Why is Yasna immune?

[Historian]

Everyone else seems to get annihilated pretty quickly mentally. Yasna gets her memory wiped, but it's not fatal/total wipe like it is for others. Is this ever explained?

[Exotics]

Originally posted by Historian:

Everyone else seems to get annihilated pretty quickly mentally. Yasna gets her memory wiped, but it's not fatal/total wipe like it is for others. Is this ever explained?

It's explained if you explore enough. Basically, Yasna fell into a natural stupor when she was attacked so the flies deemed her "neutralised" and no longer attacked her.

[teg]

Everyone else seems to get annihilated pretty quickly mentally. Yasna gets her memory wiped, but it's not fatal/total wipe like it is for others. Is this ever explained?

Not in a satisfying way. I though perhaps she'd been taken over and this was deemed an ally.

[LtKillPuppy]

In the book, you see the effects more clearly. The swarm will generally wipe out every mind it encounters (due to the EMP it emits), but the effect isn't applied universally. Some people had their mind wiped so they were adult babies. Some went mad. Others just outright died.

Rohytra is a hint about this varying effect: He has memory loss, and re-lives the same day over and over -- but otherwise seems to be fully rational and in charge of his mind.

The book has no definite explanation of why Rohan (protagonist of the book) survives contact with the swarm, but he wondered if it had to do with his personal constitution -- he was more rational-minded, scientific, and a higher rank compared to the rest of the crew who were mostly just soldiers.

My theory is that Yasna is like Rohan. I remember how she gets upset when she finds her crew had left trash on Regis III, and she muses (like Rohan) that the swarm is just a mindless force of nature.

Like Rohan, she "gets" it first (that Regis III is inhabited by a mechanical lifeform that cannot be reasoned with or understood), and therefore isn't as much of a "target" as everyone else.

It's a similar motif to other of Lem's novels -- the universe is not here for us, and those who realize that are less likely to be consumed by it. As if you seal a dark deal with the unthinking unknown by acknowledging it exists and respect its boundaries.

[Cairn.L]

That's just the way the writer intended it to be.

I mean, most of the time, there is always one person usually the protagonist, who is special and unique, unlike everybody else in this type of story, because otherwise, there will be no person to tell the story, lol!

[P90RUL0R]

It is thoroughly explained if you explore the Condor enough:

https://i.imgur.com/yaHThVs.png

[Faster With Feeling]

I love that quote they use for the game "Not everything everywhere is for us" and I think it's valid, that not everything in the universe when we find it is solely for us.