Stanislaw Lem Books

This book has a brief, one-chapter biography, and the rest is top-notch literary criticism on Lem's work up to 1985. This is solid stuff science fiction fans, get a copy now!

This amazing book explores our hearts and minds through the metaphor of an alien planet. When psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives on Solaris, he finds himself confronting a painful memory of his past lover, embodied in a real entity. He speculates that the vast ocean of Solaris functions as a massive neural center creating the embodiment of his (and other crew member's) repressed memories. Lem explores our beliefs and ability to understand our universe through inner exploration. Intelligently and sparingly written.

I'm kind of new to the story of Solaris, seeing the film with george clooney, that i really liked and then later seeing the drawn out russion film. Although i know most of the story centers around Rheya and Kelvin, the sci fi side of me wanted to know more about the planet of Solaris. The book does just that, i loved reading along with Kelvin, the main character, how he peruses the library on the space station regarding the first explorations and what they had found. Solaris after all had first been discovered and visited 100 years ago resulting in volumes and volumes of books and film. Also, the book goes into great length to describe the structures that are miles high that Solaris constantly makes and destroys and how some exploration teams had been the victim of staying too long in studying these structures. This background i feel is essential to understand solaris crowning achievement of makeing a human "clone" from memories. I have heard that the hollywood movie of Solaris had much more footage that was cut by listening to the director's commmentary. If this footage contained more background of the planet it would more closely follow the book which really makes it a more complete story. Solaris is great sci fi discovery of an amazing and unique planet, as unique as the description of Arakis (DUNE) with its sandy sees and rock islands. Still, not all is explained in Solaris. Perhaps the unknown left unknown is the best type of story in the end, we keep trying to think of what Solaris is all about, just as the explorers in the story will continue to do.

Kris Kelvin goes to a space station where strange things have been happening. The planet the station orbits - Solaris - seems to be having a strange influence on the inhabitants of the space station and begins to have an effect of Kelvin.

Solaris explores what it means to be human. This is cerebral sci-fi. Fairly heavy going but worth the effort. The central idea of the novel, which I wont give away here, is awfully compelling and Lem conjures up a wonderful character in Kelvin's lover Rhea.

Solaris has inspired two very different films - Tarkovsky's early 70's effort, which will test your patience, and Soderbergh's recent effort, which is actually very good and retains the spirit of the book.

Having seen the film that starred George Clooney and was based upon this book, and having found it wanting, I decided to go to the source. I am glad that I did, as it is certainly better as a book than it is as a film. It is also far more profound than the film, which concentrated on the love story.

This book is much more than that, covering many themes. It is, first and foremost, about contact with an alien entity and communication of a type beyond our comprehension. Is it friend or foe? Who can say, as the source of the communication makes its pitch based upon an individual's memories, some good, and some bad? What it is communicating remains unfathomable. Still, the book provides much food for thought.

I tried to watch Solaris twice (old Russian version, new Clooney version) and fell asleep both times because the going was so slow. Yeah, sorry if you think that brands me as an action-movie-dimwit, but I just didn't like them. Anyway, I had read some Lem before ("Return from the Stars", I think), so I figured I'd give Solaris a try in book form.

The good news is that the book is actually pretty short and mostly moves along briskly. More significant is that Lem does such a great job describing contact, or rather the lack thereof, between humans and... whatever the ocean is.

However, Solaris is also very open ended and leaves you to your own interpretations as to its meaning. Nothing is made clear and you have to be prepared to take the book either at its inconclusive face value, or analyze its philosophical meanings in depth. There is no nice elegant plot and conclusion included in the package. If you tend to ask yourself big questions about the meaning of life and the universe, this is by far one of the best SF books to read. If not (like me), this is still a classic, but may leave you a bit frustrated at the end.

The only question I got out of it is how the ocean, supposedly so alien and unaware of us, can animate its mental projections. Does making a perfect simulacra, complete with memories and speech not imply that the ocean understands us pretty well? Or are the simulacra involuntary and autonomous items that it is not aware of having created? Certainly, Kris's wife doesn't understand what she is, though she gradually becomes aware she isn't human. Neither does she seem particularly interested in gathering useful information out of Kris (but what information would be left unknown at that point anyway?). Maybe she is more of a projection by Kris, in which the ocean is only an accidental facilitator, rather than an interested party?

Also, with this edition, what's with translating Lem from Polish to French to English??? Ever heard of Polish to English translators? It's not that the double translation is that bad, but you do occasionally feel its effect in some weird turn of phrases.

Lovely book dealing with several philosophical issues. A collection of falsely simple short stories with deep insights. Recommended both to adults and children.

