Customer Reviews

The invincible (A Continuum book)

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I have read this book twice, once several years ago and again very recently. It's a bit more viscerally exciting and not nearly as abstruse as the other Lem novels and stories I have read. It was originally published (if memory serves) in the 60's and so I suppose it's a relatively early work (it certainly has a strong early-60s flavor). The story concerns a powerful space warship sent to a remote planet to learn the fate of an identical ship which disappeared there. The central figure of the book is Rohan, the ship's navigator (and first officer, more or less); Lem's usual attention to the psychology of his characters is evident in his excellent treatment of Rohan's uneasy relationship with his commander and his observations on the scientists and spacers who make up the crew. However, the book is not as psychologically complex as the other Lem novels I have read.

The tone of the book starts out in a very '60s hard-sf vein, veers towards horror a bit in the middle, then eventually focuses on the technical and moral dilemma faced by the crew as they try to avoid their predecessors' fate. The main theme of the book is the futility of humans' hubristic attempt to conquer (or at least understand) the universe which surrounds them; the quality of the writing (just) saves it from being heavy-handed.

It's a pretty good read and more approachable than some of Lem's other books (an interesting contrast for fans, I would say), such as _Solaris_, which draws on some of the same ideas. Try to find a version which was translated directly from Polish if you can (one US edition was translated from an earlier German translation!). Might be a good book to get someone with an interest in hard sf into Lem's work.

The invincible is a great story about a ship, the invincible, that has a crew of about 80 people, armed to the teeth with nukes and superior shields. It is on a mission to Reigis III to find out what happened to their sister ship, the condor. Part of the story has to do with exploring the barren planet that contains some seas and metalic ruins, finding the condor and then dealing with what happened and why. Lem is a great writer of hard SF, trying to be very factual and makes sense. The book has been written some time ago though so some points are a little dated such as the warship the invincible being a huge rocket, but this really doesn't detract from the whole story. What happened to the mighty sister ship the condor? This may have been the first book to deal with this type of enemy! Very advanced for the time of this book. Great chapter on the theory of how this enemy evolved on the planet. Recommended!

This is a great book by the famous eastern European sci-fi author Lem. An Earth spacecraft explores a previously unknown world and finds a very alien presence. Lots of science here, and evolutionary theory applied in an unusual manner, as humanity tries to understand the exotically alien universe (a major Lem theme throughout his works). A good adventure story as well. I read it as a teenager and occasionaly reread it- it was a mind-expander.

and I must say that it's a good book. It was also my first and
last Stanislaw Lem book. Mr. Lem has a spaceship stranded on a desert planet with most of its crew dead. How
did it get there? Nobody knows. The reader's left in the dark.
Of course, the book's a short one. It's only 100 pages long.
Still, if you want a good introduction to foreign science fiction, this is the one for you.