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CyberJoly Drim

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"CyberJoly Drim" is a cyberpunk short story by Polish author Antonina Liedtke [pl]. In the story, the heroine abandons her body in favour of a digital existence. The story was first published on her personal website in 1998. It was then published in Fenix magazine in 1999 and won the most prestigious Polish award for science ficiton and fantasy stories (n the Janusz A. Zajdel Award).

The story caused a controversy in the world of Polish science fiction and fantasy, as after it won several awards, it was heavily criticized by several critics connected with the leading Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine "Nowa Fantastyka", who themselves have in turn been criticized by others. Critics had differing views about it, with detractors arguing that its popularity is related less its literary value and more to its theme, signifcantly influenced by the emerging Internet culture. Supporters of the story emphasized its literary values ​​and themes; it is also possible that the negative opinions about the story were related to the hermeticism of the Polish fandom. with the participation of the author of the story was not closer.

Plot

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Jola is a computer graphic designer working on the Internet. She doesn't like her real life. Her husband bores her, her physical needs are unimportant. She finds fulfilment in cyberspace. There, she once found her fascination - a person with the nickname Carramba. Longing for him, she sent a humorous letter-song to a romantic website, which unexpectedly becomes a hit on the charts. Then she created an animation that became even more popular. When she finally met him, they got married, but her life quickly turned munande again. Jola, disappointed with her life, with the help of friends she made online, decides to completely cut off herself from the physical world, donating elements of her body to the bank, leaving only from the mind connected to the Internet.

Awards

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It won the Janusz A. Zajdel Award for best short story in 2000.[1] It also won the Srebrny Glob [pl] ("Silver Globe") award[2] and the On-line Award by Fahrenheit magazine.[3]

Reception and analysis

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Before the text reached the editorial office of the magazine "Fenix", it was rejected by Maciej Parowski, editor-in-chief of the leading Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine "Nowa Fantastyka".[4]

After the story was awarded prizes, the editors of "Nowa Fantastyka" noticed the importance of the text, placing a separate section "Critics about CyberJoly Drim" in the January 2001 issue. Three reviews appeared there - by Jacek Dukaj, Marek Oramus and Parowski.[5]

Parowski's opinion was moderate. He admitted that "[the text] was captivating in its linguistic and situational consistency in presenting the world of internet culture", however, "its mental monomania and action-oriented triviality" and excessive length were off-putting. At the same time, Parowski considered that the story satisfies "mythological and sociological needs of a very large group of internet users", as a text that debuted on the internet, and he considered the awarding of the Zajdel Prize to the story as the result of "promotion by a certain group" (internet users and young authors).[5][6][7]

Dukaj took a different stance, evaluating the story positively and criticizing Parowski for "failing to see the values ​​in the text that most readers and writers have seen, despite being pointed out to him." He stated that Parowski neither understands nor appreciates the culture of the Internet, which is a significant part of this work. Dukaj, who himself voted for the story to receive the Silver Globe award, considers it a "good, the best of those printed in 1999, [...] and important" text, if not outstanding. According to the writer, the author successfully combined the thread of a "banal love story" with "internet-related details," creating a realistic story in the cyberpunk genre, which he sees as "a pioneering work in Polish SF."[8]

Oramus responded to both Parowski and Dukaj, siding with the former; his review was considered the most critical.[5] Oramus admitted that neither he nor Parowski "feel connected to the Internet subculture from which the story originates". He described the story as banal and devoid of literary value ("Lietke's sentences hit the reader on the head like flails, like mauls, it is difficult to finish them in their tedious manner, because boredom is everywhere..."); he also assessed the story as not sufficiently fantastic and criticized members of the Polish fandom who voted for the story to receive awards as not having good enough taste[9].

A month later, Oramus was criticized by Konrad Wągrowski, who wrote for the fanzine "Esensja [pl]" that Oramus, who "knows nothing about the Web," is unable to appreciate the key element of the story, which is the "incredibly refined futuristic vision of the Web, a vision that is coherent and results from observation and extrapolation of the contemporary Web." Węgrowski additionally criticized other arguments of Oramus, such as his opinion that the story is "weak literarly," as subjective and poorly argued. He also rejected Oramus' argument that the story won because of the votes being dominance by fans of the Internet, pointing out the Silver Globe award is awarded not by Internet users, but by writers, many of whom are older people, not avid Internet user; he considered Oramus' review to be offensive to the younger members of the fandom. Finally, Węgrowski criticized the summary of the story provided by Oramus, suggesting that he "either did not read CyberJoly Drim or did not understand anything from it".[10]

The April issue of "Nowa Fantastyka" featured a series of polemics with the texts by Parowski and Oramus in the form of six letters to the editor; of the published letters, four defended the story and one criticized it.[11]

In 2004, Wojciech Orliński wrote positively about the story in "Gazeta Wyborcza", writing that the story "brilliantly reflects" the problem of how for some people the "virtual" world is more interesting than the "real" one.[12]

A few years later, in 2008, Andrzej Zimniak wrote critically about Liedtke's text in "Nowa Fantastyka", considering the work to be "literarily mediocre", and the awarding of the prizes to it to be a "blunder" of the principle that "good works are honored". Zimniak additionally criticized the story's author, writing that "she was the only one of the Zajdla laureates who had never written anything, either before or since, that would be heard in the community".[13] Krzysztof Głuc also criticized the story in 2011, writing in "Czas Kultury [pl]" that its award was "a phenomenon and a sign of the times, because it was published on the Internet and written in Internet slang - and these are basically its main advantages".[14]

