Review (#12): "Extensa," a novel by Jacek Dukaj (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 2002)
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| The cover of the Polish edition. |
By Péter MARTON
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"Extensa" is far future SF by Polish author Jacek Dukaj. It is well written, and may inspire a number of different interpretations, all of them interesting as potentialities -- I made up mine upon reading the book twice, to make sure I was not overlooking important clues. But there remain some puzzling aspects of the story as well as issues for ethical and philosophical debate even after this. Examples of these may be provided if along the way I also reflect on this other review of Dukaj's book by Luke Maciak. (This will come with spoilers, of course.)
To start with, I'm not sure if it's good that the book has to be re-read to appreciate all the "clues" placed there, given that they only work as actual clues upon re-reading the text, when you know what to look for. There's a bit too many of them for them to magically just come together (in "spooky action," to phrase this à la Einstein), as pieces of a puzzle should, right upon reading the last word of the story...
The premise: We find ourselves in Green Country (Zielony Kraj in Polish) where extended family units reside together, but far apart from each other, in a rural idyll of sorts, as it first seems ("the Amish of the future," as Dukaj himself puts it). They have some degree of economic specialisation, but can't produce all that they need, including modern things -- so they regularly go to the Marketplace to trade as well as to hand in a list of goodies they could use... to a nameless person who is the representative of a different world underneath their own.
It soon transpires that Green Country is like an aquarium: an experiment of sorts, in continuing with the tradition of biological human beings -- or a last refuge of those not wishing to be "involved", whose wishes are respected for the moment. At some point the "Involverence" has taken place and a post-human hive came into being that is eating up more and more of what's left of Earth, and finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate (or even just manage) the continued parallel existence of the biological line.
But then the book comes as a 2-in-1, and one of the biological humans, in a sense the chief protagonist, gets to take part in a bit of space exploration thanks to technology relying on quantum mechanics and having mastered the hidden variables posited by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (somehow). This is without actually moving in space, using instead the entanglement of particles to obtain information about objects at a distance (information travelling outside the Great Cosmic Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung a.k.a. the speed of light). The particles he intakes combine with their faraway brethren into what is called the "Extensa," reaching all the way to faraway star systems. So comes the discovery of an Anomaly in the Medusa system, which eventually turns out to be an alien Extensa. Because both the Involverence and the technology for the Extensa rely on quantum mechanics, it becomes possible to conclude that what was encountered may be the sign of Aliens having undergone their own Involverence. This is very interesting: given the enormous physical distances between stars, interstellar encounters could be at least somewhat more likely this way, should the technology become available.
This is where I need to quote Luke Maciak to show how much interpretations of the plot may diverge in the end. Maciak concludes: "The book is about stragglers – extreme religious conservatives who got scared of the progress and decided to live like their ancestors did. (...) Keeping the Green Kingdom (sic) afloat does require quite a bit of computational resources. It also prevents (the post-humans) from optimizing their computronium, as they have to route around it."
Dukaj doesn't take sides like this, suggesting the moral superiority of the post-humans, but I understand why someone (in this case, Maciak) may come away with this kind of interpretation.
To me, the biological humans of Green Country don't come across as so dumb, and this at least should leave the door open to the opposite moral interpretation as well. Mortal biological humans are the ones truly capable of appreciating time and, per consequence, life and death as well. The chief protagonist gets to experience all the drama of traditional human existence, including the death of his wife (who decides not to "betray" the biological human tradition at the very last minute when she would still have a way out of it into the Involverence).
Moreover, as the story (through the words of a character) alludes to this, the post-humans are no less prisoners to processes: they mess around with things just for the sake of messing around with things. Trees turning into metal and crazy-biting hybrid animals raining from the sky are called "Perversions" in the story with a good reason, perhaps. It's a small leap from here to say that the radical transformation of the Moon as well as Mars that the post-humans are responsible for were possibly just that, too: Perversions.
Further, as the Nameless representative of the involved humans reveals, there are the cruel and the impatient among them, too. It seems that human vanities didn't disappear with the Involverence.
And if efficience would so strongly demand the Involverence as such, why the need to preserve all the different human egos? Wouldn't merging them all into a netbrain be much more efficient and save a lot of power and capacity for those supposedly vitally necessary computations?
Beyond judging what's going on in a moral sense, it is also possible to debate the substantive interpretation of the plot. Are the involved humans really derived exclusively from humans? The technology that allowed them the Involverence may in fact have come from some other, more ancient species, as it is hinted at. The source of earthly involverence may be no less alien than the one encountered in the Medusa system. It is also unclear if the biological humans are just remnants of humanity 1.0, or if they have been re-engineered into biological existence by the post-humans -- with the original ancestors of the biological humans just three generations away, as the very first page of the story seems to imply. Adding confusion to chaos (intentionally?) is how Dukaj himself says in an interview that the biological humans are remnants rather than reconstructs.
At the end of the day, having contemplated the contents of the book for several days now, I am coming to the conclusion that -- at least for me -- the theme of the book that most stands out is the flexibility of the concept of the Extensa. We may all have our own Extensas in our lives that allow us to experience beyond ourselves, to have room to exist in beyond the straitjacket of our lives (or to have the illusion thereof). For some, this is provided by fiction. For some, it is specifically the SF universe -- the multiverse, be it in the form of moving picture, written fiction or comics and graphic novels. For others, it will be the study of history, or science, or any particular obsession -- even a human relationship. Identification with a cause, a movement, a community. The list may go on.
Even our own minds are endless universes where memories relate to new experiences the way particles may be communicating entangled across light years.
