A Perfect Vacuum

by Stanisław Lem

Book Overview

This is a collection of perfect yet imaginary reviews of nonexistent books. With insidious wit, the author beguiles us with a parade of delightful, disarmingly familiar inventions. "Lem is Harpo Marx and Franz Kafka and Isaac Asimov rolled up into one and down the white rabbit's hole" (Detroit News). A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156716860
• ISBN13: 9780156716864
• Release Date: April 1983
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A most interesting vacuum

A Perfect Vacuum is a reference for books on imaginary books. I love comments on imaginary books, an in this field Stanislaw Lem is a master. The difference with Borges reviews on imaginary books (read Fictions, by the Argentinian author) is that Stanislaw Lem recurs to science and locate most of his visionary plots into the future, where humankind is often not human and sometimes not kind. In line of other Lem's works: Imaginary Magnitude, One Human Minute, this "perfect vacuum" is a reference, the best of them all. I eagerly recommend this book.

A Metareview

Here Stanislaw Lem embarks on a pretty unique method of satire - reviews of nonexistent books. Most interestingly, Lem takes the opportunity to advance his own ideas on technology, ethics, and logic while satirizing both writers and the literary criticism establishment. Getting a grip on these multiple levels of satire is the key to understanding Lem's purpose in this book. In several "reviews" here, he skewers literary criticism by pretending to be an exaggerated version of an academic critic, first by criticizing his own nonexistent longwinded introduction to this book, then by over-analyzing his fictitious books to the point of solipsism. Examples include critiques of a book that is apparently about nothing and another book in a language spoken by neither the writer nor the critic. All the while, Lem satirizes the ridiculousness of such endeavors with ironically overblown professor-isms like "The self-novel is a partial striptease; the antinovel, ipso facto, is (alas) a form of autocastration." Just like you would find in any literary critique written by a professor wishing to impress no one but another professor - a phenomenon that deserves to be satirized. Lem also "reviews" several fictitious books that adapt the themes and plotlines of old classics to modern settings, which in the real world is the type of literary reinvention that is often slavishly over-praised by academic analysts - making Lem's satire necessary in bringing all these eggheads back down to Earth. In other "reviews" here, Lem provides commentary on the fictitious scientific and philosophical theories of his fake writers, providing him with a very sneaky method of advancing his always interesting thoughts on those same topics. Meanwhile, some brutal social satire (an underappreciated strength of many of Lem's proper novels) pops up in his "reviews" of fictitious fictional works. This book often seems to be the work of boring over-analytical ivory-tower scientists and snobs, but that's exactly who Lem is satirizing, in a sly fashion that would probably go right over their lofty heads. [~doomsdayer520~]

So many ideas, so little time...

...must have been Stanislaw Lem's predicament. He had the ideas for a good dozen novels, but didnt' actually feel like writing them, so he wrote reviews of them. The kind of reviews that thoroughly give away the plot. Well no, that's probably not what happened, but it amuses me to pretend it did. A Perfect Vacuum is a collection of reviews of non-existing books. In fact, some of them (Gigamesh, written using a battery of computers supplied by IBM, foremost) couldn't even exist. Other books ("Rien du tout") would probably be excrutiatingly boring. Others ("Gruppenfuehrer Louis XVI") sound so good I wish someone would actually write them. Some of the reviews are lighthearted, commenting mostly on the story. Others, however, wax philosophical about the author's ideas, and there is my problem with this book. Some of the reviews seem to me polemics against certain literary schools. But if Lem first needs to set up a caricature of something in order to shoot it down, isn't that just a strawman argument? Also, if Lem writes a brilliant review of a very bad book, can I be forgiven for asking `what's the point'? If he writes (review of "Les Robinsonades") about `the full boorishness of the blunder' of the author, am I to find him clever for pointing out an error that he first himself introduced? However, despite these objections this is a wonderfully inventive book, and many of its chapters have a timeless quality that makes me reread them time and time again.

Ideal for?

The collection of essais (forewords or afterwords) on non-existent major books of our future. Perfect food for thought, but rather bleak in reading comfort - a little bit too dry and condensed. It's not a blood thriller(s), even if dissecting thrilling matters.Anyway, it is a must for any real SF fan. Especially after Star diaries, Futurologic congress and things like Peace on Earth and Fiasco.

one of my favorite satirical works ever

I forget when I discovered Lem - in college? -- but A PERFECT VACUUM remains one of my favorite works and I'm delighted it's still in print (it may have been out of print once). Lem packages a collections of fake book reviews of nonexistent books, written in a delightful broad array of styles and voices. His wry humor lights every page. He includes a scathing review of his own book !! Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys satires and highbrow whimsy. (If you like this, try Julian barnes: Foucault's Parrot, or,History of the world in 10.5 chapters.