Stanislaw Lem Books

Here Stanislaw Lem embarks on a pretty unique method of satire - reviews of nonexistent books. Most interestingly, Lem takes the opportunity to advance his own ideas on technology, ethics, and logic while satirizing both writers and the literary criticism establishment. Getting a grip on these multiple levels of satire is the key to understanding Lem's purpose in this book. In several "reviews" here, he skewers literary criticism by pretending to be an exaggerated version of an academic critic, first by criticizing his own nonexistent longwinded introduction to this book, then by over-analyzing his fictitious books to the point of solipsism. Examples include critiques of a book that is apparently about nothing and another book in a language spoken by neither the writer nor the critic. All the while, Lem satirizes the ridiculousness of such endeavors with ironically overblown professor-isms like "The self-novel is a partial striptease; the antinovel, ipso facto, is (alas) a form of autocastration." Just like you would find in any literary critique written by a professor wishing to impress no one but another professor - a phenomenon that deserves to be satirized.

Lem also "reviews" several fictitious books that adapt the themes and plotlines of old classics to modern settings, which in the real world is the type of literary reinvention that is often slavishly over-praised by academic analysts - making Lem's satire necessary in bringing all these eggheads back down to Earth. In other "reviews" here, Lem provides commentary on the fictitious scientific and philosophical theories of his fake writers, providing him with a very sneaky method of advancing his always interesting thoughts on those same topics. Meanwhile, some brutal social satire (an underappreciated strength of many of Lem's proper novels) pops up in his "reviews" of fictitious fictional works. This book often seems to be the work of boring over-analytical ivory-tower scientists and snobs, but that's exactly who Lem is satirizing, in a sly fashion that would probably go right over their lofty heads. [~doomsdayer520~]

Creative and thought-provoking, Lem delves into the realm of the "unwritten." Being both playful and serious at the same time, this book is very smart.

The collection of essais (forewords or afterwords) on non-existent major books of our future. Perfect food for thought, but rather bleak in reading comfort - a little bit too dry and condensed. It's not a blood thriller(s), even if dissecting thrilling matters.
Anyway, it is a must for any real SF fan. Especially after Star diaries, Futurologic congress and things like Peace on Earth and Fiasco.

...must have been Stanislaw Lem's predicament. He had the ideas for a good dozen novels, but didnt' actually feel like writing them, so he wrote reviews of them. The kind of reviews that thoroughly give away the plot.

Well no, that's probably not what happened, but it amuses me to pretend it did.

A Perfect Vacuum is a collection of reviews of non-existing books. In fact, some of them (Gigamesh, written using a battery of computers supplied by IBM, foremost) couldn't even exist. Other books ("Rien du tout") would probably be excrutiatingly boring. Others ("Gruppenfuehrer Louis XVI") sound so good I wish someone would actually write them.

Some of the reviews are lighthearted, commenting mostly on the story. Others, however, wax philosophical about the author's ideas,
and there is my problem with this book. Some of the reviews seem to me polemics against certain literary schools. But if Lem first needs to set up a caricature of something in order to shoot it down, isn't that just a strawman argument? Also, if Lem writes a brilliant review of a very bad book, can I be forgiven for asking `what's the point'? If he writes (review of "Les Robinsonades") about `the full boorishness of the blunder' of the author, am I to find him clever for pointing out an error that he first himself introduced?

However, despite these objections this is a wonderfully inventive book, and many of its chapters have a timeless quality that makes me reread them time and time again.

I forget when I discovered Lem - in college? -- but A PERFECT VACUUM remains one of my favorite works and I'm delighted it's still in print (it may have been out of print once). Lem packages a collections of fake book reviews of nonexistent books, written in a delightful broad array of styles and voices. His wry humor lights every page. He includes a scathing review of his own book !! Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys satires and highbrow whimsy. (If you like this, try Julian barnes: Foucault's Parrot, or,History of the world in 10.5 chapters.

Recommended to all Lem scholars, science-fiction fans, literature lovers, and people who like to look beyond literature. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though it's not exactly Sunday reading.

