Return from the Stars

For all those readers who may have difficulties penetrating the complexity of Lem's book, I would like to recommend a chapter in Peter Swirski's The Art and Science of S Lem which talks about Return From the Stars in a way that made me see this story from a startlingly different perspective that bears on the most intimate aspects of today's world. By the way, the Art and Science of S Lem is an international collection of essays in which everyone is bound to find something to their liking, also it includes a previously unpublished chapter by S Lem himself!

This is one of those books that you read, put down, read again and then find something that is scarily predictive of not the far future, but of recent times. Very odd indeed. The plot of "Return from the Stars" is just that: space travelers from Earth return, but much time has passed. They are essentially visitors to their own future. But the Earth has taken trendy ideas such as non-violence and translated these ideas in ways no one could fathom. Man has not evolved, but society has evolved a way to tame Man; for example, when a man visits a woman, and the woman decides that no sexual intimacy should be the outcome of the encounter, she offers the man a drink of Britt. This substance, which is stocked in every young woman's refrigerator and looks like a bottle of milk, renders the man incapable of desire or acting upon that desire. How presumptive! Every man is a rapist. Yet, this book was written long before much radical feminist writing that asserted much the same idea. Women dress oddly, painting their nostrils red and wearing bells in their shoes. The tiny details point out the fact that the returnees are foreigners to what was once their home and is now in no way their future, though it is their heritage. Lem makes some interesting extrapolations. Some of them even came true in his own lifetime. This is actually one of the few Lem books that stuck with me, and it is a darn shame it is out of print. It is really a quiet masterpiece of speculative fiction.

This book is one of Lem's most serious works he ever wrote. His creativity is unique even among best science fiction (and any novelist)of all. All of his books have a deep concern for the future of humanity, this one , though, deals with some matters without the satirical humor he perfected so well (even as far as to create his own linguistic style). There are many new futuristic terms in this one, they are very clear and well understood, and nonetheless meaningful. Awe inspiring richness of the vision creator's future world gives the book the artistic quality of a Bosh's painting while deeply analizing the course which the future society might take. And its course is technological advancement, beyond anything today's modern science can offer. Molecular engineering, massive global sociogenetic alterations to the human body and mind, virtual reality that is all too real, holography, anti gravity are only a few of the many possibilities studied very closely here. This book is together a warning and a moral study of the genesis of the human race. Lem warns of the consequences these ultra - technological trends might bring to human mind and behavior, as well as the enviroment, tries to understand the importance of the individual's free choice and self governed social developement. The book's underlying sadeness is a substitute for a crititical exclamation. A complete literal masterpiece, flawlessly executed, from a genius of the genre. Only a person with a limited imagination can pass it off and ignore it's value. As a native Pole I have had the unoubtful pleasure of reading both the original and the translation and, here are kudos to the translator - I would say it is 99% accurate. I have been reading Stanislaw Lem for the past 20 years since I was barely 10 years old, his books have had a deep impact on my thinking and helped me to find my place among others of this troubled planet, beautiful and precious all the same...

Another impressive book by Lem, who is, in my mind, a top science fiction writer in any language. Return From the Stars proves this by staying away from formulas, relying instead on strong characters who actually are affected emotionally and psychologically by the futuristic world they live in. If anyhting, Lem is a writer concerned with characters, and ultimately with the heart of man and how it reacts to the world. This book will speak to anyone who has had the experience of returning to a community from which one has been excluded for a number of years; be it a return from prison, repatriation or imigration, the experience of Bregg returning from the stars is symbolic of all of them. To those who never left a community and never returned to it later, the book will be a chance to see what returning from the stars might be like.

I am from Turkey(somewhere between MiddleEast and Europe). I have been known as a fast reader all my life.( I can read more than 200 pages an hour in Turkish, 150 in English, 100 in German ). It was one of those days when I was used to reading 1000 page books in a few hours, when I came across this book. It took me a full 2 days, unbelievable for a book of size 300 pages. Basically it is a book written on a space pilot, who returns to Earth after a 10 year journey to a different star; meanwhile 120 years had passed in Earth time. It is not a book that you can read 10 or 20 pages a day.The first chapter is the definitive one : if you can manage to read it (app. 70 pages ) at one grasp, you will love it; if not, you will go on thinking that Solaris is the best book written by Lem. For me it is this book. In Solaris Lem was looking at a planet level, in this book he is looking at an individual human level. Lem is my favorite writer, and I love all of his writings. Lem has created two space pilots : Ijon Tichy and Pirx the Pilot. The adventures of Ijon Tichy are more amusing and eventful, Pirx on the other hand relatively uneventful and serious. This book is much more closer to the adventures of Pirx, than Tichy. If you get this book and love it, I will suggest that you get Eden too.