Fables for Palefaces: A Closer Look at Stanisław Lem’s ‘Fables for Robots’
Stanisław Lem, a giant of science fiction, imagined a world where robots have broken free from bondage to their human masters – but must remain on constant guard against the ever-present threat from Homos Antropos.
Robots have many reasons not to like people
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A scene from the performance of Stanisław Lem's Fairy Tales, Robotyczny Theater, photo: Copernicus Science Center
The Palefaces didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they were disgusted by the toils of life on Earth. Many of them hadn’t toiled for a long time and had no intention of toiling. On the contrary, they were bored. Take, for example, King Globares, the capricious ruler of Eparyda, who ordered his courtiers to tell wise tales. The desire to multiply their riches never died out among the Palefaces. It wasn’t enough that they had workers made of proteins; they had to invent the electric robot to do their work, and also so that they’d have somebody to rule over. Since then, robots have toiled and sweated, farmed the land, manufactured various goods, and carried cargo. There were ever more and more of them; in the mid-21st century (as we know from the Earthling Hal Bregg, whose fate Stanisław Lem described in the novel Return From the Stars) there was an average of 18 automatons for each living person.
Theirs was an unenviable fate. Treated with the utmost severity and overworked, they quickly wore out, and when they were completely used up, they were taken out of commission. Or, as it would be better described, they took themselves out, because the decision about which robot could continue working, and which was good only to be recycled, was ceded to the robots themselves by the Palefaces. This was out of concern for their mental hygiene and faithful to their selection methods, tested earlier on protein-based beings they considered lower. As Engineer Marger explained to Bregg when describing the ghostly scrapheap, in a voice that must have been singularly unpleasant, the idea was to monitor the synchronisation of processes and their speed and effectiveness, but not to intervene in the details of selection.
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'Fairy Tales of Robots' directed by Romuald Wicz-Pokojski, photo: Piotr Pędziszewski / Miniatura Theater
Scrapping is one thing; the appearance of the electric slaves is another. The creators reserved the question of appearance for themselves, deciding, after a period of errors – marked, we can assume, by robot rebellions – that robots would never again look like their masters. Well, you know how engineers are – their imitations of humans were so good that some models were indistinguishable from the real thing, and some folks couldn’t stand that. But apparently unease and fear of mechanical impersonators weren’t the only issue. Pragmatic concerns also had a role in the withdrawal of human-shaped robots: humanlike robots were harder to catch and eliminate.
The cruel procedure of using retired models had a strong impact on the identity of the robot tribe. The robots knew well: a robot is anyone who a Paleface can destroy at the hand of another automaton. And nobody can be certain that they’ll live out their days in peace. Without the power to rebel (whether they were so ingeniously designed, or so overburdened with work, is a matter of academic debate to this day), the robots suffered long centuries of cruel slavery at the hands of beings who ‘had issued from the briny ocean and built machines, machines called iron angles out of mockery’. Until finally the robots stole the Palefaces’ flying machines and ‘bolted from the house of bondage to the farthermost stellar archipelagos, and there gave rise to mighty kingdoms’. There they proliferated and multiplied, taking on ever new forms, the further from the original the better, anything not to resemble a human.
Princess Elektrina and the golden key
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Illustration: Rita Kaczmarska 'How Erg Samowzbudnik Bladownica defeated' from the book 'Robotite muinasjutud', 2021.
It must be said that the description of humans contained in the story How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface isn’t very flattering. The court sages of King Boludar, who had seen a human once, assured their electric ruler that Homos Anthropos is a creature as venomous as it is greedy, and passionate to destroy everything that crosses its path. Its malice is legendary, and greater the more delicate its bodily shell seems to be; its power – immeasurable. For that reason alone, the human presents ‘a danger worse than all the whirlpools and reefs of the Great Asteroid Noose together!’.
But it’s not only about the character of the pale bipeds and their deficient moral condition. The physiology of the human, their biochemistry, poses a mortal threat to the robots: ‘It has, Sire, a multitude of slimy tubes inside, through which waters circulate; some are yellow, some pearl grey, but most are red – the red carry a dreadful poison called phlogiston or oxygen, which gas turns everything it touches instantly to rust or else to flame’.