I did not know anything about Lem before--this is a great and utterly challenging introduction to just about anything that Lem wrote about: contemporary culture, literature, science, philosophy. I admire the interviewer: it must have been a difficult task of arranging and editing (and translating) these talks. I read this book and bought a few Lem novels--what a treat! I recommend A Stanislaw Lem Reader to all who love literature and are of reflective nature.

A lot of information for being approx. 150 pages as every single page contains pertinent content. (In other words, there is not one single wasted line or sentence.) Very strong writing with a nice flair as it focuses on the interdisciplinary side of Lem's novels, rather than being just an ordinary literary review. The interviews with Lem are also thought provoking; since it allows Lem's "voice" to be "heard". However, it is a little dense and at some points may be difficult to decipher exactly what the author or Lem is trying to say as both use vocabulary that is not quite "layman's terms". Still, overall it does give good insight to Lem and is a useful introduction to Lem's works. In addition, the author's focus (how literature interacts with science and society)is a breath of fresh air compared to what is usually circulating around in the guise of literary criticism!

The book is unusual, no doubt, for a "reader;" actually it's hardly a Lem reader as such. It consists of a long critical introduction/analysis plus a couple of long interviews on everything under the sun and a translation of a major (and mordantly Lemian) piece on computers, virtual reality, and its ab/uses.

Much as I enjoyed it, I liked another chapter on Lem much more, this one is in another book by Swirski, From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Entire chapter six is on Lem's Chain of Chance, and it's brilliant, written more like a cross between philosophical journalism and a reader's guide, check it, it's a classic

This slim volume isn't as much an introduction as a motley collection of interviews with Stanislav Lem, through which the author attempts to expose Lem's personal ideology. There is an overview of Lem's works - courtesy of the author, a pair of interviews (1992 and 1994), and a short essay written by Lem about his futurological masterpiece, "Summa Technologiae" (1964, essay written in 1991). The first problem the book runs into is that it's not particularly informative. I really hoped for a deeper analysis of Lem's works. In the interviews, Lem merely uses them to exemplify his beliefs. Furthemore, Lem himself comes off a bit patronizing and self-promoting. He repeatedly makes smug comments about his literary competition, several movements in philosophy, and a particular Polish critic who wrote an unduly scathing review of "Summa." Lastly, a good deal of the interviews become redundant. Lem's responses run long, and he manages to bring most to the followings few conclusions: the world can never be perfectly understood, or even fathomed; moderation is the safest philosophy - tertium datur; truth is in the eye of the beholder; language compromises any attempts at hard analysis; anyone who fails to believe that is misguided. Now that I think about it, Lem sounds very much like his GOLEM XIV. Nevertheless, he manages to make several interesting points about himself and his works: he proudly reiterates that he is most certainly not the alpha and omega of the European, or even Polish philosophical society; that his magnitude as a futurologist and philosopher is (mistakenly) overstated; and that his works are largely testing grounds for his evolving ideology.

The interviews portray Lem's faith in mankind as slight. He finds humanity as somewhat vain, and currently degenerating. An especially hard-hitting forecast of his predicts a deluge of information that will drown civilization. This examination of Lem's repeatedly frustrated attempts to bring the cosmic forces of logic to crack the tough nut of the Western civilization made me aware of just what I want from Lem as a reader: I want a book where mankind is awed and humiliated in numbers sufficient to produce a positive effect. I want the cosmos to teach man a lesson. I want an emergency exit.

As a teacher of reluctant readers, I cannot keep copies of this book on my shelves. I used to introduce Stanislaw Lem to the students first, but this intimidated them. After I changed to letting the stories hook them first, I have found all of his books disappearing. They are fascinated by irreverence and humour in quality writing. I cannot complain about the books disappearing; they are reading.

Through the eyes and mind of the now more experienced Pirx, Lem draws conclusions of future's hold on human & android relations, philosophical and psycological attachments included.
For a quick, classic Lem read, this is one of the tops. The collection starts with a few shorts, though deep contemplation, and finishes with two superb longer stories. My two favorites are 'The Accident' (short) and 'The Inquest' (long).

