The Truth and Other Stories
WORKING
Lem, Stanislaw. The Truth and Other Stories. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, translator. Kim Stanley Robinson, Foreword. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021.[1] Random House offers hardback copy, advertised at link here.[2]
Twelve short stories from 1956-1993, of which nine appear for the first time in English translation. "Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation [...]" (MIT Press blurb; see note 1).
Contents:[3]
Foreword by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rat in the Labyrinth 1956 23
Invasion from Aldebaran 1959 61
The Friend 1959 73
The Invasion 1959 123
Darkness and Mildew 1959 161
The Hammer 1959 183
Lymphaters Formula 1961 221
The Journal 1962 249
The Truth 1964 271
One Hundred and ThirtySeven [sic] Seconds 1976 295
An Enigma 1993 323
Various stories here "feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, [...], a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam."[4] Publishers Weekly (Sept. 2021, sic on no apostrophe) blurb suggests the following:[5]
"The Hunt" as the story with the robot as prey, to which we add, cf. and contrast "The Most Dangerous Game" in its several versions,[6] and the 2012 Futurama episode, ""31st Century Fox"[7] where the initial robot is about the size and form of a fox for an aristocratic-style fox hunt — and later it's the humanoid Bender.[8]
"The Journal" a story featuring "dense philosophical tracts produced by artificial intelligences [...]."
"An Enigma" as a story featuring an "unorthodox robot priest [...] who stoutly maintains that brains made of jelly can indeed think, in defiance of 'the rigid opinion of the Holy Office.'"
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Reviewed by Scott Bradfield, "Humanity Is Stupid, Helpless and Possibly Worth Saving," The New York Times, 28 September 2021, on line as of November 2021 and available — at least to subscribers — at link here.[9] Bradfield identifies "The Hammer" as a/the story "about a shipboard computer that falls in love with its human 'master” during an interstellar expedition. “I am not just the words you hear' it promises [...] after plotting their future together. 'I can keep being someone else every day, or I can always be the same. I can be everything for you.'" Bradfield notes "The Journal" is "narrated in the first-person plural by a godlike corporate intelligence, or by a computer designed to believe that it’s a godlike corporate intelligence. (Same diff, in Lem’s universe.)"
RDE, finishing, 8Nov21