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Stanislaw Lem

Invincible (English, German and Polish Edition) Hardcover – May 1, 1973

Polish Edition by Stanislaw Lem (Author)

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Navigator Rohan and the crew of the Invincible travel to the planet Regis III to search for a missing space cruiser

Language

English, German, Polish
Publisher

Continuum Intl Pub Group
Publication date

May 1, 1973
ISBN-10

082640121X
ISBN-13

978-0826401212
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Stanislaw Lem
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Stanislaw Lem
174
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Stanislaw Lem
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Continuum Intl Pub Group (May 1, 1973)
Language ‏ : ‎ English, German, Polish
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 082640121X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0826401212
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.74 pounds

Customer Reviews:
97 ratings

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Stanislaw Lem

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Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he was a contributor to many magazines, like the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works, including "Solaris".

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Carlos

An interesting interstellar action story

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2019

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I consider that the broad Sci-fi genre can be classified, according to the nature and style of the narrative, into several groups or categories. My main categories are: action, thriller, psychological/metaphysical or anticipation metaphor. The key idea of The Invincible is unexpected consequences of the evolution – thanks to artificial intelligence - of a very particular class of mechanical devices created long ago by an already extinct, advanced civilization, which turned the robots into a very particular defensive army protecting the planet from whatever they find alien. There is a metaphysical turn associated to the fact that intelligence can persist and live beyond the actual lifespan of the species that created it. Except for this key aspect, I would consider “The Invincible” mostly an “action science fiction text”. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly fond of “action” science fiction, so I cannot be an impartial judge of this title.

3 people found this helpful

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Colin Powell

Deep and rewarding if given the chance

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2015

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Lem may be one of the most underrated, under-appreciated science fiction authors of the 20th Century, and there may be a very good reason. His narrative is often chunky and involves newly minted words to describe something that hadn't been invented yet. Still, his exploration into the far reaches of interstellar travel know no bounds. For the uninitiated, The Invincible is a simple tale of a recon mission sent to discover and hopefully save the crew of a ship on a distant planet. What the second ship's crew finds occupies much of the book and Lem asks questions about the nature of being human that we have yet to comfortably answer.

Sift through the narrative, and give the translator the benefit of the doubt and The Invincible could profoundly affect how you view yourself in the world and the Universe.

14 people found this helpful

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sfwriter

Don't buy the Kindle

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2018

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The one star isn't for the book - the book is excellent. The star is for the false advertising - the Kindle version is not the new translation from the Polish, it's the old translation from the German.

3 people found this helpful

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Charles M. Britzman

THE ORIGIN OF (INORGANIC)SPECIES

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2014

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This novel was originally published, in the Polish language, in 1964 and then didn't appear in English until 1973. It thus predates the Moon landing by five years, and, IMHO, retains some of the trappings of the prevailing science fiction of the times. For example, very large spacecraft landing on the surfaces of planets, and devices with terms like "automat" and "electronic brain". Ray Bradbury had "rockets" landing on the planets of other suns, also, but his focus was on how space travel would change people(or not), etc. Lem's focus is far more scientific and his protagonists are typically professionals trying to understand particularly mysterious aliens. But he still manages to keep his descriptions of his tech general enough for it to still play well even here in the jaded 21st century.

The Invincible is an 80 kiloton "cruiser" in Lem's grand tradition of large, powerful and lavishly-equipped spaceships that, despite their office bldg dimensions, have the power and ability to actually land on the surface of one gee planets, rather than park in orbit and send out smaller craft. It is loaded with squads of various types of robots (indispensable helpers in Lem stories) and several heavy ground and air vehicles, along with adjustable force fields to protect both the main ship and the various expeditions it sends out. It can even launch satellites into geosynchronous orbit for surveillance, and possesses antimatter "annihilation weapons" that evaporate the atomic structure of targets, as a last resort. The crew is also a well-chosen and essential asset, with experts in all sciences mankind has found useful among the stars, and who go about their duties with efficiency and insight. The discussions between the 19 (out of 80) crewmembers that form the scientific administration of the ship are fascinating excursions into the best of hard science fiction. It is good to see trained professionals puzzling out an alien mystery and not just running scared from space monsters. Thus, Lem shows us mankind's best being confronted by a lethal unknown, and coming away with a deeper understanding. Indeed, Lem is trying here to gaze into a possible future for a robot lineage left abandoned by a race of beings fleeing the nova of their home star. This isn't a tale of robots like Klapaucius and Trurl of "The Cyberiad" (which he published a year after this novel) ; this is a hard science fiction look at what could really happen if robotic entities are left to their own form of evolution for hundreds of thousands of years after their own creators have long since died out.