This book is great, although I'm not too crazy about the translation. Realistically though, if you're not planning on learning to speak Polish fluently anytime soon, you should get this copy. It's not that bad. Lem is a great, realistic, down-to-earthy (no pun intended) Science Fiction author. Also get Solaris,...and Fiasco.

Lem, as always, comes through. In some of his other work he takes on philosophy, science, religion, usually with a humorous strain; in this book, and its predecessor, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, he chooses to write straight hard SF. However, the image usually conjured up by 'hard' SF is Asimov, Heinlen, and so on, meaning writing anchored on scientific devices and with generally far less time spent on character development. Pirx is a welcome antidote. He is an engineer and pilot, grounded in a reality made up not of quantum-physical theories but of nuts and bolts. He's a professional and strictly blue-collar. REading this book might give you an idea of what the future REALLY will be like.

One of the essays in this book got the author's honorary membership of the American SF Association revoked. Or rather, some of it did, in a way. "Science Fiction - A Hopeless Case with Exceptions" was published in the US in a mutilated "translation" under the tactful title "A Scientist's Choice of the World's Worst Writing", and Lem was unceremoniously booted out of the organisation. The essay in question is in fact a harsh, but in its essentials accurate, dissection of the deplorable state of science fiction and science fiction criticism as compared with the rest of literature, and deserves serious attention. (The exception discussed, by the way, is the work of Philip K Dick, and a detailed review of Dick's Ubik, justifying its claim to be taken as serious fiction, also appears in Microworlds.) There is also a fine review of the Strugatsky brothers' extraordinary novella Roadside Picnic, which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky's equally extraordinary though somewhat different film Stalker; an interesting essay on Jorge Luis Borges, noting the unique qualities and the limitations apparent in his stories; and, perhaps most valuably, a couple of long essays on what science fiction could be if it could only kick its maleficient Star Wars-style good-guy/bad-guy simplemindedness. Lem is precise, logical, detailed, cantankerous and fascinating. The world's greatest writer of grown-up science fiction and fantasy is once again pointing the way for the rest of us.

Although the book in its entirety is highly recommended for fans of Lem, I would like to present some comments extracted from the essay entitled Unitas Oppositorum: The Prose of Jorge Luis Borges.

Lem states: "In each story we can find the same kind of method: Borges transforms a firmly established part of some cultural system by means of the terms of the system itself. In the fields of religious belief, in ontology, in literary theory, the author "continues" what mankind has "only begun to make." Using this tour d'adresse Borges makes comical and absurd those things which we revere because of their current cultural value."

"However, each of these tales has in addition another - wholly serious - hidden meaning. At base, his curious fantasy is, I claim, quite realistic. The author therefore has the courage to deal with the most valuable goals of mankind just as mankind himself does. The only difference is that Borges continues these combinatory operations to their utmost logical conclusions."

"Considered from a formal point of view, the creative method of Borges is very simple. It might be called unitas oppositorum, the unity of mutually exclusive opposites. What allegedly must be kept separate for all time (that which is considered irreconcilable) is joined before our very eyes, and without distorting logic. The structural content of nearly all of Borges's stories is built up by this elegant and precise unity."

"In the beginning he was a librarian, and he has remained one, although the most brilliant manifestation of one. He had to search in libraries for sources of inspiration, and he restricted himself wholly to cultural-mythical sources. They were deep, multifarious, rich sources - for they contain the total reservoir of the mythical thought of mankind.

