The Chain of Chance – Stanisław Lem | #language & literature

The Chain of Chance – Stanisław Lem

Each of Stanisław Lem's books arouses in the reader a desire to learn about all the fields of science the writer has explored. Such aspirations, however, border on the impossible, because few can match the genius of the author of 'The Chain of Chance' – a sensational detective novel with a scientific bent.

Stanisław Lem’s 1975 work is set entirely on our planet, as is his earlier quasi-detective story, The Investigation, from 1959. Both stories revolve around an overwhelming desire to uncover mysterious criminal phenomena against which the police are strangely helpless. In both stories, the world of science comes to their rescue.

Lem regarded The Chain of Chance as being complementary to The Investigation. The earlier book involved the mystery of spontaneous corpse disappearances in several English morgues. The solution was rationally explained only in the police report closing the investigation, though it also stretched the truth. A famous statistician took part in the investigation, expressing a few not necessarily coherent or connected conclusions, not to say conjectures, but these were only partially confirmed by reality. The opposite happens in The Chain of Chance, where we receive a classic solution to the mystery, solved by the efforts of a few scientific minds and aided by retired cosmonaut whose risky sacrifice unveiled the truth.

The reality in which the protagonists move is, as always in Lem’s works, strongly marked by technological innovation. Specifically the imagined progress of the Western world, we might add, since fate drags the protagonist through Naples, Rome and Paris. The last 25 years of the 20th century were marked by technological improvements, such as the unobtrusive security measures against terrorist attacks at Rome’s airport.

The drum-like edifice is filled with a network of escalators and walkways, filtering people discreetly. Lately, weapons and explosives have begun to be smuggled in parts, to be assembled in the toilet of an airplane, so the Italians were the first to dispense with magnetometers. The probe of clothes and bodies is made by ultrasonic vibrations during the ride in escalators, and the results of this undetectable search are evaluated by a computer, typing the suspected smugglers. It was written that these vibrations detect every filling in a tooth and buckle in a brace. They can’t even get away with a non-metallic charge.

One could say that this pales in comparison with such modern devices as the all-too-real Pegasus spyware, capable of surveillance in any place and at any time, or the famous Chinese, Social Credit System, which utilises a database of facial features together with characteristics of absolutely all citizens – their own and probably also incoming ones. Depending on their attitude (i.e. loyalty), they are awarded points, which place people on a whitelist or potential blacklist, resulting in measures such as a refusal to issue a passport. In a word – a realisation of the literary visions of George Orwell and Stanisław Lem combined, and at the same time a handy model for all despots, of which there is no shortage on our planet.

Despite equally reliable security measures, the Roman airport – unofficially and not without reason called the Labyrinth – did not avoid a bloody attack on the narrow escalator. Only thanks to the exceptional sharpness of the hero’s mind (a result of his cosmonautical training), he managed to survive the massacre of travellers prepared by a Japanese terrorist by jumping over the escalator railing in time. In the process, he snatched with him the first person within reach: Annabella, a French girl from Clermont entering her teens. Both of them managed to land on the ground in time.

The bravado of the unknown passenger was reported by the press, which unfortunately added a layer of difficulty to his planned mission. He now had to flee from the increased intrusions of the Italian police, journalists and especially paparazzi, aided by the rapid intervention of diplomats drafted from the US embassy. It wasn’t long before it became clear that Rome’s escalator slaughterhouse had inspired a famous French director to create a sensational film: 'The part of the mysterious hero was to be played by Jean Paul Belmondo; the little girl would be played not by a child actress – since bedding down with a kid would have been considered in bad taste – but by a famous British movie star.' With no time wasted, the marketing hyenas were trying to cash in on a human tragedy.

However, the task placed on the shoulders of the protagonist was so complicated that he finally turned for help to a specialist, Dr Filip Barth, a digital engineer and scientific consultant of the Sûreté, who was developing a program for an investigative computer that was 'capable of solving multifactorial problems in which the number of case-related facts exceeded the storage capacity of the human memory.' He too, along with a group of select collaborators, attempted to chart a scientifically explicable path through the maze of inconsistent data. However, the logical clues amassed by this team still led them astray – so it is hardly surprising that the police detectives quickly crumbled.

