Say what you will about Stanislaw Lem, he certainly demonstrates an amazing variety as an author; this is my sixth Lem novel, and every one of them has been completely different.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is patently Kafkaesque. A nameless protagonist labors within a massive underground bureaucracy, trying desperately to figure out what his Mission is, but no one will tell him. Everyone appears to be a double or triple or quadruple agent (and people theorize about higher orders of turncoats), and nothing is taken at face value.

The book does display some of Lem's whimsical humor and love of wordplay, but I suspect that there may well have been more of this than made it through the translation. The introduction of the book provides both an intriguing setting for the novel's action (the world has been struck by an alien substance that is rapidly destroying all paper--and with it all of the knowledge which resides thereon--with disastrous consequences), and a suggestion that the excesses described in The Building are a dig at America (which frankly I found largely misguided).

As a novel I found this more interesting than entertaining; I wouldn't place it at the top of Lem's novels, but it certainly did nothing to change my opinion that he is one of the most interesting and important of recent science fiction authors. ( )

This is my favorite Lem novel. It is about a man who is stuck in a world of espionage and bureaucracy. He is summoned to the Building and given a mysterious mission. He wanders through the Building where he meets strange people doing bazaar things. He is trapped in a place that is out dated and serves no purpose. This is a place where the spies and bureaucrats need a pawn to keep the wheels turning. I can see Terry Gilliam making a Brazil like movie from this novel. ( )