But in our age they are on the decline, dying off as far as their power to interpret and explain a world undergoing further changes is concerned. In his paradigmatic structures, and even in his greatest achievements, Borges is located near the end of a descending curve which had its culmination centuries ago. Therefore he is forced to play with the sacral, the awe-inspiring, the sublime, and the mysterious from our grandfathers. Only in rare cases does he succeed in continuing this game in a serious way. Only then does he break through the paradigmatically and culturally caused incarceration which is its limitations, and which is quite contrary to the freedom of artistic creation he strives for. He is one of the great men, but at the same time he is an epigone. Perhaps for the last time. He has lit up - given a paradoxical resurrection to - the treasures transmitted to us from the past. But he will not succeed in keeping them alive for any long period of time. Not because he has a second-rate mind, but because, I believe such a resurrection of transitory things is in our time quite impossible. His work, admirable though it may be, is located in its entirety at the opposite pole from the direction of our fate. Even this great master of the logically immaculate paradox cannot "alloy" our world's fate with his own work. He has explicated to us paradises and hells; but in his books Borges knows nothing about them."

"If Schopenhauer had never existed, and if Borges presented to us the ontological doctrine of "The World As Will," we would never accept it as a philosophical system that must be taken seriously; we would take it as an example of a "fantastic philosophy." As soon as nobody assents to it, a philosophy becomes automatically fantastic literature."

I found this book totally by accident, while browsing the sf&f shelves of one of the big bookstores without much hope, and I'm glad I did, because Lem's essay, "Science-fiction : a hopeless case - with exceptions", really crystallised a lot of the things that concerned me about science fiction, and showed that at least one other person thought that sf should at least try to be literature. (Although written in 1970, and from the isolated position of Communist Poland, this essay is still depressingly accurate - although things have improved since his time.)

The guy is a heavy thinker, and come from a European tradition of taking science fiction seriously as a literature of ideas (Lem wrote the classic Solaris, which was made into a Russian movie). He is quite readable, however, and is obviously passionate about his subject. This book is essential for any academic study of science fiction, and for any reader who takes the genre's potential seriously.

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.

Solaris was a planet, but it also was a mystery. For hundreds of years mankind has been trying to understand if the ocean was a intelligence or just organic soup. Kris Kelvin, a researcher from Earth, must try to understand WHAT is happening, because the planet has done something. Something wonderful, amazing and very, very scary.
The book forces us to think about what we define as intelligence, what we define as human and, even, what we define as God. Wonderful, truly a classic. A must read!

This is an intriguing, rich, challenging, multifaceted, interdisciplinary, eye-opening book. It begins with chapter by the editor, Peter Swirski, which summarizes Lem's career and provides a fascinating look at the writer's life as a writer. It is then followed by a chapter by Lem himself who discusses the subject of thinking robots with his characteristic dry wit. This in itself makes this collection outstanding. It is a coup to get Lem to write something new so late in his life (the author passed away in March 2006). Next come: a long chapter from Katherine Hayles on "The Mask" and volition, a long chapter from Swirski on "Return From the Stars" and social engineering, a few paragraphs from Michael Kandel on translatinf Lem's last novel "Fiasco", Peter Butko on "Summa Technologiae" and evolution, J Jarzebski on evolution, Paisley Livingston on Lem's philosophy of skepticism (if I understood it correctly), K Loska on film adaptations, and Swirski again on the novel "Solaris" and the film. My favourites are Lem, Swirski, Butko, and those parts of Livingston which fit my cup of tea. However, there is so much variety and difference between the individual chapters that every reader will find something to his or her liking. The contributors are from America and Poland which is very appropriate since Lem was Polish but has become a byword in the States from the seventies.

Finally, a bit of imperfection found in this collection: some of the essays are disappointingly short, no index (what was the publisher thinking of?), the quality is a bit uneven, and the current price for the hard cover is very high (please do get it out in paper pack ASAP).

The paperback is coming out soon, so I want to say that without an index this book will not be of much use to people who want to read about Lem but are not experts and so need to look things up. Also I find the the last chapter is really an extended summary of the content of a few films, useful for academics maybe and those who can find these polish films, but not to general readers. In sum, four stars only.

I recommend the first essay to anyone; it is a beautifully written and insightful description of humanity from a point of view I tend to agree with, and uses quite a bit of very interesting data which I have a hard time imagining how Lem got a hold of (unless of course it was all fabricated, but that would generally defeat the point of the essay). The book is conveniently short (the copy I read was 102 pages), but it's clear Lem did not leave out anything for brevity's sake. Each essay takes up a third of the book, but what I take issue with is their placement.

