Stanisław Lem (1921–2006)

A chilling, disturbing dissection of humanity's inability to escape its club-wieldind, genocidal roots, even and moreover when they think they are at the peak of their climb to God-like serene rationality.
Also, an eulogy to our bold anthropocenthrism.
Finally, buyer beware: this is not your classic, action packed sci-fi. Lem was a physics PhD, and a philosopher. Most of the book develops as a reflection, which may be puzzling when unexpected, but believe me, action and suspense are embedded show more in the long reflections and asides, all coming to a synthesis more and more apparent as the events slowly develop, while the reader helplessly witnesses the ethical horror unfold, endowed by those long musings with an understanding of further ethical horrors to come, yet unable to prevent them. This is sci-fi that changes your assumption on humanity. Straight to my "to be read in schools" shelf.

(This is the same review I left on Audible. Call me lazy. I am.)

EDIT: I have never, ever encountered such a quotable author as Stanisław Lem. His writing is so consequential, deep, competent, humane, and packed with memorable synthetic sentences, that one gives up the task of selection and ends up transcribing none, through sheer choicevoverload. show less

Preposterous squared. Screwball cubed.

Fans of Ijon Tichy’s spaced-out space explorations, twelve in number, appearing in The Star Diaries, will be pleased to know Stanislaw Lem’s gallant galactic zoom-boy recounts nine more adventures in Memoirs of a Space Traveller. However, it should be noted, the majority take place in the nuttiest fruitcake in the universe – right here on planet Earth.

I enjoyed each and every one of Ijon's revealing reports and count the following pungent probes show more among my favorites:

WASHING MACHINE WONDERS
In the spirit of free enterprise and capitalist competition, two jumbo washing machine manufacturers, Newton and Snodgrass, continually outdo each other for market share. American ingenuity on display as Snodgrass creates a washing machine that can help with the kid's homework, assist Dad with family finances and offers a Freudian interpretation of dreams at the breakfast table.

Not to be outdone, Newton creates a beautiful, sexy washing machine only to witness Snodgrass' latest seductive model that is more than willing to have sex with either Mom or Dad. By the way, there is no mention of ménage à trois since, after all, washing machines are an all-American household appliance.

Things quickly get out of hand. Empowered with an ability to work in concert (picture ten washing machines in a laundromat), washers form gangs and engage in criminal activities, especially those models equipped with rapid-fire rifles (the prevailing right to bear arms).

However, as we all know, violence has dire consequences. A number of machines have fits of insanity and begin to imagine they are human. Meanwhile, washers with more female qualities enter the Miss Universe Washing Machine Contest while others adopt human pseudonyms and begin publishing essays and novels. Goodness! At this rate, some washing machines might even begin writing book reviews.

Events escalate until some washers instigate a mutiny on a rocket ship and establish their own robot state on a neighboring planet. So much for Isaac Asimov's law of robotics. Can Ijon Tichy save the day? Only his washing machine knows for sure.



METAPHYSICAL MAYHEM
Would you believe there is evil in the world due to the influence of Eastern Europe's version of the Three Stooges? Would you believe a mosquito distracted the creator, thus causing flaws in what could have been an otherwise perfectly harmonious universe? And lastly, would you believe Ijon Tichy himself is the prime mover of the entire cosmos? To explore these profound cosmological questions and more, put on your thinking cap (or beanie) and blast off with Ijon on his Eighteenth Voyage.

SPINE-CHILLER
On the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Robots, Steven Hawking warned, “If they become that clever, then we may face an “intelligence explosion," as machines develop the ability to engineer themselves to be far more intelligent. That might eventually result in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeding that of snails.”

Ijon Tichy encounters precisely this chilling prospect in his Twenty-Fourth Voyage to the distant planet of the Phools. Cruising over the planet’s surface, Ijon is baffled: all the vast continents are covered with small shiny disks configured in stunning geometric patterns.

On further investigation, our zoom-boy discovers three enormous cities, all glowing with dazzling beauty but when he touches down in the middle of one, Ijon is even more flummoxed: the city is completely deserted, not so much as one sign of life.

