Fiasco (Unabridged‪)‬

Lem wrote a number of books dealing with the contact and culture clashes between humans and aliens. In Fiasco the aliens are about the same technological level (slightly less advanced) but in the rare window of possible contact. Still nothing works out as expected.

For many the book might end in an anticlimax but the story is probably less important than the philosophical, scientific and emotional thoughts of the human characters and the computer. These are events and processes we very well might have to deal with one day not too far off.

All the fictional science feels real and is well based in existing science and theory.

Any SETI, astronomy or astrobiology -enthusiast should read..or listen to some of his books.

Stanislaw Lem always thinks very big. He takes you into places you know about, but have never really visited until now. The novel begins on Titan, and the "landscape" is described in all its marvellous beauty and significance. He looks at the natural structures and sub-structures from a scientific AND poetic perspective. He melds the two. The novel then shifts forward a few hundred years, as a man is revived from a vitrified state. The man gets a second chance to live again. But is it the same man as went under? The brain structure is identical, but is there truly a continuity? This is just one of hundreds of philosophical-religious-scientific questions that Lem introduces. But he does not stop there. He pursues the ideas deeper and deeper into their implications. He always takes things to their next level. Most or all of the great philsosphical-scientific questions show up in his work, in a new and deeper way. Alien life is another such topic. How can we meet another species just at that fraction of a moment when their technology and our technology can combine? We must warp time by travelling close to a black hole, and emerge at just the right moment either forward or backward in time. Even then, is there any possible way for two alien species to communicate, or even to recognize their mutual attempts to communicate? We don't even know what the signals are supposed to look like. We certainly don't know how a completely different biological form of life will think. I have all available Stanislaw Lem audiobooks on my iphone, and I will probably keep them there permanently.