The first is by far the most interesting and philosophical, while the next is still quite creative but has much less in the way of social commentary and much more in the way of technical speculation. The second essay is simply a speculative history of 21st-century warfare, and while very creative, cannot compare to the depth of the first.

The third is entirely out of the realm of science fiction or philosophy, instead discussing the string of unlikely occurrences leading to the development of life on earth and subsequently of humanity, and while certainly very well thought-out, is much more dry than the other two and seems to belong more in a scientific journal than its present location.

Thus the book as a whole is almost anti-climactic after the essay which comprises the first third, departing from the general (and rational) writing technique even Lem seems to have adopted of constructing texts so as to pull the reader towards the conclusion.

Contrary to the official book description, only the first of these purports to be a review of a nonexistent book; the second simply claims to summarize a secret archive of books from the future, while the third is an essay on cosmic history and the unlikeliness of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The title essay, at least, easily equals Lem's best works such as Fiasco, and I expect it to appear commonly in philosophy classes someday.

Stanislaw Lem is one among the few authors to look frankly at the human condition, define the perceptual boundaries that shape our awareness, our cultures and our potential, and tell us that, despite our nearly crippling ways of being, what we have we must hold dear.

"One Human Minute" is only one aspect of this dressed-down yet curiously uplifting view of being human, adding a statistical perspective to his perhaps better-known characterizations of isolation, loss and pain. "Solaris" and its mirror "The Invincible", as well as the staggeringly dark "Fiasco" each demonstrate the variety, texture and opacity of the walls which make us what we are while simultaneously delimiting our awareness of outer and inner existence. The persistence of these works in bringing the reader face-to-face with unknowability should drive out many of the preconceptions on which we base our sense of self. Free of the musical ditties that, with drowning sentimentality falsely reassure us close encounters of any kind will forever be of the all-singing, all-dancing variety, Lem tells us instead that we are each on our own and that there's really nothing all that terrible about it. As long as we recognize the limitless limitations.

"One Human Minute" provides a less emotional exploration of our being. Here, Lem puts us objectively in our places -- one among the masses, defined by shared parameters, weights and measures that cut deeply into our personal sense of "uniqueness". It is a bracing perspective, one that is hardly popular, despite being the only cure for our species' overbearing, top-of-the-foodchain hubris. He is gone now, but his work and his ideas will continue to compel anyone willing to openly think about what it means to be, to see the world with less of a tint. Or is it taint?

An astonishing book, especially so given its date. It's not about narrative nor character, so if you're reading for those prepare to be disappointed. It's about the impossibility of human perception outside of any human frame. Having said it's not about narrative, it's disappointing that Lem felt the need to supply something of a classic-realist conclusion in the last pages, but the rest of the book is excellent. Clarke's (later) 'Rendevouz with Rama' explores a similar theme.

If you love stories where strange new worlds and new civilizations are explored, you'll love Eden! This planet is home to 6 astronauts who crash land in the opening pages of the book. Named only for their professions except for the engineer named Henry. Explorations start from a boring desert plane (where their ship has landed) to four separate expeditions. First a nothward expedition discovers a strange factory of utmost complexity creating sophisticated items that are recycled , eastward gives them a first contact with an inhabitant in a very strange transport, South and west just give more and more mysteries. The theme here is how difficult it is to understand a totally alien society. They find that they have plenty of theories to explain the strange sites and occurences but are just unsure of the truth. Part of the problem they decide is that they base their explanations on what they know from earth and earth society. They concede that explanations that cannot be derived from earth experiences should be consiedered. Well, have no fear as explanations do come at the end of the book, unlike Lem's other planetary exploration of "Solaris".

The eng. translation takes most of the mystery out of the book.

