Sierra McCarty, 28 February 2020

Microreading: A fairytale for the human-coded anti-hero in “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface”

Stanislaw Lem’s “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” transports the reader to what appears to be a fairytale, owing to a plot that closely echoes many fairytale archetypes. Valiant heroes venture forth to wake a princess put to sleep by an unrepentant evil, encountering many dangers on their quest (Lem, pp. 898-899).  The heroes’ quests, however, sprawl across a fantastical, glittering, cosmos, and the heroes themselves hail from a kingdom of inorganic, vaguely robotic beings who, aside from their difference in composition, seem very similar to humans. Lem artfully communicates difference between these heroes and humans, however, in the form of this scientific fairytale’s antagonist—the sole human, called a Paleface in this tale, brought to Boludar as a grotesque curiosity who gleefully tricks the kingdom’s princess into giving it the key she needs to wind up her mind (Lem, p. 898). The princess then falls into her archetypal slumber and cannot be awoken, precipitating the events of the tale, in which knights and counts venture forth to slay the Paleface, retrieve the key, and win the princess’ hand as well as the throne of Boludar (Lem, p. 899). Erg the Self-inducting, the subject of the story’s title, is the one to succeed and win the prize, but, contrary to the title’s claim, he does not slay the paleface. Erg’s adventure, as it turns out, is a fabrication, and he wakes the princess through his unique ability to “open any lock” (Lem, p. 905). Erg’s deception is never discovered, and the Paleface, presumably, endures no further pursuit from Boludar (Lem, p. 905).  In Erg the Self-inducting’s underhanded triumph, Lem crafts a cynical fairytale in which honesty is foolish, the initial reading of “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” as a misanthropic tale is refuted.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this joyfully brutal and visually enchanting cosmos is the language with which it is crafted. The nomenclature of Lem’s universe is anchored in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and this familiarity in language and plot creates a “scientific fantasy” that eliminates the conceptual remoteness these vague, complex, inorganic protagonists might confer. Lem’s ability to communicate the curiosity, fear, and confusion the Paleface incites in the inhabitants of Boludar allows the reader to relate and sympathize with these inorganic protagonists and understand what it might be like to see a human from outside the human form. The heroes of Boludar are charmingly defined by their electrical apparatuses—commutators, chargers, and cathodes that speak to an entirely different but no less rigid self-conception (Lem, p. 900). Erg the self-inducting, spilling out of a barrel “in the shape of mercury,” immediately suggests an absence of this rigidity of form (Lem, p. 900).  In fully defining the current shape of Erg, the indeterminacy in the forms of the other heroes of Boludar becomes apparent. Lem intentionally allows for these descriptive gaps such that the reader, aware of the adjectival usage of mathematical, physical, and chemical properties of matter, can cheerfully graft these qualities onto the complex, anthropomorphic by gestalt forms of the metallic protagonists. In an effort to resist abstraction, the human reader has now conjured for their mind’s eye an endearing cast of noble electro-humans that bleed silver, cry tears of precious stone, and have crystals for minds (Lem, pp. 896 and 901-903). These beings can navigate the shining void of luminescent gas and gravity wells, riding sapphire-eyed cybersteeds and wielding remote-controlled sabers in a way the oxygen-breathing lifeform will never be able to (Lem, pp. 900-903). The story is an invitation to consider how strange it is to exist as a biological, carbon-based lifeform that breathes oxidizing oxygen and drinks water, deadly to electronics and completely unable to navigate the universe it inhabits. In this way the story grapples with human exceptionalism, depicting the one human in the story as entirely morally bankrupt—a strange caricature devoid of nuance outside of scheming and referred to as “it” (Lem, p. 897). The human of the story is relayed through the inhabitants of Boludar as a ghastly and incomprehensible bag of deceitful muck, a Paleface, that happily capitalizes on Electrina’s innocence, repulsive even to the human reader when compared to the noble and honest inorganics of the tale.

This blithe misanthropy reading, however, is complicated. While at first the duping of princess Electrina may appear to be cruelty on the part of the dangerously clever paleface, the story itself explicitly rejects the fairytale notion that virtue and straightforward honesty should prevail (Lem, p. 905). The inhabitants of Boludar, at least those rigid in form, appear to be pure-intentioned beings who willingly undertake the dangerous journey to revive princess Electrina and die for their simplicity. Many of the heroes who venture forth and attempt to extract favorable results by brute force suffer for their gullibility and lack of skepticism. For example, the two Automatts Vectorian are crushed by an avalanche of precious stone in the land of the Radomants, who “were allied to the palefaces by a secret pact,” and the selectivites Diodius, Triodius, and Heptodius perish as a result of true natures being betrayed and false directions from starkiller king Astrocida (Lem, p. 900-902). In this tale, doing things the honest way is fatal, and the winners will triumph at the expense of the simple and straightforward. This ultimately confers a great deal of power onto the palefaces—reviled as they may be for the danger their “native cunning” presents (Lem, p. 897). The two winners in “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” are similar in this regard: Erg and the Paleface, the two beings that are not composed of rigid metal, get what they want by deception. Erg gets the hand of Princess Electrina and the kingdom of Boludar, and the Paleface escapes with the foolish Princess Electrina’s key, having had its revenge. Furthermore, even the title of the story is a lie. “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” is not the story of Erg’s method of slaying a Paleface, it is the story of how he fools the monarchs of Boludar into believing he does (Lem, p. 904-905). The triumphant beings of this tale are those who achieve their ends by deceit and manipulation, utilizing the terrifying cleverness and lack of rigidity in thought that make humans objects of dangerous wonder in the universe (Lem, p. 897). Such a message relays an underlying cynicism in the tale—nobility and honesty, as well as proud rigidity of form and thought, are fatal. Erg the Self-inducting is the perfect main character of the story since his defining characteristic is his ability to “assume whatever aspect he desired” (Lem, p. 900).  In Erg’s triumph by subterfuge, he assumes the aspect of the clever, dishonest Paleface.

While the story may appear to be dismissive of humans at first, a closer examination reveals that it is celebratory of the fact that humans are not the rigid beings that favor straightforward honesty. The human, bewildering in the grander logic of Lem’s cosmos, is dangerous not only in its ability to survive where other forms of sentience may not, but also because of the havoc it can wreak with its uniquely clever mind and predilection for maliciousness (Lem, p. 897). Humans may not be well-liked, but they will win through these qualities, and the only way to win is to be like a human. Given that humans, from a human perspective, possess attributes beyond the caricature in the story, it is worth considering what the themes of this story look like, stripped of the novelty of a race of sentient inorganics. Would the difference in characterization then depict caricatures of different social strata? What does the victory by tricking a monarch communicate? The social and historical context within which Lem wrote this story might be illuminating in this regard.

Works Cited

Lem, Stanislaw. “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface.” The World Treasury of Science

            Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell, Little, Brown and Company, 1989, pp. 895-905.