The Black Mirror (Der schwarze Spiegel)

Eric Simon | published 1983

added Sep 14, 2024
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First Date of Publication
1983
Original Source
Ways to Impossibility (Wege zur Unmöglichkeit)
Additional Publication Information
Collected in "The Black Mirror and Other Stories"
Medium
Short Story
Original Language
German
Translator
Mike Mitchell
Kasman Review
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Not in ISFDB
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Summary: A story about an alien spaceship that brings a one-sided ideal mirror as a gift to Earth.

Story Tag Line: “There were rumors that the gift was of mathematical nature. There was also a mention of a one-sided surface - which made people think of a Mobius strip - but at the same time some kind of mirror.”

Reviews

  • Vijay Fafat
    Published on

    This story is an interesting twist on the idea of one-sided surfaces. Based on Gustav Meyrink’s “The Black Sphere” (“Die Schwarze Kugel”), the story tells us how the human race might be a little immature to handle some gifts from aliens. The “Riddhans”, a technologically advanced race of humanoids 12 lights years from earth have established communication with us and one of their spaceship is now bearing a precious cargo for us. As it goes, “There were rumors that the gift was of mathematical nature. There was also a mention of a one-sided surface - which made people think of a Mobius strip - but at the same time some kind of mirror”.

    Turns out that one side of the disk-shaped object is a perfect mirror which reflects everything with 100% efficiency. The other side is the exact opposite - it absorbs everything and in some senses, does not exist. It is a mathematical boundary; Objects which pass through this abstract boundary on the disk disappear complete (“in the negative dimension”). The exchange in the auditorium where the object is presented is quite tongue-in-cheek and Seinfeldian:

    “Truly an ideal nothing”
    “It is not ‘a nothing’. It is nothing. It is not a nothing, nor is it ideal, it is nothing at all”
    “Strictly speaking, it is not even nothing at all. It’s the other side of something that has only one side”
    “A realized abstraction - and therefore not present in reality”
    “A mathematical surface, which is ideally permeable and yet lets nothing through, since that which goes through ceases to exist.”
    “And what does not exist cannot go through”
    “The audience understood nothing - that is, precisely the topic in question.”

    So what happens now? As the Riddhans put it after seeing how humans plan to use it:

    “I think we should never have come. Bit by bit, they will throw the whole universe into the black hole empty half. That’s the curse of our visit to the Earth, Brother.”

    The story is also reviewed by Adam Robert in “Strange Horizons” (at http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2009/10/the_black_mirro.shtml)