Three Great Books by Stanislaw Lem

You will laugh. You will think. How can one writer be so deep and also so funny? It's Stanislaw Lem.

The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem is mostly known for his novel SOLARIS, and the two movies based on it (Andrei Tarkovskij's 1972 version and Steven Soderbergh's 2002 version).

His range was wide, and he could be both very serious and very funny. Here I will outline three memorable (and highly recommended) books by Lem.

SOLARIS (1961)

The novel SOLARIS is legitimately a classic. It should definitely be read today, and is still a unique text – not only in its genre, but as literature.

The plot is a mystery mixed with a kind of "ghost story". One could say that the story unfolds on a haunted space station, orbiting the planet Solaris. This planet is covered by a single vast, floating mass – a living "ocean" – that appears conscious, but does not communicate with humans. All attempts to contact this life form have been unsuccessful.

The main character Kris Kelvin, a scientist, arrives at the space station on Solaris. He immediately notices that the few other scientists onboard are behaving abnormally. They seem distracted, secretive - possibly crazy.

Eventually Kris realizes that the station is being "haunted" by synthetic people, "visitors", who seem to be taken from the very minds of the residents of the station.

The living sea seems to have created these "visitors". There is speculation as to whether the "visitors" are the ocean’s attempt to communicate, but that mystery gives way to a bigger question:

What do we humans really "want" from aliens? And if aliens can give us what we deeply desire - like some kind of extraterrestrial Aladdin's lamp - would that really make us happier anyway?

The novel asks several deep questions, and it is up to the reader to find the answers.

What strikes me is that the novel does not resemble other depictions of contact with aliens. The sci-fi genre has often had an unfortunate tendency to portray aliens as "foreigners in alien costumes" - in other words, like us but just a little different.

These “quasi-extraterrestrial” creatures are organized into societies that can be easily classified according to earthly templates – democracy, anarchy, dictatorship, primitive, advanced, etc.

But not in SOLARIS. Here, humanity has discovered one solitary, gigantic life form that covers an entire planet, and cannot be explained or "mastered" by science.

Therein lies the brilliance of the novel: It portrays an alien that is in no way similar to us, and describes people's reactions to it. The alien then functions like a Rorschach test; we "see" in it what is already in our own thoughts.

Maybe humanity will eventually discover extraterrestrial intelligence? SOLARIS can give us the insight in advance that even if we were to find aliens, it is likely that they cannot give us what we hope for.

Or worse: They might give us exactly what we want, and this will lead to tragedy.

While this is a serious work, it is not devoid of humor. SOLARIS can also be read as a biting satire of science. Its rational-minded scientist characters (and their colleagues) are repeatedly baffled and made to look foolish by the incomprehensible planet-mind.

THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS (1971)

The protagonist Ion Tichy, an astronaut, attends the Futurological Congress at a giant hotel/convention center in Latin America.

The hotel exterior suddenly becomes the battleground of a political clash. In the ensuing chaos, the government bombs the area with mind-altering drugs... and Tichy is thrown into a world of hallucinations, where nothing is certain.

In this novel, Stanislaw Lem uses copious amounts of puns and wordplay - to the point where he almost goes too far with them. (I laughed, but some readers might get annoyed.)

This is a simultaneously comical and serious story about a frightening possible future. Lem asks the readers: Are we going to drug ourselves into oblivion, or will we be able to face reality? Will we choose the comforting dream or the unpleasant truth?

THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS is a novel of its time - its concern with overpopulation and LSD is typical of the late 1960s / early 1970s. But replace “hallucinatory drugs” with “Augmented Reality” or “The Matrix”, and you get rather similar themes.

This makes for a hilarious, ironic, inventive read, packed with ideas - and written with a clarity that I wish more writers were capable of. The climax of the plot is simply devastating.

THE CYBERIAD (1965)

This is a madcap comical sci-fi fantasy, set in a fairytale future populated by very human robots. The book follows the adventures and misadventures of the two thinking robots Trurl and Klapaucius, who constantly bicker with each other.

Trurl and Klapaucius are genius inventors, who can build almost anything (like a crankier version of Gyro Gearloose in the Disney comics by Carl Barks). When they are not trying to outsmart each other, they travel to other planets - to sell their genius to various peoples, kings and governments, or to offer help.

Often they comically succeed - and sometimes they hilariously fail - as they are way too clever for anyone’s good.

Several of the stories in this book are satirical. (Living under a Communist dictatorship, the author could poke fun at the system under the guise of science fiction.) The wonderful illustrations by Daniel Mroz add greatly to the reading pleasure.

NOTE: If you read Lem’s books in translation, make sure that you get the later, better editions. Translating Lem’s incessant wordplay has not been easy, and he was often disappointed with earlier English editions.