of short stories, there’s no real “ending” to the book as
a whole. The cover art comes from Story
#2, “Trurl’s Machine”, and the title reference is brief, coming at 17% Kindle.
There’s only one or two instances of cusswords, and no sex, booze, or
drugs that I recall.
Kewlest New Word...
Benighted (adj.)
: in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.
Others: Quoins
(n., plural); Soughed
(v.).
Excerpts...
“Have it compose
a poem – a poem about a haircut! But
lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in
the face of certain doom! Six lines,
cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter ‘s’!!”
Seduced, shaggy
Samson snored.
She scissored
short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled
slave, Samson sighed.
Silently
scheming,
Sightlessly
seeking
Some savage,
spectacular suicide. (loc.
594)
“As this work too
was totally ignored, I straightway wrote another; in it I presented all the
possible hypotheses concerning the origin of the Universe – first, the opinion
that it doesn’t exist at all, second, that it’s the result of all the mistakes
made by a certain Demiurgon, who set out to create the world without the
faintest idea of how to go about it, third, that the world is actually a
hallucination of some Superbrain gone berserk in a manner infinite but bounded,
four, that it is an asinine thought materialized as a joke, five, that it is
matter that thinks, but with an abysmally low IQ.” (loc. 3004)
Kindle Details...
Amazon offers Cyberiad for $11.49 at present. There are a slew of other e-books by
Stanislaw Lem available, almost all of them science-fiction novels, in the $1.99-$11.99
price range.
Though it is easier not to believe in electrons than in dragons:
electrons, at least, taken singly, won’t try to make a meal of you. (loc. 1064)
The
wordplay is fantastic, but the storytelling is not. All the stories seem to follow the same
template, namely:
a.) Trurl and/or Klapaucius visit some king on another planet.
b.) The king poses a wish for some sort of machine.
c.) Our wizards accept and magically build the machine in almost no time
at all.
d.) Lots of talk and/or trickery ensues.
e.) the wizards prevail and live happily ever after, or at least until
the next adventure.
I
got bored after a while. So did other
reviewers, who recommended reading Cyberiad
in small amounts, presumably to minimize the “samey-ness” of the tales.
It
needs to be pointed out that these stories are technically not science
fiction. Our heroes could just as easily
travel to a neighboring kingdom instead of a nearby planet, in which case this book
would be shelved under “Fantasy”.
Finally, the book is in sore need of another round of proofreading. And some sort of unifying storyline.
5 Stars. Collections
of short stories are never my favorite genre, particularly those that are all
written by the same author. ANAICT, the
rest of Stanislaw Lem’s books are
standard science-fiction novels. I have
one of them on my Kindle, Peace On Earth, and
will probably read it in the near future in order to give Mr. Lem a fair shake.
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