Astonishingly inventive book that makes no effort to justify itself. People fly to faraway planets, hollow out moons, build ridiculously intelligent machines, and generally disregard physics altogether. It is the first book of its kind that I have read, and while it does not suit my tastes, I’m so glad to have had the indulgence into the mind of someone who thinks so differently.
While it mostly talks about men making fantastic machines, they are in fact mostly artificial intelligences designed to outwit their purpose. In fact, the whole work consists mainly in inventing super-intelligent machines designed for specific purposes, and then working out how to defeat each machine as it proves either too successful or the recipient fails to make payment on it. All the machines, and especially the resolutions of the dilemmas they create, are incredibly original, creative, and abstract; it is almost super-human to have been able to create this work.
It does suffer from the Terry Pratchett problem: the relentless intensity of the delivery of the spiel does become incessantly tedious. At some points the story becomes extremely layered, with stories inside stories narrated by friends of acquaintences, but at that point this reader could not be bothered trying to keep up, and just read each story as a short in its own right; the procession of stories falling successively to the forgotten corners of my mind.
One can’t help thinking that the translator has done most of the work in bringing this book to life, as it depends on a very deep understanding of the English language; it is crammed with unusual words, including many made up ones which nevertheless fall within the structure of the language.
There are some gems amongst the wild cascade of prose (which often falls into loose poetry), such as, “Too much beauty undermines the marriage vows, too much knowledge leads to isolation, and too much wealth produces madness.”
Reading this book has been an experience that I would never want to have missed. It opens up a whole new angle on where the human mind can wonder.