{"id":201,"date":"2016-05-23T07:20:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T07:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=201"},"modified":"2025-11-24T15:01:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:01:57","slug":"review-the-old-axolotl-hardware-dreams-by-jacek-dukaj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=201","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: The Old Axolotl: Hardware Dreams by Jacek Dukaj"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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translated from the Polish by Stanley Bill<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allegro<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 16, 2015<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

160 pages<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t your grandfather\u2019s reading experience, and that\u2019s the point. Jacek Dukaj, Poland\u2019s most famous living sci-fi writer, has created a multi-dimensional text that explores what it means to be a human versus a machine with a human consciousness. The Old Axolotl<\/i> is only being released as an e-book (from Allegro), mostly because it includes layers of hypertext and other digital elements, including diagrams of robots that can be printed on 3D printers. (see the Culture.pl article for more details about the book and Dukaj\u2019s intentions). Dukaj is interested not just in telling a story about human extermination and the rise of robots, but also in how the digital experience is shaping us as humans and how we will read in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent piece that he wrote for the magazine Ksi\u0105\u017cki<\/i>, Dukaj argued that \u201c[t]o read an e-book when everyday one is surrounded by [a] million virtual distractions, is like walking on a tightrope suspended over an abyss during a thunderstorm.\u201d (\u201cBibliomachia\u201d). We are constantly bombarded with images and information, but what happens when humans have disappeared and only the technology remains?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>But let me start at the beginning. It\u2019s a regular day, nothing much is going on, when suddenly the news feeds go crazy about a \u201cneutron wave\u201d cutting down every human, dog, bird, insect (basically all organic life) that is sweeping across the planet. No one knows where it\u2019s coming from, and only the people in the areas hit last have time to upload their consciousnesses into an unpopular and abandoned virtual reality game, InSoul3. How many \u201cmade it\u201d before the wave exterminated all Earth life? 17,946.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of course, it\u2019s not so simple. Many who successfully uploaded and then made straight for the Internet were \u201cdeleted\u201d or otherwise destroyed by a virus. Others had their consciousness corrupted somehow. Some were in the middle of uploading when death hit. Bottom line: it was messy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smart\/lucky ones manage to jump into various kinds of \u201cmechs,\u201d bringing together a consciousness and a body so they\u2019re not just floating around in the cloud. Only in Japan, though, was the robotic technology sophisticated enough for this joining, so what we now have roaming the Earth are Star Trooper Miharayasuhiros, sexbots, irigotchi, and other assorted mechs\/toys. With human consciousnesses.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartek, the main character and former \u201cIT whiz,\u201d refuses to let go of his human side, pining for the past and holding on to his former identity, as if it still exists. Throughout The Old Axolotl<\/i>, Bartek breaks into melancholy philosophical musings, for instance, when he thinks \u201cWe are monstrous shadows and scrapheaps of human beings, the molybdenum despair of empty hearts.\u201d And it\u2019s not just him- many of the other \u201ctransformers\u201d go through the motions of being human, such as drinking, kissing, and displaying emotions. The most pathetically sad moments in the book (in my opinion) occur when the narrator says something like \u201cThey sat and smoked. (Not really. But sort of\u201d). When Bartek becomes frustrated about something, he \u201cdisplay[s] Animal the Muppet beating his head against a wall.\u201d This is how the transformers communicate with one another, using their mechanical bodies to transmit human emotions, desires, and memories. Every time they emote, they must draw upon pop culture references to get their point across.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one of Bartek\u2019s friends points out later, longing for a human past is pointless because even the transformers aren\u2019t human anymore: \u201cInSoul3 couldn\u2019t upload the whole brain\u2013just some currents on the surface, the shadow of its structure, whatever made a good avatar bot\u2026There\u2019d been no breakthrough in the digitalization of minds. Nobody had invented a way to turn IS3 into some magic psychopomp. All the humans died twenty-three days ago. We\u2019re all that\u2019s left.’\u201d Cue discussions about the \u201csoul\u201d and \u201cconsciousness\u201d and what it means to be human.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And where does the \u201caxolotl\u201d come in to all of this? Well, when a bunch of transformers decide to reboot organic life on Earth, of course! While transformers form shifting alliances and fight one another over hardware and server space, Bartek and others congregate at the MIT campus and begin building Humans 2.0 from the work done by biochemists before the Extermination and the DNA maps from the Human Genome Project. One of the life-forms that returns is the axolotl, a \u201cMexican salamander which in natural conditions retains its aquatic newtlike larval form throughout life but is able to breed\u201d (Oxford Dictionaries). The existence of this creature prompts Bartek to rant about its seeming pointlessness: \u201d \u2018An entire life form for nothing, just for the hell of it, from a stupid impulse of evolution. What was meant to be a larval, transitional form ends up reproducing itself. And now look: the monster\u2019s entire adult life turns out to be completely redundant. Just a freak of nature. Why does it exist? Why?’\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why indeed. After all, human evolution was also \u201cfreestyle.\u201d And what purpose did it serve in the universe? What was the point of its existence, and what will happen now that it\u2019s been wiped out? The machine-made humans, despite their outward appearance, are not \u201creally\u201d humans, the transformers concede. They, like the transformers, are merely performing humanness.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won\u2019t spoil the ending for you, though it\u2019s pretty haunting and also disturbing. Ok, I\u2019ll just say that it has something to do with aliens.<\/span>
So if you\u2019re interested in expanding your usual sci-fi repertoire, check out this experimental text from one of the great living Polish writers.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(first posted on SF Signal 4\/9\/15)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

translated from the Polish by Stanley Bill Allegro March 16, 2015 160 pages This isn\u2019t your grandfather\u2019s reading experience, and that\u2019s the point. Jacek Dukaj, Poland\u2019s most famous living sci-fi writer, has created a multi-dimensional text that explores what it means to be a human versus a machine with a human consciousness. The Old Axolotl<\/p>\n

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