I first encountered, The Cyberiad on an optional reading list in college. I would have liked it even more when I was younger, but this book is a classic. Not all the collected fables in the book are up to the same level of quality, but a couple of them are pure genius, and can be read over and over as the years go by.

The Cyberiad is the story of two robots, Trurl and Klapaucius that spend all their time constructing things in a ridiculous attempt at one-upmanship. The competition drives them to great extremes. They sometimes travel to other planets, and meet quirky characters. Each fable has little connection to the others, and the fables don't appear to be sequentially arranged. You can pick a story at random from the book without getting confused once you understand the basic idea of the universe Lem created.

The edition, I own, has tiny drawings, which really add to the story. I dislike the cover art on this new edition, and I hope they did not omit the inside art work. I only wish they had more of the drawings. Some children love this book, and they especially enjoy the art work. The temperament of the child of the child would decide if this book would be a good fit. Not everything in the book is appropriate for younger children, but once a child is old enough to read the book his or herself, this book makes a great gift.

I can see why many of the other reviews either love this book or hated it. Either you appreciate The Cyberiad, or you cannot.

Two stars, ouch. Don't get me wrong, The Cyberiad is filled with episodic comedy that I wouldn't crabbily dismiss. The presentation though gets heavily weighed down, or even flattened, by an overwhelming amount of limp techno-posturing. (I'd give some stars to the translator personally, I think-- sometimes I was shocked when I stopped to consider that the endless wordplay was a labored translation from the Polish. It really seemed that the Polish must have had a large amount of English loan words already in it. If that's not the case, somebody needs to buy this translator a cigar.)

I first read a single story from this book when I was younger ("Gargantua"), and only read the rest of the collection years later. At the time I loved that story-- it stayed on my mind for a long time and that's why I sought out this book-- but my opinion has taken a reverse course.

First, Lem ruins his world by overdoing it with ham-fisted puns. He populates his robotic universe with cyber-creatures. Throughout the narrative, instead of referring to earth dogs, Lem will refer to "St. Cybernards and Cyberman pinschers"-- with an exclamation point. (He means St. Bernards and Doberman pinschers.) Lem ham-fistedly puts "cyber-" in front of many many other words in the book. Why would a completely robotic and cybernetic world use the prefix "cyber-" for anything? It would be redundant, since that aspect would be taken for granted. (We could likewise prefix the names of all creatures on our planet earth with "bio-" and have the same effect.)

For that and similar reasons most of the punning comes off as only so many groaners to me. If you like Richard Lederer's work and puns in general, you'll like this book. No harm done. (A successful one is an inexplicable dragon, or "draganomoly" which even now I laugh at, but it's funny because of the scene, not the pun itself.)

Secondly, even though Lem superficially creates a unique robo-world from his imagination, he strangely resorts to tropes and cliches for much of the book. All the characters and locales have a feudal, ancient aesthetic-- that's fine and good, even great. But he re-imagines it all with an overblown cybernetic veneer. If Lem wanted to write fairy tales about the middle ages, which is what many of these are, he could have ditched the cybernetic veneer and been less distracting. The cliches (a character's "wire-hair stood on end") were tiring but went on endlessly.

Thirdly, the rest of the text is made up of strings of misused terminology from calculus and physics. In all seriousness they seem to have been pulled out of a glossary with no purpose or rationale. Some readers may enjoy that, since there is a newly emerged "math aesthetic" within some segments of popular culture that has no connection to the actual study or understanding of math or science (Real-world example: putting up on the wall a framed painting of a physics formula-- a painting of the formula itself in black and white, looking just like it would look when typed in a textbook).

A critic's blurb on the back cover says "Lem plays in earnest with every concept [...] from free will to probability theory", but asinine rhymes containing the word "stochastic" is the extent of the so-called "probability theory" you'll experience in this book. That is a prime example of the shallow science aesthetic: "probability theory" is referred to explicitly only because that term is oh-la-la techno-babble, not because it has any role in the narrative. The word lazily carries vague connotations of the higher-functions of human thought, that's all.

In summary, too much of the book is based on thematic overbearing wordplay that loses its freshness almost right away. The has a higher concentration of groaners than any book ever written, I'm pretty sure. (Example: Lem describes things as "informational and transformational", which in context has no justification other than that the two words form a (forced) rhyme, and that they have a loose floppy air of "technology" about them.)

