donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (11/08/84)
[This is re-posted from the ARPA sf-lovers list, since net.sf-lovers seems to be cut off from it.] IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE is the latest in a series of new Lem translations from HBJ; this particular hardcover edition was translated by Marc E. Heine from an original that appeared in Poland in 1973, with later revisions. (Curiously, the dust jacket claims that Lem lives in Vienna -- when did he leave Poland? Part of IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE was published in a Polish literary magazine in Krakow in 1981...) IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE is a companion to A PERFECT VACUUM; the latter book is a collection of reviews of nonexistent books, the former is a collection of introductions and excerpts from the same. These pieces run the gamut from silliness to facetiousness to pedantry to philosophy. NECROBES is a curiously rationalized introduction to a book of pornographic X-ray images; ERUNTICS prepares us for the story of a mad biologist who tries to teach bacteria English, and succeeds beyond his expectations; the introduction to A HISTORY OF BITIC LITERATURE is a rather dry and scholarly discussion of a catalogue of texts written by machine intelligences; and the introductory offer for VESTRAND'S EXTELOPEDIA IN 44 MAGNETOMES drowns us in a tide of ridiculous neologisms as it gives us the hard sell for an encyclopedia that is so up-to-date, it predicts the future: In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0.9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words begin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place. The core of IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE, however, is the extract from GOLEM XIV, a book by and about a superintelligent computer. Golem XIV was the last in a line of machines produced by the US military in an effort to close the artificial intelligence gap with the Russkies (who, it turned out, were so far behind that the idea of competition wes silly). Unfortunately, when called upon, Golem XIV refused to act; it had better things to do... Two of Golem XIV's lectures are included in IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE: the first one discusses Man, concentrating on the nature of human intelligence; the 43rd lecture is about the potential for machine intelligence -- it expresses the belief that not only are human beings incapable of appreciating the reasoning of a computer as smart as Golem, but Golem is incapable of understanding thought on the next level of intelligence, and so on forever. Is there any hope for advance? Lem walks a narrow line by pretending to be a superintelligent machine, and I don't think he quite pulls it off, although the story is nevertheless very interesting. I found IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE to be less fun than A PERFECT VACUUM, mainly because the prose seems a bit lifeless in places. This may be due to the different translations (VACUUM was translated by Michael Kandel, the same fellow who was responsible for the fantastic translation of THE CYBERIAD), although it's always possible that the original was simply more turgid. The best part is Golem XIV's 43rd lecture, which (perhaps not coincidentally) was written 8 years after the rest of the book. Unless you're a diehard Lem fan like me, you should probably wait for the paperback edition... Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn PS -- A quote for John Redford: 'Chronocurrent exformatics is based on the existence of ISOTHEMES (q.v.). An ISOTHEME is a line in SEMANTIC SPACE (q.v.) passing through all thematically identical publications...'