The Star Diaries – Crazily Imaginative Short Stories from the Masterful Sci-fi Satirist

“…..Notwithstanding all the hardship and pain it had occasioned me, I was glad of the outcome, since it restored my faith, shaken by corrupt cosmic officeholders, in the natural decency of electronic brains. Yes, it’s comforting to know when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard.”

Polish author Stanislaw Lem is best known for his philosophical first-contact story Solaris (1961). But Mr. Lem proved himself to be more than an utterly serious author of sci-fi (think, Arthur C. Clarke) through his satirical and profound stories, following the cosmic (mis)adventures of Ijon Tichy (the elaborately constructed puns also reminds us of Kurt Vonnegut’s works). The Star Diaries, Lem’s most substantial work(translated by Michael Kandel and published in English in 1976), is the first collection of short stories featuring the obstinate, 23^rd century space explorer, whose intergalactic trips in his rundown rocket brilliantly satirizes society, technology, and human condition (strongly recommended for ‘Rick and Morty’ fans). The book sets up its central conceit in the two separate introductions: that it’s an incomplete recollection of Ijon Tichy’s travels. The diary is allegedly edited by Tarantoga, a professor of Astrozoology and connoisseur of ‘Tichology’. He apologizes for the incompleteness of the diary entries chronicling Tichy’s voyages. This comic introduction perfectly foretells the wacky, free-wheeling tone of each upcoming parables.

On why the diary entries start with seventh voyage and some of the voyages are entirely missing, Tichy says, “…some of the journeys took place in space, and some in time, therefore there can never be a first; you could always go back to when there were none and set out somewhere; then the one that had been first would become the second, and so on, ad infinitum!” Moreover, this specific ordering of the stories in the expanded edition was not done according to the order in which they were written (Lem deliberately concealed the chronological order of his writing). Hence, we can find certain shift in the tone of Tichy’s subsequent adventures, i.e., in Lem’s writing, as he veers from goofy anecdotal stories to satires on Stalinism to profound ruminations on human nature. Lem opens the book with a playful time-travel story, where Tichy’s spaceship travels through a series of time vortices, leading to the creation of multiple copies of himself. However in the book’s biggest story (‘The Twenty-first Voyage’), featuring the oppressed robot monks of a planet called Dichotica, the zippy feel is wholly replaced by somber and deep discussions on religion and faith (“The vision of heaven as a bank account and hell as a debtor’s prison represents a momentary aberration in the history of the faith. Theodicy is not a course in sophistry to train defenders of the Good Lord, and faith doesn’t mean telling people that everything will work out in the end”, contemplates a transhuman prior).

Elsewhere, Lem sharply satirizes Stalinism in couple of stories – The Eleventh and Thirteenth Voyages. In one story, Tichy sets out to the planet of Circia that’s governed by a rogue computer and populated by human-hating robots. In the other story, Tichy lands on the planets of Pinta and Panta which is following the principles of Master Oh, the greatest sage in all of Cosmos. In Pinta, people are desperately trying to live underwater, whereas in Panta, the government has taken extreme measures to abolish individuality. Both these stories amply refer to paranoia, conformity, and persecutions in the Stalinist era (“The upshot was... that what was to be controlled, controlled us”.) The Eighth and the exhaustively detailed Twentieth voyage poke fun at human nature. The Twentieth Voyage of Tichy happens to be another time-travel yarn, in which the explorer is appointed as the chief of a secret programme that’s engaged in amending Earth and human history. Of course, the staggering human mistakes ruins everything, causing Tichy to exile the programme’s violators like Homer, Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci to different centuries in the past, who having ‘deprived of the opportunity to create real things, gave vent to their frustrations in vicarious, sublimated work’.

Lem expertly interleaves weighty stories with playful ones. For instance, the tale of Dichotica civilization is followed up with darkly humorous account of troubles faced by a priest evangelizing extraterrestrial civilizations. Then there’s the tale of a sentient spaceship-attacking 'potatoes' and the description about inhabitants of a tiny planet who economize living space by frequently reducing themselves to 'atomic dust'. What I find interesting about Lem’s perception of human follies is that he doesn’t present a decidedly dystopian vision, but a seemingly utopian vision to meditate on human limitations. Be it the evolution by ‘persuasion’ in the planet of Pinta or Dichoticans achieving corporeal and mental plasticity, Lem envisions how intelligent beings screw up things. In one case, a semblance of utopia is reached as the power structure cruelly twists people's perception of their surroundings, and in the other case, people despite having unbridled access to science & technology to self-enhance themselves (in myriad ways) still feel entrapped. Through these weirdly inventive creations, Lem pushes us to constantly think about the limits of freedom and nature of individuality, and for which parallels could be found in our own history. Overall, The Star Diaries is an alternatively joyful and thought-provoking collection of sci-fi short stories which ponders over humanity through truly bizarre concoctions.

