The Spearhead of Cognition, an Essay on Stanislaw Lem

From an essay on Stanislaw Lem, who recently died, called "The Spearhead of Cognition," by Bruce Sterling:

You're a kid from some podunk burg in Alabama.
	From childhood you've been gnawed by vague 
numinous sensations and a moody sense of your own 
potential, but you've never pinned it down.
	Then one joyful day you discover the work of a 
couple of writers. They're pretty well-known (for 
foreigners), so their books are available even in your 
little town. Their names are "Tolstoy" and 
"Dostoevsky." Reading them, you realize: This is it! 
It's the sign you've been waiting for! This is your 
destiny-- to become a *Russian Novelist*!
	Fired with inspiration, you study the pair of 
'em up and down, till you figure you've got a solid 
grasp of what they're up to. You hear they're pretty 
well-known back in Russia, but to your confident eye 
they don't seem like so much. (Luckily, thanks to some 
stunt of genetics, you happen to be a genius.) For 
you, following their outline seems simple enough--in a 
more sophisticated vein, of course, and for a modern 
audience. So you write a few such books, you publish 
'em, and people adore them. The folks in 'Bama are fit 
to bust with pride, and say you've got Tolstoy beat 
all hollow.
	Then, after years of steadily growing success, 
strange mail arrives. It's from Russia! They've been 
reading your stuff in translation, and you've been 
chosen to join the Soviet Writers' Union! Swell! you 
think. Of course, living in backwoods Alabama, it's 
been a little tough finding editions of contemporary 
Russian novelists. But heck, Tolstoy did his writing 
years ago! By now those Russians must be writing like 
nobody's business!
	Then a shipment of modern Russian novels 
arrives, a scattering of various stuff that has 
managed to elude the redtape. You open 'em up and--
ohmiGod! It's . . . it's COMMUNISM! All this stupid 
stereotyped garbage! About Red heroes ten feet tall, 
and sturdy peasants cheering about their tractors, and 
mothers giving sons to the Fatherland, and fathers 
giving sons to the Motherland . . . Swallowing bile, 
you pore through a few more at random--oh God, it's 
awful.
	Then the _Literary Gazette_ calls from Moscow, 
and asks if you'd like to make a few comments about 
the work of your new comrades. "Why sure!" you drawl 
helpfully. "It's clear as beer-piss that y'all have 
gotten onto the wrong track entirely! This isn't 
literature--this is just a lot of repetitive agitprop 
crap, dictated by your stupid oppressive publishers! 
If Tolstoy was alive today, he'd kick your numb 
Marxist butts! All this lame bullshit about commie 
heroes storming Berlin and workers breaking production 
records--those are stupid power-fantasies that 
wouldn't fool a ten-year-old! You wanna know the true 
modern potential of Russian novels? Read some of my 
stuff, if you can do it without your lips moving! Then 
call me back."
	And sure enough, they do call you back. But 
gosh--some of the hardliners in the Writers' Union 
have gone and drummed you out of the regiment. Called 
you all kinds of names . . . said you're stuck-up, a 
tool of capitalism, a no-talent running-dog egghead. 
After that, you go right on writing, even criticism, 
sometimes. Of course, after that you start to get 
MEAN.
	This really happened.
	Except that it wasn't Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. It 
was H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. It wasn't Russian 
novels, it was science fiction, and the Writers' Union 
was really the SFWA. And Alabama was Poland.
	And you were Stanislaw Lem.

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