The Cyberiad: Stories

There was considerable confusion in both armies; the Eightieth Marlabardian Corps, for instance, maintained that the whole concept of “enemy” needed to be more clearly defined, as it was full of logical contradictions and might even be altogether meaningless.

Now these poets were all avant-garde, and Trurl’s machine wrote only in the traditional manner; Trurl, no connoisseur of poetry, had relied heavily on the classics in setting up its program. The machine’s guests jeered and left in triumph. The machine was self-programming, however, and in addition had a special ambition-amplifying mechanism with gl

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.

I immediately sat down and wrote The Scourge of Reason, two volumes, in which I showed that each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death.

It was clear, then, that leaders were a necessary evil; the problem lay in making that evil unnecessary. To go on: the discipline of an army consisted in the precise execution of orders. Ideally, we would have a thousand hearts and minds molded into one heart, one mind, one will. Military regimens, drills, exercises and maneuvers all served this en

Truly, how could a mind, besieged by a sea of paradises, benumbed by a plethora of possibilities, thoroughly stunned by the instant fulfillment of its every wish and whim—decide on anything?

They came from far and wide, carrying trunks and suitcases full of manuscripts. The machine would let each challenger recite, instantly grasp the algorithm of his verse, and use it to compose an answer in exactly the same style, only two hundred and twenty to three hundred and forty-seven times better.

Inaction is certain, and that is all it has to recommend it. Action is uncertain, and therein lies its fascination.

“It is always easier to confess that one has done something wrong than to prove that one has not.

Consciousness, it seemed, formed a deadly trap, in that one could enter it, but never leave.