Jacek Dukaj is Poland’s most popular science fiction author. His work has been adapted for both film and a Netflix original series. He is the recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature and an inductee of the European Science Fiction Society’s Hall of Fame.
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What up and coming SF writers are on your radar?
To be honest I’m not so well versed in who’s who on the SF-scene anymore. I still enjoy reading writers like Neal Stephenson and Ted Chiang, but probably don’t know who the new kids on the block are. Over the last decade or so, I’ve been writing mostly non-fiction, becoming more and more involved in the work of think tanks and the public discussions, trying to shape the public discourse in Poland about technology, democracy, large-scale civilizational changes (e.g. the shift to the culture of post-literacy). I’ve also become the CEO of Nolensum, a startup developing games.
Tell me more about this ‘public discourse’ thing.
Well, for one thing I’ve become here the ’go to-guy’ for all things AI, especially related to culture, art. Obviously, I had been writing about it in my fiction, but mostly it happened thanks to my non-fiction writings published before Chat GPT became global phenomenon. Particularly thanks to the essay titled Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which turned out to be prophetic. But I also care about where my country is heading. Poland is growing rapidly. Some analysts say we’re on track to surpass the UK in GDP per capita. With this power—economic, military, political—comes cultural sovereignty, and this is something we need to be prepared to nurture, to plan ahead.
Why is that important to you, important to Poland?
Because currently we are functioning as a periphery in the world-system; its centers are in Berlin, in Brussels, in the US. That’s where all the rules are set that we subconsciously accept. And not only accept, but become addicted to, really. We need to start setting those rules ourselves.
What types of rules are you referring to, and how can they manifest?
It all starts at the level of values. And whether you’re for or against a certain hierarchy of values, emanating from a superpower such as the US, you’re still under its spell. There’s no way to win, unless you become powerful enough to start creating your own hierarchies of values. Often these are no simple reflection of your culture; rather they serve to justify the international order you profit from. I’ll give you two examples. After World War II the United States realized they have most to gain from global free trade – consequently, for over half a century the whole West lived and worked according to the values of free exchange of goods and ideas. It’s starting to change only now, when the US is again turning to isolationism and protectionism. And consider the situation of Germany’s industry. When their captains of industry realised that Germany’s demography can’t support their business model anymore, Wilkommenskultur (open-door immigration policy) begun and the whole EU had to reorient itself accordingly. Yet historically, there hasn’t been one single example of a nation doing this in a premeditated manner, ahead of its economic rise and its practical needs. It’s been always an emergent effect of amassing enough power. For example, when a nation is powerful enough to foster the kinds of companies that gain global dominance, which is currently true of the US, you export your value system almost automatically, as a by-product of that position. But this I think is about to change. We know enough now about how the individual human mind works and how networks of human minds work, to start set values more consciously, by means of cultural engineering, if you like.
What are Polish values?
Incidentally, they have a lot in common with American values, which explains why there’s always been a great cultural affinity between these two nations. Poland used to have a disproportionately high percentage of nobility; we’re talking something like ten percent of the population during the 16th and 17th centuries. The country consisted of a patchwork of geographically and culturally independent units. For that reason, there was very little respect for an overarching national ruler. Even our kings were elected and depended on the agreement of “free individuals”, i.e. masses of noblemen. This has created a culture where people highly value their individual freedoms and instinctively distrust state. A slightly anarchic culture, one could say.
I have an impression that Poles are generally Euro-sceptics, can this be explained by your narrative?
No, because your impression is wrong. Poland has had one of the highest levels of pro-EU attitudes. It’s true that that has been slowly changing over the last two years, but still it’s very high. The change, I think, is mostly due to Russia invading Ukraine, which has fundamentally changed the dynamics in the whole of the EU. It was the first time when Poland, with its immediate and all-in strategic support for Ukraine, went against Berlin, and succeeded. And we are still concerned that Germany and most of “the old EU”, given the slightest opportunity, will go back to “business as usual” with Putin. Because for them Russian imperialism is an economical inconvenience; for us – an existential threat. There’s no easy way to overcome this fundamental difference in strategic interests. Also you have to count in something of a backlash against the European Green Deal, which means sky-rocketing energy prices.
Let’s switch track a bit and talk about space, a shared interest of ours.
Yes, let’s.
As an SF writer, what are you most excited about when it comes to this new space-age we’re currently living through?
Well, I know it sounds a bit clumsy to use this word, but for lack of a better label let’s call it the geopolitics of space. We’ve had humans in low-Earth-orbit for decades, and now we’re getting ready to colonise the Moon. That’s the ultimate ’high ground’ in the military sense of that term, which is obviously why the US and China are racing for dominance there. But what happens beyond the Moon? Geopolitics have always been, well, geography-based, but beyond the Earth-Moon system there’s no geography, no map, because Earth-Moon and the rest of planets are moving around the Sun at different speeds on different eliptical orbits. Instead of an unchanging map we have there a very complicated clockwork. In lack of fixed reference points, what will be the basis of this ’geopolitics of space’? The calculation of travel times from point A to point B, the cost of fuel, the cost and probability of this or that power destroying the ship on a given route. Kind of probabilistic gravitational matrix of the Solar System in constant motion.
You started writing SF when you were 16 years old. Now you’re 50. Does the future look different to you from this vantage point? Do you find it easier or harder to be optimistic about it?
Those labels ultimately depend on how you define what’s good and what’s bad, and I’m not really sure I can answer this question for you. Also, the futures I imagine in my books are almost never extrapolations of the present, that’s not what I use SF for. Rather, I usually start with some off-the-wall crazy assumption and go from there. Like for example, in my novel An Ideal Imperfection (not available in English), I began by asking what is the ultimate problem that every intelligent species would hit up against, given our particular set of laws of physics.
OK – spoiler alert – what is the answer?
It’s about the speed and effectiveness of processing information. That’s what gives you the crucial advantage in fight for limited resources with other intelligent beings.
Richard Feynman said that a quantum computer would be the ultimate computer, that no other computer, even in theory, could process information faster or more efficiently. We’re on the verge of now building such computers, does that mean the future already arrived?
No no no, that’s thinking way too small. Hundreds years from now when people look back at quantum computers it’ll be laughably underwhelming. I’m imagining a future where it becomes, eventually, possible to engineer the very laws of physics themselves. From there on out, all bets are off. Philoshopically, it’s not unlike the vision of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was born in the late 19th century. He coined the notion of an ’Omega Point’, which he defined as the ultimate goal of evolution, where humanity and all intelligent beings in our universe converge towards a final state of consciousness and divine presence. That’s thinking big. Compared to that, we’re currently in the amoeba stage, quantum computers or no quantum computers.
People talk about ’first principles reasoning’. It seems you’re applying that attitude to storytelling?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this was always my approach.