Science-fiction is a difficult genre to map out. At an earlier time, perhaps the term dictated certain ideas that we now identify as "old school" science-fiction: rockets shooting off to space, alien contact that was often, especially in the 1950's, paralleled with communism scares, exploring the universe in search of unknown planets. It seems like a paradox to force those words together by hyphen: science-fiction. For one part is set in stone, movable if only in the realm of theories. The other lies in our fantasies, disconnected from reality. In science-fiction literature, often reality and unreality are forced together to produce a novel questioning the unknown. Over time, science-fiction has become a sign that merely hangs above a group of genres, some which are still debated: speculative fiction, paranoid fiction, cyber punk, slipstream, and usually, interspersed within the fantasy genre, as if to insinuate that both are the works of dreams. Science-fiction and fantasy operate on dreams and nightmares; which part is set in reality depends on the author. The earliest of which, rockets shooting off into space, is pure escapist fantasy. Leave it to Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem to spin this idea on its head, with a title like Eden that promises dream fantasies but is the story of a complete and utter nightmare in the realm of communication. Playing with the escapist fantasy of traveling to a distant planet only to realize that it's a land defined by death.If I were to write a review of Eden, I would say that the book is quite dated. I spent a week wondering if I could finish the book or if I should have just turned it back in, as nothing seems to happen in 200 pages, other than problems in first contact. However, the last few chapters are utterly brilliant and made me change my mind from writing a review to an analysis. It's these two chapters that make me want to read more by Lem, that make me understand why he's considered a science-fiction master. And it's because Lem had the ability to transcend his genre and write about human interaction with an outsider's eye. It's difficult to describe what it means to write about humans from an outsider's perspective. What Lem excels at in Eden, perhaps due to his experience during the Stalinist regime, is in showcasing what societies do to keep the general public silent. Strangely, there are many similarities between Lem's Eden and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, in terms of theme. As far as writing goes, Le Guin's work is much more subtle and interesting, but I'm willing to give Lem the excuse of being at the mercy of translation. Strangely, if we're going to compare Lem to Le Guin, Lem's off and on "honorary membership status" with the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) incited protest as many other American science-fiction writers disliked the SFWA's treatment towards Lem. Le Guin was one of those writers. Lem would go on to make comments about American science-fiction writers, in which he relegated them to commercialism and capitalism. That is the best backhanded "Thank you" I have heard of lately. Eden is the story of six men who crash land on an unknown planet. They are the Captain, the Doctor, the Engineer, the Cyberneticist, the Physicist, and the Chemist. Unfortunately, those names prescribe a certain personality to each character. The Captain is stern and ruled by matter and fact, the Doctor cares deeply about the alien race they encounter and hopes to help them, and the Cyberneticist appears to only care about his precious robots. This isn't a character-driven novel, certainly. But in lieu of character and, strangely, plot, what exists in its place are theories and ideas. What Lem has going for him is his bizarre imagination. Eden is an eerie planet filled with automatic factories that produce useless objects, proposed grave sights by the humans where bodies are strewn about, a room filled with glass eggs that contain strange skeletons; perhaps the eeriest moment for me was when they taped footage of a city - disparate elements of common life that are so alien yet so familiar. These creatures constructed of abdomens and useless limbs are called "doublers" by the crew. In the original Polish, they were called "double-bodied." The few doublers they meet are by way of wandering stragglers who appear on their ship despite the crew's security. But there is another doubler they meet, in a herd, that is running and panicked. What the crew realizes is that the doubler is indifferent to human existence; it's fear is of doubler race. When the Doctor offers to take the doubler with them, it follows. They believe the doubler to be ill-formed as it cannot communicate with them. Another doubler they meet is an astronomer who has the means to communicate with them, though it is solely through a computer's translation. What they learn of the race, through the cities they glimpse and the information the Astronomer gives them, presents a harrowing story of Eden. But is this truly what is occurring on Eden or is it merely the presumptuous efforts of mankind's perspectives that create this story? The crew often questions what they saw and how they are imposing their beliefs on the doublers. In the original Polish, a reader would have received Lem's translation of the Astronomer's insights. As an English reader, I have received a translation of a translation. The observations made by the crew are all too apt: "We have to ask a multitude of factual questions, and from the answers and half-answers attempt to construct a reasonable theory." All I can do is make theories based on the translations of the crew of doubler society. What the Astronomer talks about with indifference (genocide), the crew is appalled by. They ask what they can do to help the doublers, the Astronomer answers, "Zero," and they still believe that they can give doublers weapons to solve their problems. It becomes a question of whether you go in, guns blazing to help a society or if you let that regime destroy itself. Sure, one seems more callous, but if you don't truly understand what a society is going through, how can you possibly help them? How can you ensure that they don't fall into the hands of yet another terrible regime? What seems like a simple solution becomes a series of consequences and abstractions. The crew is at the mercy of translations - they begin to understand doubler society but at the same time, know nothing about doubler society. All they can understand is that the Astronomer would rather be killed by their ship taking off than to return to its people. Many of the questions they ask the Astronomer lead to non-answers. "Is" and "is not" are in the same sentence, anonymous regimes, and untranslatable words