"Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

Introduction



"Notes from the Neogene" is unquestionably one of the most precious relics of Earth's ancient
past, dating from the very close of the Prechaotic, that period of decline which directly preceded the
Great Collapse. It is indeed a paradox that we know much more of the civilizations of the Early
Neogene, the protocultures of Assyria, Egypt and Greece, than we do of the days of paleoatomics and
rudimentary astrogation. While those archaic cultures left behind permanent monuments in bone, stone,
slate and bronze, almost the only means of recording and preserving knowledge during the Middle and
Late Neogene was a substance called papyr.

Papyr was whitish, flaccid, a derivative of cellulose, rolled out on cylinders and cut into
rectangular sheets. Information of all kinds was impressed on it with a dark tint, after which the sheets
were collated and sewn in a special way.

In order to understand what brought about the Great Collapse, that catastrophic event which in a
matter of weeks totally demolished the cultural achievement of centuries, we must go back three
thousand years. Metamnestics and data crystallization did not exist in those days. Papyr performed all the
functions now served by our mnemonitrons and gnostors. True, there were the beginnings of artificial
memory; but these were large, bulky machines, troublesome to operate and maintain, and used only in
the most limited, narrow way. They were called "electronic brains," an exaggeration comprehensible only
in the historical perspective, much like the boast of the builders of Asia Minor, that their sacred temple
Baa-Bel was "sky-reaching."

No one knows exactly when and where the papyralysis epidemic broke out. Most likely, it
happened in the desert regions of a land called Ammer-Ka, where the first spaceport was built. The
people of that time did not immediately realize the scope of the impending danger. And yet we cannot
accept the harsh judgment delivered by so many subsequent historians, that these were a frivolous
people. To be sure, papyr was not distinguished by its durability; but one should not hold a Prechaotic
civilization responsible for failing to foresee the existence of the RV catalyst, also known as the Hartian
Agent. The true properties of this agent, after all, were discovered only in the Galactic Period by one
Prodoctor Six Folses, who established RV's origin as the third moon of Uranus. Unwittingly brought
back to Earth by an early expedition (the eighth Malaldic, according to Prognostor Phaa-Vaak), the
Hartian Agent set off a chain reaction and papyr disintegrated around the globe.

The details of the cataclysm are not known. According to verbal reports crystallized only in the
Fourth Galactium, the focal points of the epidemic were enormous data storage centers calledli-brees.
The reaction was practically instantaneous. In place of those great treasuries, those reservoirs of society's
memory, lay mounds of gray, powdery ash.

The Prechaotic scientists thought they were dealing with some papyrophagous microbe, and
wasted valuable time in the attempt to isolate it. One can hardly deny the justice of Histognostor Four
Tauridus's bitter remark, that humanity would have been better served had that time been spent engraving
the disintegrating words onto stone.
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