Lem's Solaris was better than this, even in an English translation that came through French from the original Polish. In Solaris too there's some shallow scientific/techno posturing, but it was negligible since it made up a thinner layer of the book's content. Plainly put, the scientific bent of Solaris was a straw man, but the psychological core of the story was excellent and stayed with me. Or I'd suggest skipping The Cyberiad and getting Lem's THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS. Lem's indulgent there too, but with enjoyable results. You also might want to check out Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, which is distantly similar to The Cyberiad in its spacey themes but which I liked a lot more. Other than that I strongly recommend Kurt Vonnegut if you're looking for imaginative faux-sci-fi amazements. Vonnegut had and has no rival to the deftness he brings to fictional and non-fictional scientific concepts. (And for the record, the blurb by Vonnegut on this edition of The Cyberiad is a blatant misquote. Any discerning reader would do a double-take.)

If the puns and hollow misused jargon were stripped out, the residue could be commendable. The book isn't terrible. Afterall, I got through it. Meanwhile there are thousands of books out there that have no right to bring anyone past the first page. If I looked way past the drawbacks I have harped on, I could say Lem finds a creative and likeable thread.

I first discovered this book as a teenager, more than 30 years ago. Since then I have read it many times. Recently, I finished reading it aloud at bedtime to my two sons, 11 and 8. They were enthralled. I will never tire of this book and was sad to hear of Lem's death in 2006.

An excellent travel in space and mind by the most brilliant science fiction author of our days!

The 1980s Ella Fitzgerald TV commercial that asks: "Is it real or is it Memorex" comes to mind when reading Stanslislaw Lem's 1974 satirical and thought-provoking futuristic novel. Lem's dystopic narrative foretells of life aspects that have surfaced in today's society. The extreme use of pharmacopeias to control the masses should make us all sit up and take note each time we seek the services of an allopathic physician. Cosmonaut Ijon Tichy virtually stumbles from a violent anarchistic demonstration in Costa Rica while attending the Eighth Futurological Congress, where "benignimizers" or love/feel good drugs are added to the public water supply. Tichy then tumbles into a seemingly utopic world where everyone's needs are luxuriantly provided and where he continually questions: "is this reality or am I hallucinating?" When Tichy finally has access to the reality antidote, a horrifying scene is revealed with humans bunkered in deplorable conditions analogous to today's agribusiness livestock warehousing. Ecstasy anyone?

I was disappointed when this book arrived. For one thing, I felt it was a poor value when I compared what I paid with the size of the book. But, I thought, this is Stanislaw Lem and it's Ijon Tichy, so it should be worth it once I start reading. To me, though, it wasn't. I found the beginning so boring that it kept putting me to sleep. Literally. I flipped through the book hoping to pick up on something that could hold my interest longer but I just couldn't find it. It seems strange to me, since in the original Polish edition this was combined with two now separated works, including The Star Diaries, which is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi books. I guess everyone can have an off day.

What an incredible and disturbing book. Lem is hilarious and his wordplay is genius. He couldn't more perfectly establish a state of Paranoia...

I think you'll love it.

This presents Lem at his satirical, surreal best. It starts with our narrator (Tichy) attending a convention of futurologists. The meeting takes place in a 100-storey hotel in Costa Rica. There's a bit of prophetic reality early on, when conference-goers discuss their steps in dealing with metal detectors at airports - the kind that get you pulled aside for metal fillings in your teeth. We're not quite there, but it's grimly familiar.

Lem's cockeyed take on the future becomes quickly apparent. Tichy's conference swag, like everyone else's, include coupons redeemable for intercourse at a local adult entertainment business. Maybe that will offer some comfort after the day's little annoyances, like seeing the attendee next to him gunned down by conference security - terrible mistake, really, but these things happen. Pay no attention. Things get progresively more surreal as bizarre proposals and arguments come forth. Then civil unrest empties the hotel, dumping Tichy and the into streets being flooded with LTN gas. That's "Love Thy Neighbor," leading to outlandish displays of affection between combatants and everyone else. Tichy is injured too badly for treatment, so he is frozen and sent to the future, when medicine will have improved enough that he can be treated.

That's when things get really strange. It's a seemingly normal world, except that every daily action is driven by drugs. Drugs for calm, affection, religious faith, education, and very specific kinds of hallucinations. It turns out that the hallucations have been engineered by the rulers, to hide -- well, find out for yourself.

This is not just a wild ride through a faulty future and a gaily grim view of what comes next. It's also a wonderful whirl of wordplay. The English version is filled with Lem's own vocabulary, almost-familiar takeoffs on words you thought you knew. But this is a translation from Lem's original Polish, so it's also a tribute to the scholarship and silliness of Michael Kandel, who did the translation. I recommend it highly.

//wiredweird

I have read and reread this book so many times, and it never ceases to make me laugh...then think about how much more relevant this book becomes as the years go by...then i laugh and think some more.

this book is an essential read for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the nature of reality. whether you're 13 or 33 this book will wind your brain up and send it in all directions. So....read it!!!

