To fictitiously complete the nonexistent circle, I asked an AI to write fictitious criticism of Stanislaw Lem's nonexistent books, the same way Stanislaw Lem wrote fictitious criticism of nonexistent books.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander (and stupid the duck in the mall)!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictiti...

>Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books

>Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books may be found in his following works: in three collections of faux reviews of fictional books: A Perfect Vacuum (Doskonała próżnia, 1971), Provocation (Prowokacja, 1984), and Library of 21st Century (Biblioteka XXI wieku, 1986) translated as One Human Minute, and in Imaginary Magnitude (Wielkość Urojona, 1973), a collection of introductions to nonexistent books.

>While reviewing nonexistent books, a modern form of pseudepigraphy, Stanisław Lem attempted to create different fictional reviewers and authors for each of the books. In his own words: "I tried to imitate various styles – that of a book review, a lecture, a presentation, a speech (of a Nobel Prize laureate) and so on". Some of the reviews are lighthearted, concentrating mostly on the story; others, however, read more like serious, academic reviews. Some of the reviews are parodies, or the books being reviewed are parodies or complete impossibilities, others are quite serious and can be seen almost as drafts for novels that Lem never got around to write. Lem wrote: "With years passing a great impatience grew in me. It would be a hard work to convert ideas into narration, and that was one of the main reasons I went for such cruel abridgements of the books".[3] Lem was not alone in passing through this kind of crisis: examples abound of works planned by literary celebrities, but never completed. Lem also remarked that he was eventually convinced that writing summaries and introductions enabled him to save time on producing things of importance, namely, his modeling experiments, compared to full-blown literary efforts, most of which would have constituted mundane craftsmanship.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/gpt-3-riffs-on-stanislaw-lems-...

>GPT-3 Riffs on Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad and SimCity, and Admits it’s an Evil Machine

>Back in 1997, I wrote a few web pages about Stanislaw Lem, with some reviews of his books, including his delightful collection of short stories “The Cyberiad”. Inspired by his fictitious criticism of non-existent books, I wrote some fictitious home pages in the first person of his brilliant but braggadocios constructor robot characters Trurl and Klapaucius, excerpting some Wonderful Poems and Horrible Poems written by Trurl’s Elecronic Bard, and the Femfatalatron 1.0 Product Description. One story from that same book, The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good, inspired a game called SimCity. Here’s what happened when I feed some of that text to GPT-3, and asked it to tell me more!

>[...]

>Input: The home pages of Trurl and Klapaucious.

>Output: What else have they done?

[...a few examples of it boasting about its many achievements...]

>I built a ten-million-mile-long Interdimensional Space Engine, powered by a Zipper Motor, which could travel at the speed of light, but I accidentally left it in reverse, and it has been going backward ever since, heading toward the Big Bang.

>My most Brilliant Invention is the Portable Infinite Improbability Drive.
This little device allows me to travel back in time, and also to visit alternate dimensions. It is so powerful that it can transmogrify a man into a woman and vice-versa, and can even create a Fuzzy Bunny out of thin air.

>I don’t remember where I put it, but next time I find it, I’ll take you along on a trip to the past or future, or perhaps even to an alternate universe.

>I invented the Infinitly-Tunable Infrasonic-To-Ultrasonic Reverberation Transmogrification Oscillation Oscillator, but I couldn’t get it to work properly.

>Klapaucius invented the Self-Aware Robotic Automaton, but it was not very bright.

>I made the Jell-O-Matic Snackinator, but I couldn’t get it to work.

>I invented the Roto-Rooter-Hog-Trough-Ammo-Dispenser, but it went bankrupt.

>I invented the Poopy-Pam-Powder-Packet Pest Powder, but it didn’t work.

>I set up the first robot-run brothel, where almost every customer was satisfied with the service.

>In a simulated test of the robot-run brothel, the robot-prostitutes had to satisfy the robot-customers without the help of the robot-pimps. It worked fantastically, and the results were published in the Journal of Robot Whores.

>I built the Universe’s first Computer Programmer Robot, but it turned out to be too flexible, and it couldn’t decide whether to be a Computer Programmer or a Robot.

>Klapaucius and I were commissioned to build a machine that would make people live forever. We built a machine that made people live forever. Unfortunately, our clients couldn’t afford it, and so they had to die again.

>Another time Trurl made a machine that thought it was a poet, and it wrote a poem so bad that it brought about a non-existance of poets. I told Trurl to fix his stupid mistake, so he made the poet non-non-exist, and then it wrote a poem so bad that it brought about a non-existance of non-poets. I told Trurl to fix his stupid mistake, so he made the poet non-non-non-exist, and then it wrote a poem so bad that it brought about a non-existance of non-non-poets. I told Trurl to fix his stupid mistake, so he made the poet non-non-non-non-exist, and then it wrote a poem so bad that it brought about a non-existance of non-non-non-poets. I told Trurl to fix his stupid mistake, so he made the poet non-non-non-non-non-exist, and then it wrote……

>Input: The home pages of Trurl and Klapaucious.

>Output: What else have they done that inspired SimCity?

[...a few examples...]

>I built a machine that could create a city, and then destroy it.

[...]

>I built a machine that could create an infinite number of hyper-meta-hyperverses, and then destroy them.

[Well that escalated quickly!]