like "deathavoid" and "selfaid." What they discover is that the doubler society was once ruled by anonymous tyrants. As that regime faded out, a new, anonymous government appeared and anyone who speaks directly of this "non-existing" government is put to death. The anonymous government put a plan in place where the doublers would be biologically engineered so that their future offspring would be perfect. This had unintended consequences though, in that doublers were being born with one eye, faces without mouths, and mental deficiencies. The anonymous government then washed out any idea that a plan had been enacted. And so it's not a plan anymore, but a disease. This gave the anonymous government the right to seek out these "diseased" doublers and kill them. Anyone who speaks of the disease as a plan made by the government is also put to death. In the 2002 film Hero, the King of Qin attempts to unite all of China by way of force. One of the more memorable scenes (in a film that is built of memorable scenes) is when his forces attack a calligraphy school. One would wonder why he specifically sent soldiers to a calligraphy school, but this is a symbolic interpretation of taking over a group of people. It's stated in the film that before China was united, there were 25 words for sword - sword being one of them, as "word" is in sword. The King of Qin conquers these people by forcing them to have solely one word. One word to unite them rather than dabble in obscure varieties. Essentially, what Hero states is that you control people through language. If you control language, you control the populace. In Eden, the amount of anonymity is staggering. This isn't uniting a country; this is complete annihilation. By making the tyrants anonymous, the doublers have no one to place their anger on. They have no face to retaliate. And without a being to retaliate, they comply to forces. They do so willingly. The Astronomer reveals that doubler life revolves around anger, perhaps due to the fact that they have no one to release their anger onto. By taking away a "plan" and replacing it with a disease, this change places fear within the doublers. They are ruled by fear and anger. No healthy society can come out of this. Lem's writing certainly has historic parables. I'll leave those open for you to decipher. Eden isn't a great book. I had difficulty finishing it, but those last few chapters are enough to warrant more tries on my part to obtain Lem's works. Not only are Lem's ideas relevant, they're also important. It's important to remember that we're only human and that we can only impose our humanity onto others. Thus, we are born with culture shock, whether we accept this or not. It's only human.
In many ways this book is dated to its era of publishing, the 1950s. It has the constant mention of atomic this and atomic that and a bunch of extremely intelligent white guys visiting a planet and no female characters at all. Things like film cameras can be overlooked because I don't expect authors writing 50 years ago or more to predict the rise of digital technology. All of this would be easier to deal with if Eden had a better story. There's never a sense of why the men are out exploring space in the first place. Also, they don't have names. They're addressed by their profession, Captain, Chemist, Cyberneticist, Physicist, Doctor, Engineer. This, coupled with the fact that none of them are all that distinguishable, creates a feeling of detachment. Lem has the characters pontificating and debating philosophical issues pertaining to their situations a lot. Science fiction is a good genre for political, social and scientific metaphor but I prefer subtlety to being hit over the head with it. I also don't think the story ends well. I'm left feeling like something's missing. The one thing that does save this book though is the world-building. The planet of Eden, and its odd inhabitants, is profoundly alien, both beautiful and unsettling, in a way similar to the planets described in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. Though the story is told in a way that's at times dry, I do think it reflects accurately how people would react to things on an unknown alien world.
What do You think about Eden (1991)?
Plucked this off the stack for some much-needed sci-fi distraction. There are some brilliant moments scattered throughout, embedded in Lem's ambivalence towards technology and the politics of complex societies. The contrast between alien 'Procrustean' socio-biological engineering and the reassuring familiarity of 'human' science (robotics, nuclear power) could not be more horrifically stark in some ways, while their underlying uses end up being disconcertingly similar in others. Yet for the most part the writing style is tedious (it could be the translation itself, but I'm doubtful). I found myself sympathizing less and less with the main characters over time, except, ironically, for the two alien protagonists. There is apparently some debate about whether the 'flaws' and confusing turns in Lem's writings were mainly due to self-censorship under the Polish Communist regime. All the same he probably would not have been driven to write such disconcerting novels without being immersed in the same sea of politics to begin with. The joys of art...The book will probably induce nightmares in some readers - but only if they can be bothered to read it to the end.
—unperspicacious
Stanislaw Lem is still my favorite SF-author - this one is a very common Lem book, alien worlds so alien that most things that happen are and stay unexplainable; where this one comes off the usual path is that in the end, there's actually a bit of explanation! Of course, like usually with Lem, it stays short and many things remain unexplained (but that's the good part).My main grudge with Lem is that his descriptions just don't activate my "head's inner cinema", maybe that's the translation but I remember that I had the same problem with German translations... In a nutshell, his descriptions are very technical and don't flow very well:... a smooth slab that crumbled at the edges and was flanked on either side by slanting surfaces that bore a series of notches.(p. 107)
—Philipp
Interesting take on what first contact with aliens might actually be like - the sheer incomprehensibility of something completely out of the human norm. A human ship accidentally crashes on a little-studied planet and tries to piece together the inhabitant's civilization from their own observations, knowing that the human point of view might not apply.Lem's writing is a little simplistic (perhaps due to translation), but he creates a fantastic world populated with incredible creatures and improbable things. Not his best work, but still an enjoyable read.
—Christopher