Despite all this, the fate of The Condor, Invincible's sister ship that it was sent to find on Regis III, remains a mystery for nearly a month of careful and comprehensive investigation . Lem takes us along on the mystery and reasoning of the scientists, until the amazing truth arises to render nearly 50% of The Invincible's crew either blank-minded children, or dead.

Where other novelists might want to add intrigue among the crew or commanders, and action triggered by subterfuge or incompetence, Lem portrays a shipload of men who, though human in every way, are an idealized version of such. They stick to procedures and do their jobs in the background of the action, which frees the story to move forward as a progression of discoveries that reveal the nature of their foe. I sincerely hope that future expeditionary forces from Earth are just like these guys.

4 people found this helpful

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J. Walker

Perfect book. Really took me by suprise.

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2020

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I was not prepared for how good this was going to be. Lem can be scientifically imaginative and detailed rather than Sci Fi Fantasy and I really like that about his writing. No one seems out of place and you don't feel you need to know a character more than you do. Sci Fi steals from this story so much it's not even funny.

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Bernie K

I have always enjoyed Lem and was excited to find this early book ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2015

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I have always enjoyed Lem and was excited to find this early book of his. It reminds me of his later book Fiasco. A solid read and excellent sci fi. Lem is always inventive and thought provoking. Also, it is well translated.

4 people found this helpful

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C. Juliet

Evolution on Reigis III

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2008

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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!

6 people found this helpful

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Stephen Padgett

Unique science fiction book

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2019

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The concept of non-biological evolution makes this a very interesting science fiction read. I highly recommend it for any science fiction lover.

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browse shop review

Incredible 'Invincible'!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2015

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NOTE: THIS REVIEW REVEALS SOME DETAILS OF THE PLOT, IN ITS DESCRIPTION

The story begins in the void, with the mighty Earth ship Invincible - 18,000 tonnes of Class II Cruiser, and temporary home to a crew of 83 - having spent several long months travelling a parsec from its base in the constellation of Lyra. Journey's end is Regis III - an ageing planet, feebly lit by an equally aged and reddening sun; the crew's objective - to discover the fate that has befallen their sister ship, the Condor...

From the outset, Regis III proves to be something of a baffling and contradictory world: the continents are deserts, seemingly devoid of life - and yet the atmosphere contains a sizeable proportion of methane, suggesting the presence of living organisms. But where are these organisms to be found - and where, exactly, is the Condor and its crew? Their investigations quickly provide some equally puzzling answers: in stark contrast to the harsh reality on land, where nothing appears to survive - not even the smallest microbe - the oceans, on the other hand, fairly teem with many varied yet strangely timid forms of life; and the Condor - well, that poor ship is located a couple of hundred miles away from where the Invincible has landed, but closer inspection shows it now to be hardly anything more than an abandoned hulk, with most of its 80 crew members long since dead...except for one grown man, seemingly as helpless as a newborn. Might their disastrous ending have something to do with the rusting metal bush-like ruins of what may once have been a thriving ancient city, or perhaps with the crumbling remains of almost impossibly venerable machines lying buried in the sand...? And what of the Invincible itself - is it safe, and can Commander Horpach and his crew protect their vessel from a similar catastrophe...?