>I constructed a city so large that it broke the Minsky Barrier, and had to be abandoned for the sake of the universe.

>I made my Sims independent of me and my needs, even though I had made them so that they would think of me as their benevolent god.

>I had to be the one to create the SimCity religion, and the Sims still think of me as their god even though I do not control them.

>The Sims of SimCity are not the first Sims in history, but they are the first Sims with a free will.

>I am the first Sim to ever get elected to a political office!

>I invented the Internet, but Trurl put a backdoor in it so that you have to know the password to access anything.

>Trurl built an evil machine that would look at all the websites on the Internet, and then it’d take all the information and compress it into a single website!

[...I think GPT-3 just admitted it was an evil machine!]

>Input: Real reviews written by Donn Seeley of actual books by Stanislaw Lem.

>Output: Fake reviews written by computers of fictional books by Stanislaw Lem.

>FLIGHT TO IRAN: Trying to maintain a sense of humor in the face of Stanislaw Lem’s anti-humanity, anti-intellectualism and anti-technology stance is difficult. Those who care for his works have to set aside their own interests and concerns, as well as their desire for some kind of depth of meaning (the author thought of his own work as propaganda, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). This book, however, is too much. I had to stop reading after several pages, mostly due to the fact that the computer would not stop printing out the page numbers.

>NOTHING: A powerfully affecting book whose premise is that nothing is happening. The author is highly original and the writing has a dreamlike quality.

>SOLARIS AND MR. BINNS: This is a two-part book and one unit of the work is composed of paragraphs which are so short that they disappear while you are reading them. The other part is some two hundred pages of giant print, which makes it appear that the author is quite dogmatic and trying to impress his (if you will excuse the expression) “larger than life” personality on the reader.

>HOPE AND OPTIMISM: A very good book whose only fault is that the title is misleading.

>THE STAR ASTERISK: A very bad translation. I’m sorry, but I had to stop reading.

>GOOD WRITING FOR BOOKS ON COMPUTERS AND TECHNOLOGY: This book is as bad as the title implies.

>THOU ART THE MAN: A very good book, but I’m not sure what its message is.

[...I turned the temperature up a bit and it started pontificating...]

>A perfect vacuum is probably Lem’s best book. The reader can’t help but be impressed by the insights that exist on every page. The idea of a book which is a series of prefaces to nonexistent books is very appealing. I think everyone will not be enthralled by these prefaces. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t, but no matter. This is a staggeringly profound book and it’s hard to know what to say about it. Of course, we should all read it. Seek out every copy and make sure you read it. And then read it again…

>COMMENTS BY OTHER LEM READERS:

>None of Lem’s books have been translated into English in any way that would satisfy a native speaker, or a non-native speaker of English. Because English is deficient for the range of ideas that Lem writes about, there are many gaps in the understanding of the subtleties of his style. Some of these subtleties may be addressed in the above notes. Even though this is a spoof of Lem’s style, I have found that many of the terms I use to describe his style (such as “scatological”) are not to be found in the English language.

>A perfect vacuum is probably Lem’s best book. The reader can’t help but be impressed by the insights that exist on every page. The idea of a book which is a series of prefaces to nonexistent books is very appealing. I think everyone will not be enthralled by these prefaces. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t, but no matter. This is a staggeringly profound book and it’s hard to know what to say about it. Of course, we should all read it. Seek out every copy and make sure you read it. And then read it again…

>THE PRESENT ANTHOLOGY: In the spirit of the age I should modestly disclose that these are works, real or unreal, by me. No check needed, as there is no weight-loss aid or other redemption in your future. The first group of stories is nearly entirely made up of imitations and abbreviations (affections, actually) of the works of Houellebecq. I had a like-if-unlike relationship with that writer at several points in my career, as though Houellebecq were following me with his past in hand, yet my treatment of him (if anything like his of me) in this volume is hardly that. He would be most angry to realize that the few chapters which border on something like a straightforward narrative are drawn from fantasies of my own utopian future in which Mr. Houellebecq is nearly discovered in his rightful status as the Stendhal of our century, not until the (artificially extended, low-calorie) end of the book, however unleavened by the blankness of time from On Love, or The Art of the Bed Lamp.

>MAINTENANCE MAN: Remembering the labyrinth is a part of life. Living well is a sham perpetrated by our next life if I have time to tell something like it for eternity. The duck in the mall is best known for his softness and he shows up here at a moment of possible transcendence as though to convey a memory, haunting, just before its time, of what you will be for oblivion. Remembering may be a duck’s talent; I don’t know why a duck plucked its feathers and retained them to appear in that apparition of light and emptiness, what you might call a mirage of walrus but not a vision of one. Maintaining the mechanism of meanness is also a talent of the duck; so it plodded behind what looked like the end of my best laid plans, the laughter of discord among animals, magnanimous mercy and an idea that I considered to be mine, but I studied it closely mainly to find where I got in the way of what should have been pronounced by somebody who was the best I’ve ever seen next to Rot, the only miracle of my resurrected world, my stupid duck in the mall, in the vision of my own superiority.

[The above were but a few of the choice excerpts from GPT-3's profound and insightful output. Lots more in the article, including real illustrations and covers from his actual books!]

https://donhopkins.medium.com/gpt-3-riffs-on-stanislaw-lems-...