"His Master's Voice" is a philosophical science fiction novel (actually, it is in part a critique of popular science fiction literature) written by Stanislaw Lem. It is styled as a memoir of a mathematician, Peter Hogarth, who is recruited in a Manhattan-style Pentagon-directed project (code name, His Master's Voice) with the aim of decoding an apparent inter-stellar transmission originating from the Canis Minor constellation. The transmission is a neutrino stream with peculiar properties suggestive of an information-rich signal rather than pure noise. Besides seeming to have a meaningful content the neutrino stream is also found to have properties conducive to bio-genesis.

Lem uses this premise in order to explore a variety of issues, including the possibility of establishing meaningful extra-terrestrial contact, the ethics of military sponsored scientific research (the Pentagon is interested in the possibility that the neutrino code is an instruction manual for the assembly of a new kind of technology with potential military application), Cold War-era politics in which individuals are construed as the purely self-interested agents of game theory, the uses and abuses of technology and the ways in which humans interact with technology and problems of epistemology. Lem is particularly pessimistic about our ability to derive knowledge when faced with the truly unknown - thus, despite a tremendous investment of resources, the HMV project is ultimately unable to arrive at any tenable conclusions regarding the nature of the neutrino transmission (or even, to determine whether it is a message at all or the outcome of a purely stochastic process). The book is also a realistic portrayal of the hermetic intellectual environment within which the HMV scientists conduct their work. It provides insights into some of the professional turf wars and fundamental misunderstandings that exist between scientists trained in different disciplines.

Stanislaw Lem has been called the `Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age' and this is perhaps a fitting characterization. "His Master's Voice" makes no concession to entertainment - the novel contains very little in terms of action. It is a densely written piece that requires the reader's active attention and it is devoted mainly to the exploration of some fascinating ideas and hypotheses. It deals with certain themes similar to those explored in Lem's other novel, "Solaris", which incidentally is a more accessible work and perhaps a better starting place for a Lem neophyte.

His Master's Voice tells the story of a project set up after a "message" is received from outer space. The story is narrated by a somewhat self-satisfied scientist involved in the project.

HMV has little in the way of plot. It is more of an exploration of ideas relating to the source and meaning of the message - and a gentle satire on the machinations of top scientists. It's pretty heavy going and only marginally worth the trip.

If are are thinking of reading this because you enjoyed Solaris (as I did), then you may be disappointed.

Lem should have got the Nobel Prize for this book. It's highly philosophical and somehow wraps up the history of mankind in 200 pages.
A complex signal is received from space, the brightest heads of the world assembled to decipher it, and in the end it turns out that the message may be nothing less than the "DNA" of the universe, the basic instructions for life.
Lem is a very controversial writer: his "contact novels" are brilliant, the early books are good, too, I didn't like his stories so much, though. He doesn't care about the popular definition of science fiction. His books are actually a lot more about science than fiction.
Also be warned: His Master's Voice is damn hard to read, but it's worth every minute. (Maybe read Solaris first to get into the mood.)

Lem's bibliography cosnists of a great variety of books. From fairytales (featuring robots) to incredibly difficult quasi-philosophical works. HMV can be placed somewhere in the middle of the scale.
It can be read even if you're not a scholar, at the same time being a very demanding book. The incredible and unique thing about Lem (whose death was a tragedy to me) is that he was able do describe truly ALIEN beings, their actions by definition impossible to comprehend with human minds. Where other accomplished writers give us descriptions like: "it was a kind of a hive" or "it was game hunter" Lem does not. OK, he gives out some hints, but these are not to be treated as any kind of explanation.
If you want to briefly touch a mystery read His Master's Voice or Solaris. Both masterpieces, they will open your mind to the unknown and make other Sci-Fi novels look ridiculous.
Having read the book, over the last 7-8 years I've been sometimes wondering what really happened in HMV. So far, 1:0 for Mr Lem. Rest in peace, my Master.

Stanislaw Lem's HIS MASTER'S VOICE is a masterful work with issues. The story, simple on its face and straightforward enough, has an alien message sent via neutrino particle waves being intercepted by mid-20th Century humankind at the height of the Cold War. An ever-growing army of scientists from every conceivable discipline are gathered in the desert (think Manhattan Project) to decode the thing. This formidable assemblage quickly begins to resemble nothing so much as the Biblical Tower of Babel. Agendas are on parade, most noticeably that of the American military, always on the lookout for a new mega-weapon (they nearly get their wish). In the end, nothing is resolved and we are left with far more questions than answers. (Beware: some of those questions are themselves quite remarkable, with the power to twist the average mind into an intellectual pretzel overnight.)

