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Jun. 1st, 2004 09:25 amI was looking up some work by Stanislaw Lem this morning -- The Futurological Congress, recommended to me by a fellow librarian who had listened to me rant, during a slow hour, about how little I desired to see The Matrix, a free showing of which everyone else on campus was going to that night.
"Stanislaw Lem wrote it first," she told me, and since we had a full collection of Lem at our fingertips, I picked up a copy. This was not that long after 9/11, and perhaps that was why the opening chapter struck me. I thought I'd share Lem's precognitive skill by quoting a bit from a book written in 1974:
...some of the hotel furnishings puzzled me - the ten-foot crowbar propped up in a corner of the jade and jasper bathroom, for example, or the khaki camouflage cape in the closet, the sack of hardtack under the bed. Over the tub, next to towels, hung an enormous spool of standard Alpine rope, and on the door was a card which I first noticed when I went to triple lock the super-yale. It read: "This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management."
It is common knowledge that there are two kinds of scholar these days: the stationary and the peripatetic. The stationaries pursue their studies in the traditional way, while their restless colleagues participate in every sort of international seminar and symposium imaginable. The scholar of this second type may be readily identified: in his lapel he wears a card bearing his name, rank and home university, in his pocket sticks a flight schedule of arrivals and departures, and the buckle on his belt - as well at the snaps on his briefcase - are plastic, never metal, so not to trigger unnecessarily the alarms of the airport scanners that search boarding passengers for weapons. (...) I set off alarms in the airports of Bangkok, Athens and Costa Rica itself having six amalgam fillings in my mouth.
As for the Alpine rope, the crowbar, the hardtack and the camouflage cape, one of the members of the American delegation of futurologists patiently explained to me that today's hotels take safety precautions unknown in earlier times. Each of the above items, when included in the room, significantly increases the life expectancy of the occupant.
"Stanislaw Lem wrote it first," she told me, and since we had a full collection of Lem at our fingertips, I picked up a copy. This was not that long after 9/11, and perhaps that was why the opening chapter struck me. I thought I'd share Lem's precognitive skill by quoting a bit from a book written in 1974:
...some of the hotel furnishings puzzled me - the ten-foot crowbar propped up in a corner of the jade and jasper bathroom, for example, or the khaki camouflage cape in the closet, the sack of hardtack under the bed. Over the tub, next to towels, hung an enormous spool of standard Alpine rope, and on the door was a card which I first noticed when I went to triple lock the super-yale. It read: "This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management."
It is common knowledge that there are two kinds of scholar these days: the stationary and the peripatetic. The stationaries pursue their studies in the traditional way, while their restless colleagues participate in every sort of international seminar and symposium imaginable. The scholar of this second type may be readily identified: in his lapel he wears a card bearing his name, rank and home university, in his pocket sticks a flight schedule of arrivals and departures, and the buckle on his belt - as well at the snaps on his briefcase - are plastic, never metal, so not to trigger unnecessarily the alarms of the airport scanners that search boarding passengers for weapons. (...) I set off alarms in the airports of Bangkok, Athens and Costa Rica itself having six amalgam fillings in my mouth.
As for the Alpine rope, the crowbar, the hardtack and the camouflage cape, one of the members of the American delegation of futurologists patiently explained to me that today's hotels take safety precautions unknown in earlier times. Each of the above items, when included in the room, significantly increases the life expectancy of the occupant.
