Customer Reviews

Return from the Stars

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
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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.

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collection of essays in which everyone is bound to find something to their liking, also it includes a previously unpublished chapter by S Lem himself!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 a relatively contemplative work by Lem - he saved his blatant humor for other works. Instead, it's a relatively sober story about how thoroughly isolated one can be, even in the midst of a crowd.

The "one" in this case is Bregg, an astronaut returned from an interstellar misson. Perhaps he never hoped to be a hero upon return, but it never occurred to him that no one would care. In the hundred-plus years since his departure, humankind had remodeled itself into a people that could not understand why anyone would venture into space, after an era in which such trips were declared pointless expenses. The returning voyagers are welcomed by their gentle hosts, but largely ignored.

The first part of Lem's story imagines Bregg's utter disorientation in the physical world, filled with unfamiliar words, sounds, and sights; where even a wall isn't necessarily a wall. He's intelligent and adaptable, so moves on to the second level of disorientation: simply having no idea how to have a conversation when so very few concepts or values are shared. This isolation appears most clearly in his attempts at inimacy. Betrization, the process that made this world the gentle idyll that it is, makes him seem like a ravenous beast to the generation around him, an object of fear no matter what he does or says. The danger inherent in his un-betrizated state appeals to some, of course, but it's an appeal that Bregg does not want to hold. After a time, he finds a woman of this brave new world that can accept him. Then, the deepest level of his isolation surrounds him: he simplay has no place in this society. There is no need for his skills, no interest in the heroism and tragedy of his star travel, and no job that he's competent to do. One or two personal ties are simply not enough to anchor him in this alien place.

The very end has a different tone, one that I'll let you discover for yourself - I'll just say that I found it worth the wait. The trip there passes through Lem's evocative writing, including a poetic moment describing the peace and permanence to be found in studying mathematics: "New roads arise, but the old ones lead on. They do not become overgrown." There's also an oddly prescient desciption of Emil Mitke, "... a crippled genius who did with the theory of relativity what Einstein had done with Newton." Back when this book was written, there was no way to forsee Stephen Hawking, today's asymmetric icon of scientific brilliance.

This might not be the best intro for someone new to Lem. I'd recommend his lighter writing to start with. Still, it's a good one.

//wiredweird

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.

The other reviews have rightly commented on this books concerns with gender relations. However, in the context of all of Lem's works it can also be viewed another way. "Solaris", "Fiasco", "Eden" and other books are about how alien a new world would appear to human eyes...a far deeper if more pessimistic vision than the typical science fiction where aliens are just funny looking people. Starting from this perspective "Return from the Stars" could be an account of how alien the future would appear. For example, in the beginning of the book the returnee wanders through a gigantic, many-levelled structure of moving ramps, trying simply to find his way out. After awhile the reader realizes Lem could be describing the experience of a medieval person dropped into a modern major airport.

Hal Bregg returns to Earth after a journey that spanned 10 of his years and 100 years at home to find a world unrecognizable from the one he left. He and his crew embodied the loftiest aspirations of a society willing to take risks, even fatal ones, in the pursuit of exploration, discovery, and advancement. Sound familiar? But society in the intervening century now has expunged all possibility of risk. To achieve this, humanity accepts a narcotized solution in the form of betrization--a socially engineered necessity. Hal, full of passion and vigor, is thus a living anachronism and unsure how he will fit in.

With this scenario that seemingly could go anywhere Lem would like, it oddly becomes something of a romance. Please though dont surmise that this a standard love story. The book contains the classic Lemmian effulgence of realities that presciently evoke some of our own: reals (simulated encounters with danger); betrization (aforementioned); an enslaved workforce of robots; electronic books; etc. Without revealing more, the ending confirms Lems place among the pantheon of superb literary artists.

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.

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...

This one is a page-turner that keeps you up till all hours of the night! It is not like some of Lem's more comedic novel(la)s but nonetheless it is still a great read. Great characterization and offers a philosophical look at the improvement of society and space travel, amongst other issues. It is precisely Lem's blending of cognitive, societal, moral, and scientific issues that leave other sci-fi writers in the dust... Without a doubt, Lem does credit to the genre.

I have always enjoyed Mr Lem's writing and this novel starts so magically with the arrival back on a changed Earth. I felt as mystified and perplexed - even childishly naive - as Bregg did on his return. Do all children feel this way as they grow to know the world around them? And the unfolding of the story was logical and interesting to me. But where was it going? Could Bregg ever integrate usefully into the new world. Clearly he rejected the possibility of a return to the stars. There is only one other possibility available to him. What disturbed me about this novel was the sequence of unlikely events and revelations - built one on top of the other they left me unconvinced in the novel as a novel. However it is a good yarn and has some very interesting observations about what makes a human being, casting some doubt that the result would still be human if some radical changes were made.