Imaginary Magnitude

A collection of prefaces to books that do not exist, including one for a fictional encyclopedia produced entirely by a machine. Lem's machine produces perfect text — every entry impeccable, every cross-reference internally consistent — but with no relationship to reality, because it generated everything from formal rules rather than from experience. A closed system of references that refer only to other references: internally consistent, externally meaningless. A precise description of what late-stage AI model collapse produces. One of science fiction's most rigorous explorations of information, language, and self-referential systems.