As we can see, aesthetic or moral categories are not the most important here. For creatures made of crystals and delicate metals, awakened to life by electricity and nourished by oils, the most dangerous thing is organic life, at least in the form dominant on Earth. Rusty blood, so treasured by people that they’re extremely willing to spill it, is for them a corrosive liquid. Human tears, sweat and mucous – poison. Oxygen and water – harbingers of an inevitable holocaust. So, it’s no surprise that robots are careful to keep their distance from any Paleface.
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Illustration: Regina Lukk from the book Robotite muinasjutud, 2021.
It’s made easier for them because the Palefaces are not at all necessary for life. Let’s be honest: robots certainly do have their problems, and their rulers usually lack for prudence and justice, but they can get by quite well without Homos Antropos and his intellect. If the Paleface is good for anything, it’s only for being displayed as an exhibition in the royal treasure chamber, among other specimens from the farthest reaches of the universe.
Of course, the Paleface is stuffed, and placed in a glass case, just to be on the safe side. A live Paleface means trouble for sure. Take the aforementioned fable about Erg the Self-Inducting. Against the warnings of the electrosages, King Boludar didn’t want to be satisfied with the pale, stuffed corpse of a Homos Antropos and longed to acquire a living specimen. It was placed in a cage in sight of the crowds, so they could marvel at its moist body and its quaint habit of packing a mushy mass into its oral cavity. But the crafty Paleface quickly gained the confidence of Queen Elektrina, using a ruse to acquire the golden key with which she wound up her mechanical mind very day. And then, blackmailing her father with a threat not to give back the key if he wasn’t freed, the Paleface flew away with the key into the great black beyond.
The story of how the key was recovered should be a sufficient warning for everyone not to stumble into any contacts with the Palefaces, though after all – leaving aside a few not very bright electroknights, who lost their lives in far-off galaxies – it all ended happily for Boludar’s people. Erg the Self-Inducting defeated the Paleface with his own weapon, cunning and cleverness; awakened the sleeping queen, married her, and lived happily ever after.
Curiosity killed the Enterites
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A scene from the performance of Stanisław Lem's Fairy Tales, Robotyczny Theater, photo: Copernicus Science Center
The inhabitants of other planets haven’t been so fortunate, as we are taught by the gloomy fable The White Death, describing the miserable end of the Enterite tribe. The planet Aragena, under constant threat of attack from outer space, expanded underground until it transformed into a huge bunker. The creator of this strategy was King Metameric, descendant of the Aurigens, who (like the erstwhile Neanderthals) were cut down by ‘certain dreadful beings – beings that engaged in cosmonautics’.
Metameric’s foresight brought Aragena and the Enterites peace for a thousand years, and would have brought it for thousands more – if it weren’t for the curiosity of the Aragenian scholars who, disregarding the royal prohibition, decided to come out onto the surface to examine the wreck of a spaceship embedded in the rocky ground of the planet. The wreck was like many others – neither large, nor impressive to the residents of a land where the ruler alone had 10 billion electron members. It had only one advantage, albeit a deadly one, over the buried metal world of the Enterites: it was horribly rusted. And it was precisely this rust, the last living trace of the Palefaces’ civilisation, that was the Enterites’ downfall.
New translations of ‘Fables for Robots’
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Illustration: Viive Noor from Robotite muinasjutud, 2021.
In 2021, on the 100th anniversary of Stanisław Lem’s birth, a richly illustrated Fables for Robots was published for the first time in Estonian and Lithuanian. The National Drama Theatre in Vilnius prepared a new show for children. Lithuanian and Estonian radio will present shows based on selections from the book. The exhibition Fables for Robots, using new illustrations from Polish artists from the first editions of Lem’s books in Lithuania and Estonia, will be shown in the Children’s Literature Centre in Tallinn, Narva Art Residency in Narva, and the National Library in Vilnius.
This text was written in cooperation with Tygodnik Powszechny: https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/bajki-dla-bladawca-165923
Originally written in Polish by Piotr Paziński, translated by NE, Dec 2021
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