The mystery to be solved was a series of mysterious deaths caused by a state of inexplicable panic amongst the male clientele of a Neapolitan bathing establishment. The profile of people losing their lives in suspiciously unnatural circumstances was quite peculiar and overlapped with the characteristics of our protagonist – an astronaut prematurely retired due to recurring allergies. According to preliminary findings of investigators, the list of characteristics of victims of 'acute psychosis of unknown etiology' included: the same sex, similar age, similar body build, ailments and material status.

To qualify one would have to be a male in his fifties, rather tall, the athletic or the pyknic type, a bachelor, a widower, or divorced, but in any case single during the time spent in Naples. […] Nor should one know any Italian, or if so, only a smattering. [...] There wasn’t a single diabetic in the whole series. On the other hand, there were five known diabetics amongst the rheumatic patients sent to Naples by Dr Stella, all of whom returned home safely.

Moreover, the shared traits included incipient baldness, rheumatism and allergies (for example, hay fever, as in the case of our narrator) – in short, a truly random list. The protagonist, aided by a team watching over him, took over the role of a certain Adams, one of the strangely inexplicable victims. He became his understudy, putting on Adams’ clothes and shoes, travelling with his suitcases, even renting the same room at the Hilton.

Psychotic panic attacks leading to suicidal acts are not a very encouraging reason to step into the shoes of a person who followed that exact path. The act of the retired astronaut should be considered in the categories of rare courage, combined with bravura. This was ultimately confirmed by his further fate.

The substantial team of people guarding the ex-cosmonaut, alongside a separate team dedicated to finding a solution in a situation full of unknowns, helped him survive the trials successfully. Also, thanks to a flash of intuition at the most critical moment, he managed to handcuff himself to a solid radiator: ‘Randy had given them to me back in Naples so I could handcuff the murderer when the time came.’ Why did he do it? So as not to be tempted by the inscrutable urge to jump out the window.

The solution to the mysterious suicides, however, turned out to be decidedly different than what the average detective story reader might expect. There are no handcuffs that could contain the killer, as it turned out to be not a person, but a combination of certain factors that had to occur in order for someone to be driven to the brink of despair. Aging men with rheumatic ailments who take sulphate baths, those who use cosmetics masking to mask their baldness as well as gourmands who indulge in sugared almond delicacies are all in danger.

Innocent substances – innocent when separate – in the right combination created an electrifying mixture, suddenly paralysing the will to live of previously reasonable and sober-thinking people. A series of extremely suggestive visions, comparable to narcotic hallucinations, often led them to irreversible acts. The protagonist of The Chain of Chance was saved only by a reflex, which other victims without cosmonautical training, did not manage to put into action.

Stanisław Lem, a writer with a medical background, was perfectly aware of the impact of chemical or pharmacological substances on the human body, which helped him create a detective story with a perfectly acting killer that cannot be brought to justice. An excellent grasp of the progress of science allowed the writer to lead the sensational plot in a way that kept the reader in suspense until the last page, but he was not uncritical of the university-polytechnic representatives. It is true that the scientists get on the right track, but it does not happen without the sacrifice of a space veteran, because without his fortitude and cold blood their scientific success would not happen for some time, or at all.

In The Chain of Chance, as in many of his other novels, Lem makes it clear to the reader that all achievements are rarely won without pain, and they sometimes even involve victims. Here the writer’s scepticism towards the customary practices of scientists experimenting on living organisms is revealed. People who undergo research tests of their own free will at least give their consent to it, which is difficult in the case of other representatives of the fauna – and this is also an important ethical aspect strongly present, although not directly, in all of Stanisław Lem’s prose.

Stanisław Lem

The Chain of Chance

English translation: Louis Iribarne

Northwestern University Press, 2000

number of pages: 179

ISBN: 978-0810117303

Originally written in Polish by Janusz Kowalczyk, translated into English by P. Grabowski, Dec 2021

stanisław lem

polish sci-fi literature

futurology

sci-fi