I thought this was pretty darn good. While there are important differences, it felt like a much more successful attempt to address the story of Arthur Clarke's Rendezvouz with Rama: man travels to meet with aliens, has a hard time communicating, finds surprises and danger, has a hard time figuring out what the heck's going on.

Lem populates his human ship with a small but truly diverse crew of scientists, pilots, a physician and catholic priest. Each of these characters at times plays an important role in the story. They bring diverse experiences, values, and personality types to a very stressful situation, allowing the dynamics of the interactions among the crew to play an important role in the novel. Lem's Quintans are one of the better conceived aliens I can remember, in surprising ways completely different than humans, and yet in other ways similar.

One of the more memorable things about the book is a superb first chapter that serves as an extended prelude and could easily be published as a stand alone short story. Set a couple hundred years before the rest of the story, it is a truly stunning tale of an attempted rescue mission on Titan.

Another thing I liked about Fiasco is that Lem makes you think. There are questions that are left unanswered, but the reader is given enough evidence to draw conclusions. Oddly enough, the identity of the protagonist is one of these unanswered questions (although the inclusion of the first chapter makes it pretty clear who the reader is supposed to assume the character is).

Fiasco is obviously a novel written during the cold war, and is clearly meant as a warning about mankind's future. And while in some ways it feels dated, we certainly cannot afford to forget how easily a reasonably intelligent species can get caught up in a downward spiral leading to very real possibilities of extinction. ( )

http://www.maciejmajewski.pl/czytam/2... ( )

"Fiasco" and "Solaris," two of Lem's finest novels, can be taken together to form a treatise concerning contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms.

If "Solaris" is concerned with the notion that we might never be able to understand an alien culture well enough to meaningfully communicate with it, then "Fiasco" goes a step further: it might not be possible for us to communicate with an alien culture at all.

Evidence of alien life is discovered in a nearby star system, and a team is sent to investigate. When they arrive, the aliens they were sent to greet seem hugely reluctant to communicate; first contact progressively moves closer and closer to becoming, well, a fiasco. ( )

possibly my favorite of Lem's works. ( )