What Lem really gets right here is practically all in the Introduction, a stellar piece that had me jotting quotes on bookmarks. The "story," such as it is, doesn't really get going until about the second chapter. Essentially, the depths of human intellectual limitations are mined throughout. Lem's deft use of the desertscape serves to remind us of our hopelessly remote place in the universe and of the sheer vastness of space. Lonesome, indeed.

Where the book goes wrong is in Lem's basic approach. Rendered as a sort of posthumous epistolic diary, there is scant dialogue and very little action. A more dramatic approach would have saved HMV from its utter dryness. My guess is, this time around, Lem only wished a room with enough scale in which to park his ideas, and this he has done to the point where too much of the time the piece resembles more a work of philosophy than fiction. A case of too much telling and not enough showing. Any dependable novelist would recognize the mistake.

In the end, HMV is not a display of Lem the Artist, but Lem the Thinker. And what a thinker he was.

This book has held a spot in my top ten favorite sci-fi books ever since I first read it as a teenager. I was amazed by the divergent thinking Lem uses in his wide variety of space tales. One of my favorites now (although it was too disturbing when I was younger) is the story of the computer/robot monastery, on a planet where every doctrine had been stripped away by scientific discoveries. The monks' reaction to this situation is described so poignantly that even Tichy is humbled. At the other end of the spectrum is the slapstick humor when Tichy enters the time vortexes and finds himself multiplied. I consider this Lem's finest work and I'm so glad it was translated into English!

-- and again, and again. Not quite a novel, but more than anthology, this book assembles twelve travels of the peripatetic Tichy. These voyages are numbered sporadically from 7 to 28. The numerical order of their presentation has nothing to do with the dates of their writing, however. Members of this collection come from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and their non-chronological order of writing reflects the time machine mixups in which Our Pilot has found himself.

If you've never read Lem, then start here. His tone approaches Douglas Adams's combination of the mundane and absurd. The self confident mood is just the opposite of Adams's bafflement and hard-earned paranoia, however. So, when the space spuds attack (voyage 25), our hero and his associates fly boldly out to take on the tubers of terror, on their home turf. The educated, thoughtful tone (voyage 21) creates a startling comment on the nature of pure belief. Slapstick sensibility (voyage 7) parodies "in one door and out the other" humor, using time travel instead of doors and one actor instead of many. Maybe that's one actor taking the roles of many, sequentially and concurrently.

No matter, it's a fine collection, mixing philosophy and comedy in ever-varying parts. I recommend it to readers across a wide range of interests.

-- wiredweird

If you want to have fun - read this book

PS: Did the english translation include 'The Profit from a Dragon' (not sure about the translation) that was an exeptionally funny one (not the best though)

Whether he is infiltrating a planet of rogue robots whose ire against humans shows little restraint or, debating theology with Dichotican monks, Ijon Tichy is almost always willing to go to the ends of the universe for new adventures. (I found it amusing that, in the novel, Baedecker's was still printing travel guides, even for the far reaches of space).

One time, however, his future self visits Tichy to enlist him in heading the THEOHIPPIP effort (this acronym stands for Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning). Tichy is a bit reluctant to take on this monumental project of reworking history so that man will be a better human in the future. Using a chronocycle, those spearheading the undertaking would travel through time to set things right, so to speak. Tichy finally agrees, and there begins his frustration. Many of the historical engineers start using the project for their own grandiose schemes and things quickly run amok. For example, Harry Bosch, who was supposed to be working on perfecting intelligence in earthly species, decided instead to dabble in the formation of all manner of fantastical creatures whose brain power was getting nowhere fast. Ijon had little choice but to strand Harry, and others who had strayed from the goal, in past times. It is there that they used their imagination in other endeavors; Harry took to painting.

The above is just a small part of one of many adventures Ijon writes about in his space journal.

Stanislaw Lem covers many themes in this book and there is much to think about as varying species in the universe voice their views on all kinds of subjects. Every once in awhile, one of the stories might get a bit bogged down in ornate explanation. Then again, there are other moments when some things are left unexplained. But, when our intrepid star traveler has to leave a planet quickly in order to save his life, some things must fall by the wayside.

The best book from Ijon Tichy series. The set of stories is the best I read from this series. The stories, written in various years, show how diverse Lem is. Some of the themes he touches here are very serious, e.g.planet with the 'water cult', planet with 'no identity' people, religious monk/robots, etc. Some are masterpieces of sci-fi humor (multiplication of Tichy on the ship is just the best), some are just a simple fun (twentieth voyage with the attempt to fix the past from the future with the outcome that anything significant that happened to the human race is because of mistakes in trying to fix the history). Highly recommended to anyone (not only sci-fi fans). And by the way - it is totally different from 'Solaris'.

