I love Lem's work. There's something appealing to a vision of a truly alien universe, one that cannot be comprehended by forcing our humanity on it; a universe that does not care. In Fiasco and...
I love Lem's work. There's something appealing to a vision of a truly alien universe, one that cannot be comprehended by forcing our humanity on it; a universe that does not care. In Fiasco and Eden the aliens are just simply too different from our psychology and physiology and what would that mean for contact and communication. In Solaris and His Master's Voice the portrayal of potentially incomprehensible phenomena and how humanity would respond to it (think Roadside Picnic).
There's also a lot of just awful translations in my opinion. I hated Return from the Stars, and some of the dialogue from almost every book felt stilted. But that might also be just me.
I also recommend Summa Technologiae, a collection of his essays from 1964. It's a non-fiction work that dives deep into sci-fi tropes, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biological/technological evolution, teleportation, and so on. A lot of it is only now starting to emerge or be discussed on a practical level, and much in the way he envisioned.
A friend of mine turned me on to Lem in 2010. I first read The Futurological Congress and it was one of the funniest things I had read in a while. After that I read The Cyberiad and Tales of Pirx...
A friend of mine turned me on to Lem in 2010. I first read The Futurological Congress and it was one of the funniest things I had read in a while. After that I read The Cyberiad and Tales of Pirx the Pilot. The Cyberiad was incredibly fun, I was a little disappointed with Pirx as I was expecting more of the same humor and it was not intended to be funny. Reflecting on it now, the story was interesting enough, just not what I was trying to read at the time. I'll have to check out the rest of his work, my friend recommended His Master's Voice next but I never got around to it.
I love Lem's work. There's something appealing to a vision of a truly alien universe, one that cannot be comprehended by forcing our humanity on it; a universe that does not care. In Fiasco and Eden the aliens are just simply too different from our psychology and physiology and what would that mean for contact and communication. In Solaris and His Master's Voice the portrayal of potentially incomprehensible phenomena and how humanity would respond to it (think Roadside Picnic).
There's also a lot of just awful translations in my opinion. I hated Return from the Stars, and some of the dialogue from almost every book felt stilted. But that might also be just me.
I also recommend Summa Technologiae, a collection of his essays from 1964. It's a non-fiction work that dives deep into sci-fi tropes, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biological/technological evolution, teleportation, and so on. A lot of it is only now starting to emerge or be discussed on a practical level, and much in the way he envisioned.
A friend of mine turned me on to Lem in 2010. I first read The Futurological Congress and it was one of the funniest things I had read in a while. After that I read The Cyberiad and Tales of Pirx the Pilot. The Cyberiad was incredibly fun, I was a little disappointed with Pirx as I was expecting more of the same humor and it was not intended to be funny. Reflecting on it now, the story was interesting enough, just not what I was trying to read at the time. I'll have to check out the rest of his work, my friend recommended His Master's Voice next but I never got around to it.