Almost all of Lem's science fiction centers around one or two variations of one theme. The theme is "What is intelligence?" and the two variations are "What would robotic life be like?" and "What would a truly alien intelligence be like?" "Eden" is in the second group. A party of explorers arrives on an alien world and wanders around trying to make sense of it. The subtext of "Eden" is that it could really be a description of Earth as viewed through completely fresh eyes. In a typical scene the explorers wander into a valley of flowers. When approached the blooms suddenly take flight. Lem leaves it to the reader to realize a visitor to Earth might make the same mistake about butterflys. Like many of Lem's works the book is really a work of philosophy and somewhat abstract: the explorers do not even have names, just job descriptions. By the standards of any other science fiction author this book deserves 5 stars, I only give it 4 because I prefer "Solaris" and "Fiasco" with which "Eden" should be grouped (along with the more difficult "His Master's Voice") as books about contact (Sagan's "Contact" is clearly based on "His Master's Voice").

Instead of just making a fly-by of an unexplored earth atmosphere planet named Eden, a six-man crew spaceship crashlands with no hope of rescue. Lem doesn't even deign to give the characters proper names. Instead, in a Kafkaesque manner, they are simply called The Captain, The Chemist, The Engineer, The Physicist, the Cyberneticist, and The Doctor. It's not really clear to me why he chose this method, unless he wanted the universal everyman or stereotype of each profession. Who knows? The first problem the crew has to face is just getting out of the ship since the main hatch is resting underground and the only other exit has been flooded with radioactive water. It doesn't seem like they can contact anyone off planet either, and it will be impossible to move the ship without powering up robots. But one of the crew does seem to remember seeing a city before they crashed, and so the crew sets out on foot. They do find alien lifeforms and structures, but what results is the usual violence that humans seem to display when enveloped in fear and the unknown. The crew expects to be attacked or to be greeted by the inhabitants, but what happens when the natives act as if they're not even there?

Lem does a good job of portraying the aliens in his fiction as aliens. In works by other sci-fi writers, extraterrestrials seem to be humans in green skins, or animals with longer teeth. As he did in Solaris, the author hits the theme that like mortals comprehending God, humans would have an impossible time figuring out the behavior and mentality of a truly alien species. Yes, vastly different civilizations have collided through time on Earth, but what would happen if we truly faced and ALIEN consciousness? The crew in this book make the same mistakes we would make. Namely, comparing and contrasting alien behavior and buildings to human models. Of course, this leads to many wrong conclusions in Eden, even leading to death for some.

I think in the end Lem lets me down simply because there are some explanations of the Edenites behavior, and these explanations are ideas that humans could have. I guess no human can truly write a realistic encounter with an alien race simply because a human mind cannot think like a non-human mind. Well, maybe a flying saucer will land in my backyard tomorrow and I'll write a book about it.

If you liked this book I would highly recommend Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

I feel G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" would be the appropriate companion piece to read with "The Investigation". Both books are filled with the ominious, the unaswerable, both are philosophical and haunting. The mystery here is the mystery of existence. This book is the great sonata of life "living the questions". Besides, the atmosphere is rich, dark and foggy - it is the England we all stereotypically imagine in our minds. Read this book because you want great literature. It's not just "another mystery". It's beyond that.

For years I'd heard a lot about Stanislaw Lem as a great Polish science fiction writer, maybe one of the world's greats in that field, but I hadn't ever read him. Therefore, when I saw a book of his at a yard sale, I bought it. The price was certainly right. But, I must report that I still haven't read any of his science-fiction because THE INVESTIGATION turns out to be one of his few works in other genres. But what genre is this ? You might say it's a detective novel, but "metaphysical detective fiction" would describe it better. How many other books fit into the same field ? Good question. Here we find bodies removed from graveyards and mortuaries; sometimes they turn up elsewhere, sometimes not. Gregory, a suspicious policeman, is assigned to catch the perpetrator. But is there a perpetrator ? Discussions of statistics and probability, as well as mysterious speculations, pepper this novel, which takes place in cold, foggy, rainy or snowy conditions in England, a country that does not emerge very realistically from the background. I was constantly reminded of Ismail Kadare's novel "Doruntine" by the similar philosophical nature of the writing which marks both books, by the rain and cold, and even by the names of characters-Stres in the Albanian book, and Sciss (the statistician) in Lem's. I can't say that this is a characteristic Lem novel because it's the first I ever read. But a detective novel that asks "what if everything that exists is fragmentary, incomplete, aborted, events with ends but no beginnings, events that only have middles, things that have fronts or rears, but not both, with us constantly making categories..... ?" cannot be considered average. Lem's novel may not be to everyone's taste---especially if you are looking for sex, violence, or lots of action---but it is unusual and well-written.

