I recently listened to an audio version of an old book by a science fiction writer. “The Cyberiad,” by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, was first published in 1965. It is a kind of mixture of science fiction and fairy tales. The idea is that robots in the far future tell their own series of fairy tales, partly explaining their morality and fears.
The heroes of the stories are the constructor robots, Trurl and Klapaucius. In one story, Trurl is travelling in deep space when he encounters another robot which is stuck on an asteroid. Trurl lands on the asteroid and speaks to this other robot. The robot explains that he was the king of one planet, but he was considered such a bad and cruel ruler that he was exiled to this asteroid and cannot now get off the lonely little world. He begs Trurl to take him back to the planet which he once ruled.
Trurl doesn’t want to upset the people of the planet by returning the exiled king. But he feels sorry for the lonely robot. So he promises to build a new world for the cruel king to rule over. He builds a tiny little world full of microscopic creatures, who live and die on a world the size of a little box.
The king is delighted with the gift and starts ruling over the world, threatening to shake the box and cause earthquakes if the inhabitants don’t follow his strict rules and build statues of him.
Trurl flies away and meets his friend, Klapaucius. When he tells Klapaucius what he has done, his friend is angry.
“Why have you created this life and left it to be tortured by this awful king? You have to go back to that asteroid and set the people of the box free.”
Trurl realizes the cruelty he has inflicted on the microscopic creatures. So he and Klapaucius return to the asteroid. When they get there, there is initially no sign of the king, or the box. The whole of the asteroid is covered in tiny cities. Given their microscopic size, the created creatures live and develop much faster than fully sized creatures. They have developed a high level of technology, and they have escaped their box and spread across the asteroid.
Wondering what has happened to the bad king, Trurl eventually sees his frozen body, floating around the asteroid as a moon. It seems that the creatures of the box rebelled against his rule and managed to expel him into space, where he will float above them forever, like a cold, dead god.
All life that can think and feel pain is to be valued, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem, and no matter how humble or artificial its beginnings.
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