Customer Reviews

Imaginary Magnitude

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was my introduction to Stanislaw Lem, which is ironic, because this is a book consisting only of introductions of other (imaginary) books. I found it completely by accident on the bargain rack, and I don't know why I bought it. But I did, and I'm certainly glad. When I started reading him, I said to myself, "What *is* this?" and found it all very bizarre. But Lem is one of those rare writers who makes you feel smarter just for having read him. For all that, this book is not only fascinating, but surprisingly funny at times. (How do you write an introduction to a book of introductions?) And for being so fanciful, Lem's discussions are surprisingly relevant.

"Imaginary Magnitudes" is a forceful, blackly humorous introduction to the irreducible mystery that powers Stanislaw Lem's work. Composed of introductions to works of non-fiction and literature to appear sometime in the coming century, one can only marvel at the breadth of imagination involved as well as the smoothness and cleverness of the translation from the Polish. The lectures of GOLEM XIV are the diadem of this collection, adumbrating most of the earlier prefaces in one vast, misanthropic razz of humankind by a very advanced (but still very humanlike), very disillusioned defense-management computer -- sort of a HAL9000 without the homicidal (or genocidal) impulse. I never have a copy of this book because I always give it away to people -- it is that good. Like most of Lem's work, it is where literature and SF become indistinguishable. Lem ranks with Clarke, Asimov, Herbert and Dick in the SF pantheon.

Though it wasn't the most entertaining book of Lem's, it definitely gives the best span of his talents of any that I've yet read. We get the simply goofy in the first couple bits, and the hard-core philosophical in the GOLEM lectures. This is an excellent survey of Lem's talent, but the individual parts are not his best. The humorous bits are certainly not "Cyberiad" or "Star Diaries" quality, but they are good nonetheless. The GOLEM stuff is a bit dry, but very intruiging. Overall quite good stuff, so it gets 4 stars. Mediocre Lem though.

Whereas with "A Perfect Vacuum" Lem wrote reviews of fictional books, here he writes introductions to different fictional books. You get some of his more straightforward philosophy with "Golem XIV," typical Lem cleverness with "Necrobes" and sheer, amazing, mind-blowing virtuosity with "Eruntics," probably his single most impressive piece of short fiction. This "story" alone is worth the price of admission. Ranking near the Tichy stories, with plenty of distance between "The Cyberiad" on one side and "Solaris" on the other, on the fun and ponderousnness scales. Among his best.

-----I've been a fan of Stanislaw Lem ever since someone forced me to read something of his, and I found out what a unique and brilliant man he is. _Imaginary Magnitude_ is easily as original a work as anything he's written; If you're the type of person who skips Introductions(I am), you could easily become confused by this book unless you've read this warning; --the book /consists/ of introductions! ------------------------------------------------ -----_Imaginary Magnitude_ is a collection of excerpts of novels that have yet to be. Specifically, it's a collection of the /introductions/ of the to-be-written novels.. --and, the explanations of the subject matter of these books are both fascinating, philisophical, and ocassionally whimsical. From the introductions of the instantly-updated encyclopedia (if the words start to look blurry, close your eyes, pause a moment, and start over--it's being rewritten), to the methods for making intelligent microorganisms(if they can out-evolve our poisons, they can out-evolve our intelligence tests.), this book contains a lot of food for thought.. --this science-fiction isn't for preteens.. ..but, the effort spent in the reading is well rewarded.

I find this one of Lem's more philosophical works, lacking in the frnezied bafflement that drives so many of his more amusing works. Instead, this presents itself as a set of introductions to books that were never written, abstracting writing-about-writing almost wholly away from the writing itself. (To complete the delightful illogic of his approach, Lem includes an introduction to these introductions.)

The first two pieces describe a book of X-ray pornography and another about bacteria trained not only in language, but in foretelling future events. These apply Lem's straight-faced humor to the entire genre of over-intellectual intros, which sometimes seem almost parodies in themselves. The next pseudo-intro welcomes the reader to a study of writings by computer intelligences. Lem uses this vehicle to speculate on the ways that machine minds might differ from our own, and on the gaps that seem sure to arise between our differing kinds of thought processes.

That chapter turns out to be a bridge toward a series of lectures delivered by one of those electronic thinkers. As this second half of the book progresses the dry humor dries up, replaced with a genuine sense of wonder. What would constitute growth or personal (if I may use the word) development for such beings? Would any points of intersection with human experience even remain?

I suspect that Lem put more into this book than his translator was able to extract. Golem's discussion of thinking about thinking echoes Goedel's famous theorem on the limits to the knowable, something I'm sure lay within Lem's range but possibly not in the translator's. I can't complain though. The translation, on the whole, comes across as lively and engaging, and seems to preserve a lot of the wordplay that the original must have contained. The original Polish is a closed book to me, so I'm grateful to see Lem's work in English at all.

-- wiredweird

No so good as A Perfect Vacuum, Imaginary Magnitude is nevertheless a very interesting books. I love comments on imaginary books, an in this field Stanislaw Lem is a master. The difference with Borges reviews on imaginary books (see Fictions) is that Stanislaw Lem recurs to science and locate most of his visionary plots into the future, where humankind is often not human and sometimes not kind.
I recommend this book but also recommend the reader to first (or afterwards) read A Perfect Vacuum.

"Imaginary Magnitude"'s value as entertaining literature is essentially nil. Only occasionally does it lapse into readability - otherwise it is an undiluted philosophical treatise. To be sure, this is Lem at his most intellectual - it just doesn't lend the writing the same measure of livelihood his more straightforward pieces do. The format is quite something conceptually - a set of introductions to not-yet-written books. "Imaginary Magnitude" showcases four - plus "GOLEM XIV", which, being a separate piece of literature altogether, is included only for the sake of its similar spirit.

The short pieces themselves aren't particularly exciting. This is Lem's chance to preach his views, and he does so extensively. "Necrobes" piqued my interest with its laconic treatment of creatively-posed x-ray nudes as art. "Eruntics" was even partially plausible - it deals with evolving a genome which is, basically, word-processing software. And then the bateria begin predicting the future. The "Extelopedia" lacked any sort of real structure - it is an encyclopedic dictionary of purely prognosticated words. The introduction includes a "Proffertinc" - a prognosticated offer, and a sample page of words that begin with "prog-". The following introduction to a treatise on bitic literature - that is, books written by non-human authors - is an excellent piece of short fiction dealing with epistemological topics. The summary traces the development of artificial thinkers through several stages - from cladogenesis, where computers generate random meaningless words, through mimesis, where a computer formulates the mathematical basis of books, allowing perfect translations, and even creating entirely new works in the author's exact style, and to transhuman apostasy - works generally incoprehensible to humans - from incredibly complicated math to elaborate works on cosmogony.

Then the reader gets to "GOLEM XIV", and the book takes a nosedive. Even despite the warning, the superhuman, impersonal intelligence within the computer seems snobbish, patronizing, and the text of its lectures - overly elaborate and peppered with metaphors. Likewise, the leading points of the two lectures - on man and on itself - coincide: the evolution is an asymptotic blunder; it has reached the maximum level of complication in its creations, and further random "progress" is impossible; man has reached his potential ceiling and is drowning in his civilization, etc. Like most of Lem, taken piece by piece this is profound theorizing, but as a work of creative, non-academic literature it is ornate and unreadable.