Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem. New York. 1987. Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. 0151306400. Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel. 322 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Vaughn Andrews. Jacket illustration by John Alfred Dorn III.
DESCRIPTION - Quinta, the fifth planet of the solar system, is pocked by ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network draped from spindly poles. It is a dream long dreamed, a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted by madness. In stark contrast, the crew of the spaceship Hermes represents a sensitive, knowledge-seeking Earth. There is a supercomputer named DEUS; a troubled monk who is a delegate of the Vatican; a Japanese physicist-philosopher; and a young daredevil pilot thrilled at the prospect of meeting the aliens face to face. They all have the best of intentions toward their ‘brothers in intelligence’ as they approach Quinta. But the Quintans are locked in a ‘star-wars’ escalation gone berserk. They have thrown up a wall of white noise on all wavelengths. They will not answer. They will not show themselves. As the crew is attacked in different and mysterious ways, they find that their responses are determined not by their God-like technology and their self-congratulatory moralizing but by primitive instincts portended in strange images and symbols. A dark poetry takes over and leads them into a nightmare of misunderstanding. Fiasco: at once a stunning space adventure and a tale of lost innocence.
Stanislaw Lem (12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. In 1996, he received the prestigious Polish award, the Order of the White Eagle. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humanity's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns.
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