 

I Served the King of England – A Captivating Social Satire

“He answered, pulling himself up to his full height, Because I served the King of England. The King? I said, clapping my hands. You mean you actually served the King of England? And the head waiter nodded his head in satisfaction.”

The renowned Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) has lived through the most tumultuous periods in his country's history, first enduring the occupation of Nazis and later the Soviets. Although Mr. Hrabal finished a degree in law his primary interest was at writing poems. In the post-war years, he was part of an underground literary club where he would read aloud his poems, and later his stories. His earlier novels – Dancing Lessons for the Advanced Age & Closely Observed Trains – were published in the mid-1960s, the later turning into acclaimed movie by Jiri Menzel in 1966. In 1970s, after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hrabal was often at odds with the communist government, forcing him into a period of silence. In 1971, the author had type-written his novel I Served the King of England, but it was only in 1983 the novel was officially published, and the English translation by Paul Wilson was done in the year 1990 (most of Hrabal’s works were translated into English after the Soviet Union collapse).

Paul Wilson says this translation was his response to Czechs claim that 'Bohumil Hrabal is untranslatable'. And he seems to have done a good job, preserving the writer’s unrestrained, flowing style (full of long sentences and page-length paragraphs) which allows us to closely comprehend his central character’s stream-of-consciousness. The chief characteristic of Hrabal’s writing is his ability to focus on the surreal and comic oddities within ordinary human life (I had previously read only one Hrabal’s novel although I have seen all the faithful movie adaptations by Czech film-maker Jiri Menzel). I Served the King of England tells the picaresque story of Ditie, a short, young waiter with prodigious carnal appetite. Divided into five chapters, Hrabal describes Ditie’s sexual awakening, naïve dreams, small victories, and resilience with a mix of farce and poignance that eventually comes off as the intimate portrait of an individual in a particular time and place.

Fifteen-year-old Ditie starts his adventures as a busboy in the Golden Prague Hotel. Like every other adolescent caught in the space between reality and dream, Ditie desires for sex and money. He spends the generous tips he receives on prostitutes. He also likes decorating the naked lap of the prostitute with flowers. Ditie means ‘child’, and much of his action reflects the innocence and absurdity of a child. Ditie is enthralled by ludicrous innovations of the era. He gushes about the salami slicer, and later he marvels at a tailoring firm’s allegedly revolutionary fitting technique. Ditie uses such absurd thoughts as a sort of escapism to forget his own strangeness and isolation within the community. He works in various hotels, raises to the position of waiter, but the jealousies of fellow-workers often keeps him on the move.

At one hotel, Ditie is trained by the esteemed head-waiter who has served the King of England, and subsequently Ditie himself serves the Emperor of Ethiopia, who provides him a medal for the service. The story takes a surprising turn when Ditie falls in love with a Nazi woman named Lise (commander of the nursing corps), whom he marries after intense examination of the Reich authorities on whether his sperm is worthy enough of impregnating a 'Teutonic Aryan vagina' and bring to the world a race of ‘New Man’. Labeled as a German sympathizer and wholly ostracized by the Prague community, Ditie now works in a hotel in the mountains and lives in a ‘breeding station’ which the Nazis has established to develop a ‘pure race’ of humans. Naturally, the war and the subsequent occupation of Soviets drive him to reach rock bottom, even though he finds opportunities in the harshest conditions; amidst laughter and despair, he tries to live life to the fullest.

A still from Jiri Menzel's movie adaptation

Bohumil Hrabal’s flights into magical realism avoid the novel from becoming just another uniformly bleak story on the modern East European history. Hrabal shows greater sympathy for Ditie, an ignorant comman man whose naïve enthusiasms and tall dreams deflate alongside the broader inhumanity. By turns sad and hilarious, Hrabal’s minuscule, insecure protagonist learns how every one of us and our grandiose ambitions is rendered tiny in front of the death’s inevitability and volatile historical forces (which always make the ‘unbelievable come true’). Yet it seems like Ditie who served the Emperor of Ethiopia and trained by the man who served the King of England, one mustn’t allow their indomitable spirit to be crushed.