Told almost exclusively from the perspective of the Invincible's chief navigator Rohan, this shortish novel is an exciting read that builds and maintains a sense of tension right to the very last page. Written in the first half of the 1960s, it's a story that clearly embraces one of Stanislaw Lem's abiding themes in his fiction from that period - and a theme that, as preoccupations go, is perhaps not too difficult to understand from an author who was writing from behind the Iron Curtain during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Humankind's apparently boundless faith in the universal efficacy of its own technology (particularly, its weapons technology) - yielding a near unshakeable belief that the machines upon which we place so much reliance must always equip us to prevail against adversity, when in fact it's elementary human courage and resourcefulness that most often sees us through...that is, when we decide to offer them the chance to do so!

So - without wishing to disclose too much more of the plot, it almost goes without saying that the basic premise of 'The Invincible' is thoroughly ingenious: that is an essential hallmark of Lem's writing, in general - but particularly so here, I think. Perhaps the manner in which the planet's nigh-indestructible swarming menace goes about incapacitating its victims is a little over-elaborate (being able to summon such incredible levels of unified power, wouldn't it have made far more sense for these entities to kill their chosen targets - either by frying their central nervous systems, stopping their hearts from beating, or simply tearing them limb from limb?); perhaps the spacecraft Invincible might have been better named 'Noah's Ark' - or maybe, 'Pandora's Box' - since it does appear to continually disgorge from its hold an unfeasibly large assortment of vehicles and robots of awe-inspiring power; there are certainly some similarities to the basic premise of the (earlier) 1956 film 'Forbidden Planet', as another reviewer has perceptively identified (an Earth ship travelling to a distant planet in order to investigate the disappearance of a previous expedition, but soon being forced to confront the formidable threat of a long-extinct alien civilisation's instrumentality...); and perhaps the characters - whilst being noticeably stronger-willed and determinedly more focused than their counterparts in 'Solaris', for example - are a little bit on the one-dimensional side, which is unfortunately one of Lem's perennial and most obvious weaknesses; but taken in the round, these are all rather minor considerations that shouldn't deter you in the slightest from reading what is - in my opinion - a magnificently compelling work of science fiction.

If you purchase the Kindle edition, you will not only need to contend with Brian Johnston's Americanised (English) translation from the original Polish (spellings AND idiom, I'm afraid!), but also the now depressingly familiar and all too prevalent e-book typos! That said, I have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending what is undoubtedly an absolute belter of a book!

4 people found this helpful

Angus Day

Thoughtful and thought-provoking, fast-paced science-fiction adventure.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 6, 2017

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This book really has it all, so far as science-fiction is concerned; it manages to handle themes on the nature of intelligent life, on eveolution, and on man's place in the universe, without being heavy-handed or didactic. Just enough of the ideas mixed in to the plot to ensure that the reader has the raw material for connecting these themes together, if they wish so to do. But at the same time, it manages to be a fast-paced sci-fi action thriller, with blasters and shields and aliens and missing rockcet ships, and indeed, it is possible to read it in that vein without considering any of the more thoughtful themes.

2 people found this helpful

Durham James

Solaris' less well-known cousin, but similarly excellent.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2016

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The Invincible has themes in common with Solaris - the otherness of what might be out there and our limited grasp on how different other life might be; a critique of the human urge to explore for the sake of domination and to needlessly put human interests ahead of those of other species.

This is also a good adventure romp with guns and aliens etc. the works. For those who find Solaris to lack action, this will certainly not disappoint.

Richard Alibon

Clever

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2016

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A cleverly-constructed scientific detective story with a message - as we explore the universe, we will encounter alien life forms which are so different from what we are used to that we may not even recognise them as being alive. This novel ought to be more well-known - very readable in this translation.

One person found this helpful

Nigel Harding

Sublime

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2015

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Taking what could be seen as perfunctory and academic and turning it into something intricate and exquisite. There are divergences from what a novel usually tries to be to investigate the limits of what both science-fiction, and ultimately mankind, can be.

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