In 2010, Grażyna Gajewska [pl] analyzed the story from the perspective of feminist literary criticism and the relationship between humans and technology. She focused on the heroine's marginalization of her corporeality and the simultaneous presentation of cyberspace as a space friendly to women.[15][5] Similarly, in 2021, Przemysław Czapliński stated that the heroine's abandonment of her body in favor of an online existence "constituted a form of rebellion against the patriarchal appropriation of the body that dominates in real life".[16]

Maria Głowacka, writing in 2013 for "Wielogłos [pl]", concluded that the story aroused significant controversy in the Polish fantasy community. She believes that the controversy and criticism were related to the fact that the author was a woman from the Internet community, while the negative opinions about the text in industry magazines were made "exclusively by male writers-critics", which, according to her, indicates the "closet nature of the Polish science fiction industry". The researcher criticized the review by Zimniak, which, in her opinion, clearly states that "it was a mistake to award the prize to someone who [...] had not previously belonged to the science fiction and fantasy community", which she considered to be proof of the aforementioned closeted nature of that community. She also took a negative view of Oramus's review, stating that he had devalued the work by deliberately underestimating its value and using simplifications and jargon in his review to support Parowski and to criticize the justification for awarding the story any awards. She noted that the story's significance was "recognized... by Gajewska's gynocritical perspective." Głowacka herself gave a positive assessment of elements of the story, such as the use of flashbacks.[5]

In 2022, Stanisław Krawczyk located the rejection of the story by Parowski and Oramus in a dispute that was going on at the time between them (primarily Parowski) and a group of fans and critics from the Polish science fiction and fantasy fandom, whom Parowski labelled "fans of entertainment fantasy".[17] At around the same time, Parowski himself, in his autobiographical book on the history of that community, mentioned Liedtke's story in the context of his "unwise war on fandom" and admitted that he "missed the real change in audience tastes".[18]

Author

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Liedtke is a graduate of librarianship and information science from the University of Warsaw and worked in the library and publishing house of Warsaw University of Technology, and then in the Publishing School of Economics. C. 2010 she was a New Media Director in the publishing house Runa [pl].[19] She wrote another short story, Psychika ofiary (Psychic of the victim), published in fanzine Framzeta [pl] in 2000.[20]

References

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  1. ^ "Laureaci Nagrody Zajdla". zajdel.art.pl. Archived from the original on 2006-07-15. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  2. ^ "Srebrny Glob". Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  3. ^ "Nagroda On-Line". Fahrenheit. 1999. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  4. ^ Jacek Dukaj (2001). "Sny następnego pokolenia". Nowa Fantastyka (1): 72. Archived from the original on 2010-03-17. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  5. ^ a b c d e Maria Głowacka (2013). "Wstęp do teorii trzech kręgów kobiecej prozy science fiction w Polsce. Na przykładzie twórczości Antoniny Liedtke i Anny Kańtoch". Wielogłos (in Polish). 4 (18): 122–125. ISSN 1897-1962. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  6. ^ Maciej Parowski (2001). "Gusta i marketing". Nowa Fantastyka (1): 73.
  7. ^ Parowski, Maciej (2011). Małpy Pana Boga. Słowa. Narodowe Centrum Kultury. p. 485-486. ISBN 978-83-61587-72-9.
  8. ^ Jacek Dukaj (2001). "Sny następnego pokolenia". Nowa Fantastyka (1): 72. Archived from the original on 2010-03-17. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  9. ^ Marek Oramus (2001). "Teoremat Lema". Nowa Fantastyka (1): 72-73.
  10. ^ Konrad Wągrowski (15 February 2001). "Esensja: 'Fantastyczne podróże: Problemy panów O.'". Esensja.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  11. ^ Górska Danka: Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....); Jezierski Łukasz: Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....); Tojza Radosław J.M.: Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....); Krawczyk Krzysztof P.: Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....); Mariusz Przybysz Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....); ; Olszański Tadeusz A.: Nowa Fantastyka 2001 nr 4 s. 2 (list do red....)
  12. ^ Wojciech Orliński (12 April 2004). "Nomadzi cyberprzestrzeni, Sinha, Indra". wyborcza.pl. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  13. ^ Andrzej Zimniak (2008). "Nagrody i plebiscyty". Nowa Fantastyka (2): 75.
  14. ^ Krzysztof Głuch (2011). "Recenzje [Dajcie spokój z tym realizmem]" (PDF). Czas Kultury (in Polish). XXVII (3): 144–170. ISSN 0867-2148. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  15. ^ Grażyna Gajewska (2010). Arcy-nie-ludzkie: przez science fiction do antropologii cyborgów. Poznań: Wydawn. Nauk. UAM. ISBN 978-83-232-2141-8. OCLC 702678826. Retrieved 2024-07-19. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |opis= ignored (help)
  16. ^ Przemysław Czapliński (2021). "Zaplątani w bunt". Teksty Drugie (in Polish) (6): 7–15. ISSN 0867-0633. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  17. ^ Stanisław Krawczyk (2022-10-11). Gust i prestiż. O przemianach polskiego świata fantastyki (in Polish). Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar. p. 149-150. ISBN 978-83-66849-57-0. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  18. ^ Maciej Parowski (2021-08-24). Wasz cyrk, moje małpy. Chronologiczny alfabet moich autorów. Tom 2 (in Polish). Wydawnictwo SQN. p. 268. ISBN 978-83-8129-632-8. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  19. ^ "Company information". Runa (in Polish). Archived from the original on 16 April 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2010.
  20. ^ "Framzeta 8 (2000)". Katalog.Czasopism.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2024-08-03.
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