P.S.: The novel was adapted into a movie by Jiri Menzel in 2006 who also turned Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Closely Observed Trains (1965) and short stories -- The Snowdrop Festival (1978), An Advertisement for the House I Don't Want to Live in Anymore (1965) which was adapted as 'Larks on a String' -- into feature-length movies.Mr. Hrabal had also co-wrote the script of Menzel's 1981 comedy 'Cutting It Short'

 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – A Significant and Subversive Classic of Modern Soviet Literature

“Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (published November 1962) is a slender book, telling us a very simple story in a simple format. It’s easy to finish it in a single sitting (and I’d recommend that to have an immersive reading experience). Yet Solzhenitsyn’s story tells us something deep about history, inhumane political system, and human dignity which fat historical textbooks utterly fail to convey. Early in the novel, the titular character Ivan Denisovich Shukhov wonders, “Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?” Solzhenitsyn’s austere yet powerful narration serves as a bridge of empathy, transporting us into a cold, inhumane world to feel the hunger, humiliation, hopelessness, powerlessness, and also small delights of one gulag prisoner.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is enriched by Solzhenitsyn’s sharp realism, devoid of sentimentality or strong emotions. The emotions are a luxury, only we readers could afford. Because the man living in the earth-bound hell can only focus on how to get through the day which involves avoiding punishment, fighting the cold, and overcoming the hunger. It’s a document of human suffering although it’s chiseled with words that are fundamentally life-affirming. In the midst of an unbelievably cruel reality, a man survives keeping his dignity intact. It’s what makes Solzhenitsyn’s novel one of the finest literature; not just a book for history students interested in gulags and Stalinist era.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published nearly a decade after Stalin’s death, the publication sanctioned by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to debunk Stalin's personality cult (the ‘thaw’ went on for a brief period). The novel’s description of life inside the forced labor camps naturally shook the Soviet Union. Although after Khruschev’s removal from power in 1964, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn faced numerous threats, he released his masterwork ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ – a three-volume literary-historical account of the vast ‘slave labor economy’ – in the year 1973. Before that in 1970, Solzhenitsyn received Nobel Prize [the Soviet disinformation campaign against the writer only escalated after Nobel Prize and publication of Gulag Archipelago].

The brilliance of the novel lies in the character Solzhenitsyn chooses to narrate his single day. Unlike the writer, who himself spent 8 years of his life in such camps (between 1945 and 1953), Ivan Denisovich Shukhov isn’t an intellectual, constantly predisposed to philosophical thinking. Solzhenitsyn doesn’t extrapolate his ego to create Shukhov. This distance or removal was what makes it an ingenious literary work, and not simply a memoir-turned-novel. Comrade Shukhov or convict SHCHA-854 belongs to the 104^th gang of the gulag’s 9^th hut. The gulag was one of the cold-blooded schemes designed by Soviet Supreme leader – the Red Tsar -- to meet the needs of both Soviet industry and economy. Zek is the word used in the novel to describe a gulag inmate. When the novel opens in 1951, Shukhov has already spent 8 out of his 10 year prison-term. He is a decent man who like the majority of members in the camp did nothing wrong to deserve the harsh sentence. He wants to take one day at a time, starting his day by getting up from his sawdust-filled mattress in which he hides a small daily ration of bread.

Shukhov goes through the day by circumventing web of invisible snares – from punishing climate, furious guards to fellow wrathful inmates – and hopes to finish it in the same sawdust-filled mattress, nibbling the black, stale bread. Shukhov takes us through the unwritten rules that must be followed to survive a typical work-day in the camps. Apart from the things Shukhov must do to keep himself warm in order to gain extra mouthful of soup or a bite of bread, we get a sense of the zek’s palpable fear, boredom plus small victories and joys (“That bowl of soup—it was dearer than freedom, dearer than life itself, past, present, and future”). Solzhenitsyn’s unadorned prose not only allows us to attune to Shukhov’s emotionality, but also to his sensory experiences. Even if I had never smoked in my life, I could feel the warmth Shukhov receives after taking a puff from the cigarette or the way he counts his bread makes us share his sense of triumph (“…got four hundred grams of bread, and another two hundred, and at least two hundred in his mattress…. He was really living it up!”). The description of hunger and the feelings recounted by the meager nourishment really gets to you (“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow”, Shukhov wryly observes).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Soviet journalist and writer Vitaly Korotich has remarked, “We were absolutely isolated from information, and he [Solzhenitsyn] started to open our eyes………. The Soviet Union was destroyed by information, only information. And this wave started from Solzhenitsyn's One Day.” Even though the power ‘One Day’ held in Soviet slowly waned, while the Stalinist policies are continuing to be embraced and championed by the contemporary Russian establishment, the novel remains as much more than a damning indictment on the staggering injustices of Stalinism. It’s a celebration of human dignity, and the power of the human ability to adapt and empathize. Overall, it’s a study of the spark of humanity that survives through subhuman condition.

P.S.: Please read H. T. Willetts’ translation, the one translated from canonical Russian text and authorized by the author himself.