A mystery story involving, of course, dead bodies.

The spirit of the novel is best contained in the statistician's remarks on gravity. The word "Gravity" doesn't really explain anything, rather it gives a name to the tendency of objects to fall toward the center of the earth. If something like that happens every day, we give it a name of some sort and accept it as normal. If something like that seldom happens, then it's exceptional and warrants investigation.

Although I was dissatisfied with the ending, the reasoning employed along the way there is pretty engrossing. The story is also strange enough in places to be bleakly humorous. Maybe an extra half-star, for being different.

This is a wonderful thriller; at times surreal, at times resolvable and at times resolved. But there is a great sense of the unknowable in the face of the 'randomness' of events around us. 'What if life is like a soup with all kinds of things floating in it, and from time to time some of them get stuck together by chance to make some kind of whole?' Yes, this is my experience of life and it comforts me that there are unexplainable things - things that I cannot explain and in a real sense can never be explained. The principal character in this novel carries my own name - Gregory - and that bonded me a bit. But it is the statistician, Sciss, who says 'I don't have any illusions. That's pretty awful you know ....' I identify most of all with that statement, if not Sciss himself.

Recommended other reading:
'Limiting Factor' by Clifford D Simak (this is a short story)
'Under Western Eyes' by Joseph Conrad (he comments on illusions too)

As every detective and scientist should know, objectively there are facts and relationships between facts. Sometimes there are causal relationships between facts, and the facts are correlated; sometimes there are no causal connections between facts, and the facts may or may not show some statistical correlation. The situation where the facts display at least chance correlations but may not be linked causally provides the leitmotiv for Stanislaw Lem's "The Investigation" (and his "Chain of Chance" for that matter).

Correlated facts are suggestive, but when the number of facts does not amount to a meaningful statistical sample the correlation may be an artifact, and then sound inductive reasoning often gives way to wild speculation. In "The Investigation", lieutenant Gregory of Scotland Yard desperately tries to puzzle out a consistent explanation for a bizarre series of disappearing corpses while receiving input from a scientist, a doctor, and fellow detectives --- each with his own ideas. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough solid evidence to decide whether the facts of the case have causal structure or whether they simply form "fortuitous patterns". Hmmm.

The category of "science fiction" is usually reserved for whimsical flights of fancy, but here we have a book that breathes fictional life into part of the intellectual apparatus that is at the very heart of science --- the empirical, or scientific, method. No pedantic statement is made about the empirical method, it's darker corners simply serve as a compelling thematic backdrop for a detective story. "The Investigation" is not a detective novel in the traditional sense though, and the ending will throw Agatha Christie enthusiasts for a disconcerting loop...but, an enjoyable one.

The narrative style is pleasingly "cinematic" in that, with few exceptions, only things that can be seen and heard are described --- it reads something like a well-written screenplay. This narrative approach is nothing new, though, and its lack of originality kept me from getting too excited; but, my fetish for stylistic originality is probably not shared by most readers. The book is also intellectually provocative without being didactic in that the story conjures up a small whirlwind of intriguing questions, not a parade of dubious and facile answers. Most importantly, it's a fun and engaging story. I really liked this one.

"Imaginary Magnitudes" is a forceful, blackly humorous introduction to the irreducible mystery that powers Stanislaw Lem's work. Composed of introductions to works of non-fiction and literature to appear sometime in the coming century, one can only marvel at the breadth of imagination involved as well as the smoothness and cleverness of the translation from the Polish. The lectures of GOLEM XIV are the diadem of this collection, adumbrating most of the earlier prefaces in one vast, misanthropic razz of humankind by a very advanced (but still very humanlike), very disillusioned defense-management computer -- sort of a HAL9000 without the homicidal (or genocidal) impulse. I never have a copy of this book because I always give it away to people -- it is that good. Like most of Lem's work, it is where literature and SF become indistinguishable. Lem ranks with Clarke, Asimov, Herbert and Dick in the SF pantheon.