In spite of some of the issues mentioned above (which may as well be seen as strengths rather than weaknesses), I can certainly recommend the book, and it should be translated to English, to let it become part of the great English-speaking literary Involverence. It may be enjoyable to read and contemplate regardless of how (or how completely) you put together the puzzle of its plot.
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| Jacek Dukaj, author of Extensa |
To start with, I'm not sure if it's good that the book has to be re-read to appreciate all the "clues" placed there, given that they only work as actual clues upon re-reading the text, when you know what to look for. There's a bit too many of them for them to magically just come together (in "spooky action," to phrase this à la Einstein), as pieces of a puzzle should, right upon reading the last word of the story...
The premise: We find ourselves in Green Country (Zielony Kraj in Polish) where extended family units reside together, but far apart from each other, in a rural idyll of sorts, as it first seems ("the Amish of the future," as Dukaj himself puts it). They have some degree of economic specialisation, but can't produce all that they need, including modern things -- so they regularly go to the Marketplace to trade as well as to hand in a list of goodies they could use... to a nameless person who is the representative of a different world underneath their own.
It soon transpires that Green Country is like an aquarium: an experiment of sorts, in continuing with the tradition of biological human beings -- or a last refuge of those not wishing to be "involved", whose wishes are respected for the moment. At some point the "Involverence" has taken place and a post-human hive came into being that is eating up more and more of what's left of Earth, and finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate (or even just manage) the continued parallel existence of the biological line.
But then the book comes as a 2-in-1, and one of the biological humans, in a sense the chief protagonist, gets to take part in a bit of space exploration thanks to technology relying on quantum mechanics and having mastered the hidden variables posited by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (somehow). This is without actually moving in space, using instead the entanglement of particles to obtain information about objects at a distance (information travelling outside the Great Cosmic Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung a.k.a. the speed of light). The particles he intakes combine with their faraway brethren into what is called the "Extensa," reaching all the way to faraway star systems. So comes the discovery of an Anomaly in the Medusa system, which eventually turns out to be an alien Extensa. Because both the Involverence and the technology for the Extensa rely on quantum mechanics, it becomes possible to conclude that what was encountered may be the sign of Aliens having undergone their own Involverence. This is very interesting: given the enormous physical distances between stars, interstellar encounters could be at least somewhat more likely this way, should the technology become available.
 |
| The most basic visualisation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen issue, by NASA |
This is where I need to quote Luke Maciak to show how much interpretations of the plot may diverge in the end. Maciak concludes: "The book is about stragglers – extreme religious conservatives who got scared of the progress and decided to live like their ancestors did. (...) Keeping the Green Kingdom (sic) afloat does require quite a bit of computational resources. It also prevents (the post-humans) from optimizing their computronium, as they have to route around it."
Dukaj doesn't take sides like this, suggesting the moral superiority of the post-humans, but I understand why someone (in this case, Maciak) may come away with this kind of interpretation.
To me, the biological humans of Green Country don't come across as so dumb, and this at least should leave the door open to the opposite moral interpretation as well. Mortal biological humans are the ones truly capable of appreciating time and, per consequence, life and death as well. The chief protagonist gets to experience all the drama of traditional human existence, including the death of his wife (who decides not to "betray" the biological human tradition at the very last minute when she would still have a way out of it into the Involverence).
Moreover, as the story (through the words of a character) alludes to this, the post-humans are no less prisoners to processes: they mess around with things just for the sake of messing around with things. Trees turning into metal and crazy-biting hybrid animals raining from the sky are called "Perversions" in the story with a good reason, perhaps. It's a small leap from here to say that the radical transformation of the Moon as well as Mars that the post-humans are responsible for were possibly just that, too: Perversions.
Further, as the Nameless representative of the involved humans reveals, there are the cruel and the impatient among them, too. It seems that human vanities didn't disappear with the Involverence.
And if efficience would so strongly demand the Involverence as such, why the need to preserve all the different human egos? Wouldn't merging them all into a netbrain be much more efficient and save a lot of power and capacity for those supposedly vitally necessary computations?
Beyond judging what's going on in a moral sense, it is also possible to debate the substantive interpretation of the plot. Are the involved humans really derived exclusively from humans? The technology that allowed them the Involverence may in fact have come from some other, more ancient species, as it is hinted at. The source of earthly involverence may be no less alien than the one encountered in the Medusa system. It is also unclear if the biological humans are just remnants of humanity 1.0, or if they have been re-engineered into biological existence by the post-humans -- with the original ancestors of the biological humans just three generations away, as the very first page of the story seems to imply. Adding confusion to chaos (intentionally?) is how Dukaj himself says in an interview that the biological humans are remnants rather than reconstructs.
At the end of the day, having contemplated the contents of the book for several days now, I am coming to the conclusion that -- at least for me -- the theme of the book that most stands out is the flexibility of the concept of the Extensa. We may all have our own Extensas in our lives that allow us to experience beyond ourselves, to have room to exist in beyond the straitjacket of our lives (or to have the illusion thereof). For some, this is provided by fiction. For some, it is specifically the SF universe -- the multiverse, be it in the form of moving picture, written fiction or comics and graphic novels. For others, it will be the study of history, or science, or any particular obsession -- even a human relationship. Identification with a cause, a movement, a community. The list may go on.
Even our own minds are endless universes where memories relate to new experiences the way particles may be communicating entangled across light years.
In spite of some of the issues mentioned above (which may as well be seen as strengths rather than weaknesses), I can certainly recommend the book, and it should be translated to English, to let it become part of the great English-speaking literary Involverence. It may be enjoyable to read and contemplate regardless of how (or how completely) you put together the puzzle of its plot.
Previously reviewed in EUtopias and Other Futures: "Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus" by Bogi Takács (Clarkesworld, 2017)
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