What would result from the meeting of two famous science-fiction writers – Stanisław Lem and Philip K. Dick? What if the Polish visionary-rationalist had joined forces with the mad energy of the American author? Among other things, these are the questions Mateusz Pakuła takes on in this play. Lem vs Dick is not however a straightforward attempt at finding the answers, it is more about exploring the limits of imagination (the famous authors and Pakuła’s own) on the one hand, and testing and pushing the line separating fiction from reality on the other.
In Lem vs Dick there is indeed a clash of worlds and characters, but not so much as a realistically presented confrontation between the two authors, but as a result of a gesture by Pakuła himself, who consciously marks this confrontation with his own imagination. Facts carelessly stand here next to fiction, conjectures right next to the truth, at times mixing together and making it impossible to distinguish between them, at other times appearing clearly separated, openly challenging each other. The piece balances between derision, artistic humour and thoughtful reflection on literature, theatre and reality, which is reflected in the varied, colourful language.
It all begins with the (in this case completely true) story of the conflict surrounding the Polish edition of Philip K. Dick's Ubik in Lem's translation. The Polish author could not pay the American writer his due in any other way than in zlotys, and these, after all, were worthless in the United States... In an absurd and amusing telephone conversation, Lem proposes to Dick to come to Poland, where he will be able to spend the money due to him immediately.
Pakuła's piece is divided into scenes depicting the development of this conflict and side episodes: once Dick tries to borrow money from his Mother to come to Poland, another time he denounces Lem to the FBI, exposing him as the alleged leader of an international conspiracy. The Polish writer, in turn, in one scene talks to a SB (a communist secret police) officer who threatens him, in another complains on the phone to Ursula K. Le Guin about Dick. Whose perspective an episode is presented from remains deliberately unclear, and the subjective nature of the narrative is clearly emphasised.
The relationship between Dick and Lem serves Pakuła to confront a series of opposites or simply radically different worlds: rationalism and madness, the West and reality from behind the Iron Curtain, calculated pragmatism and narcotic malaise. At the same time, the diagnoses posed here are regularly challenged by the author, the images painted in the work being erased with a single stroke of the pen. These gestures culminate when the author himself appears in the play as a brain in a jar functioning in virtual reality. Apparently he is trying to write a play about Dick, but it doesn't work out for him because he keeps thinking about his dying father.
It turns out, then, that it is the play with fiction, the artistic creation itself and its relation to reality, that are the main focus of Pakuła's interest in this piece. The layering and interlocking narratives, which are at an ever-changing distance from reality, are a recipe for a performance that is as demanding as it is absorbing in its structure, in which the author's hand remains constantly visible.