My first thought on the book is for a reader to wait until the end of the book to read the introduction. This book is not for the intellectually weak. The allagorical and symbolic meanings of this book are not easily analyzed nor determined and it takes a few readings just to get the plot straight. Dispite these negative characteristics, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" is a great story, dedicated to satirizing the flaws of a buearocratic society, among many other issues. For English majors looking to analyze this as a part of course study, not much has been written on this particular work, and the articles I have found negate their arguments within the first 200 words. I recommend this book for people who liked the following books, but are looking for something a little more difficult: Nineteen Eighty-Four The Giver or any other dystopian piece of literature.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanslaw Lem follows the adventures of an agent-in-training as he wanders in search of a mission through the vast bureaucracy of a purposeless intelligence agency.

The agent is anonymous. But we can call him K - because the story, the style, and the absurdist message are drawn directly from Kafka (esp. The castle]. K is an everyman, and his agency is an allegory for society. Ostensibly, the agency is the post-apocalyptic remnant of America, but it feels entirely European.

The theme of the Memoirs is that one's search for individual identity (i.e. the mission) is distracted by reflections of the self in other people. Social interaction discloses layer upon layer of identity (like the numberless floors of the agency's building) but no essential purpose. Such a search wraps the individual tighter and tighter in a web of conformity.

In the end, K can no longer imagine leaving the building. He becomes incapable of even attempting a mission, should he ever find one. Even his human rebelliousness turns into tragically reflexive conformity.

Lem's narrative style conveys serious ideas using a simple narrative prose and pervasive, but understated humor. In this respect, Lem writes like Kafka on Prozac - with clearer ideas, faster pace, and more fun. For me, this is the best aspect of the book.

The worst aspect of the book is the introduction. I advise the reader to skip it; with the intro included, my recommendation drops by at least one star. It places the Memoirs in a sophomoric (and entirely unnecessary) SciFi context and draws the connection with America. I speculate that the introduction was added to satisfy censors in 1961 Poland.

Hilarious bureaucratic master-work reduces every paranoid cliche to the realm of the absurd. After a brief prologue (explaining the current state of the world), the memoirs take over the book and create an environment both instantly insane and memorabley accurate. Lem was always the funniest of the sci fi writers- he makes you think, the same time he causes you to laugh out loud. (it's like Kafka mixed with the Marx Brothers.) The un-named narrator will have you rooting for him from the first sentence. Even the final stark scene is somehow uncomfortabley amusing.

I'm a big fan of Lem but I have to admidt he has churned out some bad books. I have read all but two all of Lem's books and this is among his worst (along with Chain of Chance, Eden, the Investigation). Its boring, short, and no way worth [that much money] Instead start out with one of his 5-star books: His Master's Voice, Star Diaries, Fiasco, or Pirx the Pilot.

These memoirs are presented in the foreword as the last remnant of a dead civilization, and its twisted hierarchical organization and jargon justify the archaeologist of the future in thinking that this is the artifact of a bizarre religion. As such, it is a religion that radically cut itself from transcendence: its Temple is a shadowy museum of illusions and deceptions, with no hope whatsoever of receiving the light of order; pseudo-heresies are created by their unknowing priests, revelations are elaborated at will only to be contradicted soon after. This is the world that the book's nameless hero must brave - he experiences several 'signification crisises', going back-and-forth between allegory as a universal rule and a complete negation of sense. The Building in which all the events take place is a sort of fiction-generating machine (like Lem's book itself), perpetually spinning tales, intrigues and conflicts. What makes the book powerful is that Lem equates his reader with the main character, both sharing an elusive mission; the work starts smoothly, until reader and agent are completely immersed in this world of mirrors, crypted informations and thwarted enigmas. The desire to understand remains, but there is nothing to understand as the personal quest (the agent's and the reader's) becomes more and more convoluted and drowned into a complex string of half-truths. A maze of a novel.

For all those readers who may have difficulties penetrating the complexity of Lem's book, I would like to recommend a chapter in Peter Swirski's The Art and Science of S Lem which talks about Return From the Stars in a way that made me see this story from a startlingly different perspective that bears on the most intimate aspects of today's world. By the way, the Art and Science of S Lem is an international collection of essays in which everyone is bound to find something to their liking, also it includes a previously unpublished chapter by S Lem himself!

The other reviews have rightly commented on this books concerns with gender relations. However, in the context of all of Lem's works it can also be viewed another way. "Solaris", "Fiasco", "Eden" and other books are about how alien a new world would appear to human eyes...a far deeper if more pessimistic vision than the typical science fiction where aliens are just funny looking people. Starting from this perspective "Return from the Stars" could be an account of how alien the future would appear. For example, in the beginning of the book the returnee wanders through a gigantic, many-levelled structure of moving ramps, trying simply to find his way out. After awhile the reader realizes Lem could be describing the experience of a medieval person dropped into a modern major airport.