Though it wasn't the most entertaining book of Lem's, it definitely gives the best span of his talents of any that I've yet read. We get the simply goofy in the first couple bits, and the hard-core philosophical in the GOLEM lectures. This is an excellent survey of Lem's talent, but the individual parts are not his best. The humorous bits are certainly not "Cyberiad" or "Star Diaries" quality, but they are good nonetheless. The GOLEM stuff is a bit dry, but very intruiging. Overall quite good stuff, so it gets 4 stars. Mediocre Lem though.

"Imaginary Magnitude"'s value as entertaining literature is essentially nil. Only occasionally does it lapse into readability - otherwise it is an undiluted philosophical treatise. To be sure, this is Lem at his most intellectual - it just doesn't lend the writing the same measure of livelihood his more straightforward pieces do. The format is quite something conceptually - a set of introductions to not-yet-written books. "Imaginary Magnitude" showcases four - plus "GOLEM XIV", which, being a separate piece of literature altogether, is included only for the sake of its similar spirit.

The short pieces themselves aren't particularly exciting. This is Lem's chance to preach his views, and he does so extensively. "Necrobes" piqued my interest with its laconic treatment of creatively-posed x-ray nudes as art. "Eruntics" was even partially plausible - it deals with evolving a genome which is, basically, word-processing software. And then the bateria begin predicting the future. The "Extelopedia" lacked any sort of real structure - it is an encyclopedic dictionary of purely prognosticated words. The introduction includes a "Proffertinc" - a prognosticated offer, and a sample page of words that begin with "prog-". The following introduction to a treatise on bitic literature - that is, books written by non-human authors - is an excellent piece of short fiction dealing with epistemological topics. The summary traces the development of artificial thinkers through several stages - from cladogenesis, where computers generate random meaningless words, through mimesis, where a computer formulates the mathematical basis of books, allowing perfect translations, and even creating entirely new works in the author's exact style, and to transhuman apostasy - works generally incoprehensible to humans - from incredibly complicated math to elaborate works on cosmogony.

Then the reader gets to "GOLEM XIV", and the book takes a nosedive. Even despite the warning, the superhuman, impersonal intelligence within the computer seems snobbish, patronizing, and the text of its lectures - overly elaborate and peppered with metaphors. Likewise, the leading points of the two lectures - on man and on itself - coincide: the evolution is an asymptotic blunder; it has reached the maximum level of complication in its creations, and further random "progress" is impossible; man has reached his potential ceiling and is drowning in his civilization, etc. Like most of Lem, taken piece by piece this is profound theorizing, but as a work of creative, non-academic literature it is ornate and unreadable.

This book was my introduction to Stanislaw Lem, which is ironic, because this is a book consisting only of introductions of other (imaginary) books. I found it completely by accident on the bargain rack, and I don't know why I bought it. But I did, and I'm certainly glad. When I started reading him, I said to myself, "What *is* this?" and found it all very bizarre. But Lem is one of those rare writers who makes you feel smarter just for having read him. For all that, this book is not only fascinating, but surprisingly funny at times. (How do you write an introduction to a book of introductions?) And for being so fanciful, Lem's discussions are surprisingly relevant.

Whereas with "A Perfect Vacuum" Lem wrote reviews of fictional books, here he writes introductions to different fictional books. You get some of his more straightforward philosophy with "Golem XIV," typical Lem cleverness with "Necrobes" and sheer, amazing, mind-blowing virtuosity with "Eruntics," probably his single most impressive piece of short fiction. This "story" alone is worth the price of admission. Ranking near the Tichy stories, with plenty of distance between "The Cyberiad" on one side and "Solaris" on the other, on the fun and ponderousnness scales. Among his best.