Author: Stanislaw Lem
Published: 1986
Are we all alone in the Universe? What if human beings found a sign, a signal, of other intelligent life? And what if having crossed the light years through technical wizardry we arrived to say hello and the other life form said: "Bugger off!"
That is the central question of
Fiasco, a blend of hard science fiction and philosophical questions. Quite a lot of the physics and chemistry was beyond me. The details regarding mining on Triton or space travel via black hole vibrations could be true or completely imagined, I wouldn't know.
There is a lot of not knowing in the book, a central theme of Lem's career. At a conference I attended, one of Lem's translators, Michael Kandel, referred to ontology, questions of knowing (versus PKD's epistemology, questions of being). Is the rescued pilot in the book Pirx or Parvis? Will the captain continue to raise the stakes on the Quintans? Questions are left unanswered.
While recommended several times at the Readercon '08 panel on Lem, this isn't going to be my favorite.