Hal Bregg returns to Earth after a journey that spanned 10 of his years and 100 years at home to find a world unrecognizable from the one he left. He and his crew embodied the loftiest aspirations of a society willing to take risks, even fatal ones, in the pursuit of exploration, discovery, and advancement. Sound familiar? But society in the intervening century now has expunged all possibility of risk. To achieve this, humanity accepts a narcotized solution in the form of betrization--a socially engineered necessity. Hal, full of passion and vigor, is thus a living anachronism and unsure how he will fit in.

With this scenario that seemingly could go anywhere Lem would like, it oddly becomes something of a romance. Please though dont surmise that this a standard love story. The book contains the classic Lemmian effulgence of realities that presciently evoke some of our own: reals (simulated encounters with danger); betrization (aforementioned); an enslaved workforce of robots; electronic books; etc. Without revealing more, the ending confirms Lems place among the pantheon of superb literary artists.

This is a relatively contemplative work by Lem - he saved his blatant humor for other works. Instead, it's a relatively sober story about how thoroughly isolated one can be, even in the midst of a crowd.

The "one" in this case is Bregg, an astronaut returned from an interstellar misson. Perhaps he never hoped to be a hero upon return, but it never occurred to him that no one would care. In the hundred-plus years since his departure, humankind had remodeled itself into a people that could not understand why anyone would venture into space, after an era in which such trips were declared pointless expenses. The returning voyagers are welcomed by their gentle hosts, but largely ignored.

The first part of Lem's story imagines Bregg's utter disorientation in the physical world, filled with unfamiliar words, sounds, and sights; where even a wall isn't necessarily a wall. He's intelligent and adaptable, so moves on to the second level of disorientation: simply having no idea how to have a conversation when so very few concepts or values are shared. This isolation appears most clearly in his attempts at inimacy. Betrization, the process that made this world the gentle idyll that it is, makes him seem like a ravenous beast to the generation around him, an object of fear no matter what he does or says. The danger inherent in his un-betrizated state appeals to some, of course, but it's an appeal that Bregg does not want to hold. After a time, he finds a woman of this brave new world that can accept him. Then, the deepest level of his isolation surrounds him: he simplay has no place in this society. There is no need for his skills, no interest in the heroism and tragedy of his star travel, and no job that he's competent to do. One or two personal ties are simply not enough to anchor him in this alien place.

The very end has a different tone, one that I'll let you discover for yourself - I'll just say that I found it worth the wait. The trip there passes through Lem's evocative writing, including a poetic moment describing the peace and permanence to be found in studying mathematics: "New roads arise, but the old ones lead on. They do not become overgrown." There's also an oddly prescient desciption of Emil Mitke, "... a crippled genius who did with the theory of relativity what Einstein had done with Newton." Back when this book was written, there was no way to forsee Stephen Hawking, today's asymmetric icon of scientific brilliance.

This might not be the best intro for someone new to Lem. I'd recommend his lighter writing to start with. Still, it's a good one.

//wiredweird

This book was disturbing and utterly silly. It should be titled "What would happen if the radical left Feminists took over the world". A completely emasculated society.
I had trouble feeling sympathy for any character. The women who think that violence is evil and men are rapists destroy society in this story. Although set in the future, due to the new order there is no real progress. The driving desire to compete and fight for what you need is gone. Along with all the testosterone apparently.

As a women I hated this society. Although I didn't care for the protagonist's backward thinking either. It was an interesting read if only to see what would happen if a certain small segment of society got its way. Scary stuff.

Though not as ample in the sheer fun category as Lem's earlier outings with Ijon Tichy, this book reunites us with one of the author's most endearing protagonists in a physiological and top-secret caper. The split brain/ double Tichy dilemna somehow does not fall flat, and will make you wonder what your left hand is doing while you're busy on that mouse....