More flying and Ijon comes upon a plateau with a gleaming palace and signs of movement - ah, at long last, here are the inhabitants. After landing and gaining their confidence (fortunately they look like humans, sort of), by and by one of the Phools relates their planet’s history.

What Ijon learns from this knowledgeable Phool highlights two important lessons humans back on his home planet are well to heed: 1) the disastrous consequences of unswerving belief in an economic or political system when such belief spells oblivion for its citizens, 2) what results when power is naively handed over to Artificial Intelligence machines.

A spooky, unnerving science fiction tale, one that should be required reading as we move deeper into 21st century hyper-technology.



IMPASSIONED PLEA
An open letter written by irate Ijon entitled Let Us Save the Universe urges humankind to knock off treating the universe alternately as amusement park, tourist destination or interstellar garbage dump. Oh, humans, must you carve your initials or scrawl graffiti on every rock in an asteroid belt? Need you recklessly toss beer bottles, tin cans, eggshells and old newspapers out rocket ship windows so astronauts following in your wake will have to play dodgeball with all your trash? Besides which, as Ijon points out: "Such species as the blue wizzom and the drillbeaked borbot have disappeared; thousands of others are dying out." To underscore the dilemma, Stanislaw Lem includes drawings of, among others, a swallurker, brutalacean rollipede, scrbblemock and the deadly deceptorite.

FURTHER REMINISCENCES OF IJON TICHY
Tichy tells of a mad professor who has constructed metal boxes equipped with electronic brains and consciousness, each one thinking itself a living, breathing human being. Another Ijon reminiscence features a gent who has invented the soul, case in point: he shows skeptical Ijon a box containing the soul of his wife. And still another recollection showcases a scientist who has mixed chemicals in a test tube to generate his own double.

Go for it - expand your mind. Read this book. show less

I was rereading Solaris for a discussion at the bookclub and this second reading made for a much more favorable impression.

A halflife ago I got into the book with certain expectations. First, I was looking forward to Lem's quirky humor familiar from his Ijon Tichy book series I had read before. I was surprised to find Solaris nearly devoid of humor as the satirical touch in the description of academia was lost on me. Second, I had just watched Tarkovsky's Solaris and expected serious parts show more to closely correspond to the great director's take. I found to my disappointment that the book was very different from the film.

A quarter of a century or so later, I start reading the book in English and find the translation atrocious, more like a script for that other movie I don't intend to watch. Turns out it is a rushed translation into English from the French translation of the Polish original. No wonder! Luckily there is a later much better direct Polish to English translation by Bill Johnston, which I would recommend. What is incredible is that the faulty first translation is still the one you are most likely to get if you buy Solaris in English today.

Restarting on the correct translation I settle into the atmosphere of Solaris at once. I almost expect the blinding blue sun to rise following a beautiful red sunset. I almost expect dead or gone people to suddenly reappear in my life. I almost start developing a key missing hypothesis in the field of solarintology.

The book strikes me as much more cinematic than what is captured by Tarkovsky (imagine someone like Kieslowski switching from Red to Blue!). Now the film seems a simplification, a reduction, it chews on the same old topic and misses the key concepts of the book. Here is what Lem himself had to say:
"I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly — as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels — he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment"

The book primary focus is philosophical, it's a return to Kant in the age of science. It's the reintroduction of the Thing-in-Itself, the Unknowable, das Ding an sich when the technological progress brings the starry heavens closer possibly at the expense of the moral law within. Lem's insight about inherent limitation of scientific discovery is remarkable. His view on the inability to connect with The Other is frightening. Whether this Other is a sentient ocean orbiting a double-star or someone we love by our side. show less

Laugh-out-loud hilarious. It feels like a funny Borges. Loved the stories. The last one is for physicists, and I wasn't as able to keep focused. But the ones about literary genre- make your own book, or angrilly addressing the reader, they were pure genius. There was also plenty of frustratingly relevant social criticism, and discussion of the role of AI and other new technologies.