Fiasco (Stanisław Lem)

The plant fiasco of 1986 is one of the realistic, not fabulous science fiction - novels by Stanislaw Lem , in which he tried to describe a possible scenario of a scientifically well-advanced future of humanity. Fiasko is a large-scale novel, a late work by the author, with a storyline that is interrupted several times by small colorful narratives, retrospectives and scientific essays.

The novel was created as a commissioned work for S. Fischer Verlag during Lems emigration from Poland due to martial law . Lem says that it is the only time that he has taken such an advance, especially without an "idea" for the plot.

action

The main story is divided into two hundred years apart.

The first takes place in the not too distant future, when people are building the first unfinished rocket landing sites and supply facilities on Saturn's moon Titan . The tectonically extremely complex area between the stations becomes a trap for some space travelers who attempt the way to the neighboring station with large striders called " diglators " - humanoid robots that are dozen meters high and controlled by a pilot. Among them is the character of the pilot Pirx, known from Lem's short stories . In a subsequent rescue attempt, the narrator of the first part of the novel, the pilot Angus Parvis, with his diglator becomes a victim of “Birnham's Forest” - an area in which chemical processes produce rapidly growing solid structures that collapse due to their own weight. When he realizes the hopelessness of his situation, he decides to die by vitrification , a kind of shock freezing - in the vague hope of being brought back to life by a later generation with further developed medical skills.

The second part of the novel now takes place - a hundred years later - in this futuristic world. Mankind, who are well advanced in physics, space travel and medicine, are actually in a position to resuscitate at least one person who died in the diglators. The human race of the future has reached an enormous technological potential and is in the process of starting a large space expedition, the aim of which is to make contact for the first time with a planet on which one suspects signs of intelligent life. Using 'sidereal technology' (a type of astro-engineering art) and actually unimaginable navigational artifacts, the description of which by Lem suggests the appearance of conformity with the laws of nature and physical feasibility, they overcome the abysses of space and time that exist between civilizations lie. They use the possibility of time distortion in the vicinity of rotating black holes , which is at least possible today . A subcommand is sent out with a dinghy to make contact with the 'Quinta' (the name of the planet). Once in the target system, they believe that they will encounter two extremely hostile parties that have been engaged in an arms race that has been going on for centuries . During the planning and implementation of their contact, they are ignored by the inhabitants of the planet , also using their cybernetic final generation of computers, and later even attacked (whereby a human lander intruding into the system is attacked here). When the people realize that the contact they wanted to establish (with such high effort that the expedition cost) will not be allowed, they begin to force it with brutal measures. They try to demonstrate their superiority with a lunoclasm , the destruction of the moon there.

After further attempts at contact, the inhabitants of the planet try to lure people into a trap. However, they are well prepared because they expected a trap. They are sending an automated dummy of their spaceship to the planet. When it is expected to be attacked, the people retaliate by destroying a gigantic artificial ice ring that runs around the planet, causing a climate catastrophe on the planet.

Through the behavior of the people - they blackmail the planet - the inhabitants are finally forced to consent that a single envoy may enter the planet. It is the resuscitated pilot from the first part of the book. Because he is engrossed in investigations after landing and forgets to report to the expedition every 100 minutes, the expedition assumes that the pilot has been attacked and uses a giant laser to destroy the presumed base of the opponents '. Since the pilot is exactly there at this point in time, he takes the knowledge about the residents with him to his death. Contrary to all human imagination, the population of the planet consisted of stationary, hut-sized organisms that were connected to one another underground. Since the people of the expedition had only looked for moving objects, they could not recognize the true identity of the population.

Until the end of the book, the reader does not find out whether the resuscitated pilot from the past is Parvis or Pirx.

people

In addition to the narrator of the pilot Mark Tempe (alias Pirx or Parvis), few people are involved in discussions about the purpose of the expedition. They are stereotypes of their respective occupations, a physicist, the expedition leader, cyberneticist, medicin, and with particular importance Father Arago, an envoy of the Holy See on board a spaceship, who functions as a moral authority and critic of the whole enterprise.

criticism

• Walter Udo Everlien: “The German title of the novel says it all: Not only the crew of the terrestrial spaceship Eurydice is experiencing a 'comprehensive failure' , which is about to make contact with the first discovered extraterrestrial civilization; This civilization, too, paralyzed by a cold war of global proportions, has maneuvered itself into an impassable impasse. [...] Lem has consequently thought through the concept of the militarization of space called SDI by pointing out that arms control among untrusting blocs becomes impossible at the latest where it is withdrawn from verifiability: for example in space. At the latest in these scenes it becomes clear that Lem not only addresses the problem of making contact with the aliens in his novel, but that he is also interested in updating the military situation currently being discussed on earth. "
• Karsten Kruschel : “The quinta that was found there represents a mirror image of the earth. The earth as it will become if mankind puts up with certain plans: one of an inextricable network of combat, espionage and camouflage satellites a wounded planet for which every tiny shaking of the delicate balance of terror and the potential for battle becomes a catastrophe. […] Here Lem no longer just demonstrates what this earth can expect if the armaments madness is not stopped - he explains soberly and logically and in an excitingly written story that understanding and armament are mutually exclusive things. [...] Once again, Lem has proven that science fiction is very well able to present burning human questions in a way that other literature cannot. "
• Rachel Pollack: “So it can be said that although fiasco successfully portrays wishful and delusional ideas and the tendency to violence in humans, it disappoints in almost all other matters [...] The endless pages with technical explanations, hypotheses and possible theories etc. confuse pleasantly, but stun the reader. Lem is not generally considered a hard science writer, but his descriptions surpass that of most specialist writers in the field. "

expenditure

• First edition: fiasco. Translation by Hubert Schumann. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3100433022 .
• GDR edition: The fiasco. Translation by Hubert Schumann. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-353-00158-1 .
• Polish edition: fiasco . Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 1999, ISBN 83-08-03008-4 .
• New edition: fiasco . Translation by Hubert Schumann. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2000, ISBN 3-518-39674-9 .

literature

• Peter Swirski (Ed.): The art and science of Stanislaw Lem . University Press, Montreal 2006, ISBN 0-7735-3046-0

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fiasco . www.lem.pl. Archived from the original on December 2, 2011. Retrieved on December 2, 2011.
2. ↑ One of the allusions to Shakespeare's Macbeth , central to Lem in the treatment of domination and violence.
3. ↑ See Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 1991, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-453-04471-1 , pp. 729, 731
4. ↑ Leipziger Volkszeitung , 15./16. August 1987
5. ↑ Cf. Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 1991 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-453-04471-1 , p. 738 ( translated from Foundation magazine )