Even at this late stage of his career, Stanislaw Lem was still delivering sharp satire that skewered not just the human condition, but also the archetypes of science fiction. Here, the droll antihero Ijon Tichy is the victim an enemy attack that has severed the connection between the left and right sides of his brain, resulting in the weirdest behavior you'll ever see from a sci-fi secret agent. Meanwhile, Tichy is assigned by Earth authorities to dig up some dirt on what's happening with proxy warfare on the moon. In the most biting aspect of Lem's satire, the nations of the Earth are self-righteously proclaiming "Peace on Earth" when they have merely exported warfare to the Moon, where it is conducted by self-replicating robots and nanotechnology. It turns out that these tech gadgets have evolved on their own in ways their human creators could never comprehend, and some portions of this book are mindbendingly surreal as Tichy tries to infiltrate bizarre mutant technological landscapes. How these technologies end up threatening their Earthbound masters, who had designed them for falsely peaceful purposes, allows Lem to ruminate brutally on the fallacy of war and the pitfalls of technology. The master of sci-fi satire strikes again. [~doomsdayer520~]

Ijon Tichy, our favorite clutzy hero, who has been subjected to "benignimizers," time machines, insane robots and who was responsible for creating the universe, stays a little closer to home in this mind boggling little masterpiece. Lem, although unknowingly, created a strangely prophetic story for Y2K worry worts. The idea of our quest to become more advanced, no matter how idiotic the advancements, leads to our undoing; or for the optimist, a new beginning. I'm intentially being cryptic, as not to ruin the story, but this book is definitly worth its weight in LEM.

Ijon Tichy, our favorite clutzy hero, who has been subjected to "benignimizers," time machines, insane robots and who was responsible for creating the universe, stays a little closer to home in this mind boggling little masterpiece. Lem, although unknowingly, created a strangely prophetic story for Y2K worry worts. The idea of our quest to become more advanced, no matter how idiotic the advancements, leads to our undoing; or for the optimist, a new beginning. I'm intentially being cryptic, as not to ruin the story, but this book is definitly worth its weight in LEM.

This is another novel in a series of stories about Ijon Tichy, space traveller. Ijon Tichy' stories are always fun to read, no exception here - some kind of combination of absurd and science fiction genres (of course, Stanislaw Lem has so much more than this). This is the later work by this master and I do believe it's not his strongest - but even so it is very good. At the same time, for somebody new to Stanislaw Lem I wouldn't recommend to start his journey here - there are better starting points. This book will be better appreciated by somebody already familiar with Lem books in general and with Ijon Tichy stories, in particular.

The invincible is a great story about a ship, the invincible, that has a crew of about 80 people, armed to the teeth with nukes and superior shields. It is on a mission to Reigis III to find out what happened to their sister ship, the condor. Part of the story has to do with exploring the barren planet that contains some seas and metalic ruins, finding the condor and then dealing with what happened and why. Lem is a great writer of hard SF, trying to be very factual and makes sense. The book has been written some time ago though so some points are a little dated such as the warship the invincible being a huge rocket, but this really doesn't detract from the whole story. What happened to the mighty sister ship the condor? This may have been the first book to deal with this type of enemy! Very advanced for the time of this book. Great chapter on the theory of how this enemy evolved on the planet. Recommended!

Great book, just as much of Stanislaw's Lem's books are.

Titanic, unstoppable Spaceship lands on alien world... encounters alien life form that bears an amazing resemblance to the monster in Michael Crichton's "PREY" (only it's much more exciting and interesting in the movie "THE INVINCIBLE" )

Ah, I have to go buy a new copy of this. Mine's in tatters.

I read this after "Eden" and found it to be an interesting book, for it deals with an alien life form which is complex and strange. As in all his books, Lem explores human understanding of a foreign world.

A rather common theme in Lems writing (Solaris, Fiasco) is human encounter with an alien, fundamentally incomprehensible civilisation or "organism". In Lem's view such an encounter is likely to escalate to the level of destruction or surrender because human motives and interpretations are with necessity confined within human frames of reference, no form of closer understanding is possible. In "Invincible" an expedition shall find out the fait of a previous lost expedition. The aggressor (the result of a very particular form of evolution) this time is the alien being a deadly threat because of human presence (or rather, human technology) only. The plot unfolds with many twists and turns typical of Lem and is good entertainment for anyone liking Solaris or Fiasco.

An impressive science fiction thriller, despite the fact that my Ace paperback edition is an English translation of a German translation of a Polish novel.

A military spacecraft lands on an unexplored planet to determine the whereabouts of a lost crew. The story resembles the film ALIENS in some ways, and also the Niven-Pournelle-Barnes novel LEGACY OF HEOROT; although this novel predates those other stories by a few decades. A better way to describe it is to call it a horror novel in a Perry Rhodan vein, for those of you who are old enough and pathetically geeky enough to benefit from that reference. It employs many elements of space opera: laser guns, antimatter cannon, force fields, atomic combat, and other such special effects commonly found in Perry Rhodan and Doc Smith's LENSMAN. But this one has a much creepier tone to it than what you'd expect from space opera.

The theme to the book is similar to that of other Lem novels, like SOLARIS and THE INVESTIGATION, where the heroes find themselves up against increasingly complex and frustrating phenomena. I liked this one better than those two, however. Recommended, but you'll have to look to find a copy.