"Stanislaw Lem. Sexplosion " - читать интересную книгу автора

Stanislaw Lem.

Sexplosion


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© Copyright Stanislaw Lem
© Copyright Alexei Novikov , translation
Date: 04 Dec 2003
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Stanislaw Lem "Sexplosion". 1971.
Translated to English ┐ 2003 by Alexei Novikov

Review of a (fictional) story by Simon Merrill "Sexplosion" (Walker and
Company - New York)

If you believe the author - and we are more and more often told to
believe the writers of science fiction - the current inflow of sex in the
eighties is to become The Great Flood. But the events of "Sexplosion" take
place twenty years later - during the harsh winter in snowy New York. An old
man, who remains unnamed, sinking in deep snow and bumping into cars buried
under it makes his way to an abandoned skyscraper, takes out a key, warmed
by the last bits of the old man's bodyheat, unlocks the iron gates and goes
down to the basement levels. His wanderings interleaved with flashbacks are

what make up the novel.
The dark underground, whose walls become lit by the beam of the
flashlight, turns out to be something between a museum and a part of an
exposition (or, more appropriately, sexposition) for a powerful concern,
evidence of those memorable years when America conquered Europe once again.
Half manual manufacturing of Europeans clashed with an unstoppable pace of
conveyor production, and the post-industrial scientific-technological
colossus quickly won over. Three corporations were left on the battlefield:
"General Sexotics", "Cybordelics" and "Love Incorporated". When the volume
of production of these giants reached its peak sex, out of private
entertainment or group exercise, hobby or amateur collectioning, grew into
the philosophy of civilization. McLuen, who lived to that time still a stout
old man, proved in his "Genitocracy" that it was the destiny of mankind once
it stepped on the road of technological progress. That ancient rowers,
chained to the galleys, loggers of the North with their woodsaws,
Stephenson's steam engine with its cylinders and pistons defined the rhythm,
type and meaning of the motions that defined copulation as the main event of
human existence. After adopting the complications of sexual positions of the
East faceless business changed the medieval shackles into unchastity belts,
occupied artists and designers with creation of copulators, megapenises,
vaginettes, sexariums and pornomats, started the sterile conveyors that
continuously produced sadomobiles, lovistors, home sodomizators and public
homorobots, and founded research institutions that started a struggle for
emancipation of both sexes from the duty of procreation.
From that point on sex became not a fashion, but a faith, orgasm - the

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