The Futurological Congress

From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

By: Stanislaw Lem

Narrated by: David Marantz

Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure.

©1974 The Continuum Publishing Corporation (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Good story, but maybe better ingested visually.

First off, this was a good book, but I think one that I would have appreciated a lot more if I'd read it rather than listened to it. A lot of the latter part of the book contains words that Lem created and being able to see the words spelled out on the page and thus analyse them for the implied (and probably sarcastic) etymology would have added to the fun.

It did take me a little while to get into the mood for this book, the sarcasm is not so much tongue-in-cheek as tongue-through-cheek, it's not subtle. That said, once the introductions were complete and the main plot kicked in I enjoyed the story and the humour.

The story is told first-person, transitioning to a chunked diary-style format for the last third of the book and there were moments where I felt presages of the book Fiasco in the tone and style of the story-telling.

I want to stress that I had no issues with this particular recording, I thought it was well narrated by Mr Marantz and was free of distractions (music, chapter breaks, etc), I just think that the content would be better appreciated with a bit more time to linger on the words and a better idea of how things were spelled.

The Onion on scifi steroids

Any one paragraph in this book could be an entire book unto itself. It reminded me of the blurbs on the front of the Onion newspaper (when there was a printed version) that directed you to the inside of the paper to read the full article—which did not exist. Many of these ideas are excruciatingly funny skewerings of modern Western culture. No system, service or symptom escapes Lem’s brilliant satire. The pharmaceutical industry is the most obvious foil, but Lem uses our propensity to believe there is a pill to cure everything to send up religion, government, academia, Big Agriculture, health care, marketing . . . the list goes on.

There are so many ideas in here, but not much of a plot. Still, one of the funniest and most original scifi books I have read in a long time. [I listened to this as an audio book read by David Maranz, who did an excellent job.]

Also cannot fail to recognize the brilliant translation work done here by Michael Kandel. I cannot imagine how difficult it was to translate this from Polish, with all the wordplay, made-up words, and still keep the humor intact. A bravura translation.

(Not Your Average) Really Humorous SciFi Adventure

I initially read this on my Kindle and enjoyed it immensely. It's a fun, feel-good type of book despite the dire futurological predictions. So, I recently decided I needed to listen to the audio version. The narration was just fine, thank goodness! So, here is my previous review.

"I must say I warily downloaded this book and put off reading it for some time. I thought it could be as bleak as the recent Russian sci-fi translation I read. I guess I didn't read the reviews carefully enough. This was one of the funniest books I ever read. Lem is brilliant, with such a sense of humor. There were parts where I had to close my Kindle, while I tried to get the guffaws under control. Luckily I was reading in bed and only my hubbie could see me.

While Lem is wonderfully creative and you could tell he had a great time penning this story, I was also blown away by the translator. This novel is so much about word play, and you could not tell it was written in a foreign language. It was impeccably translated and didn't suffer a bit. I can't wait to try more of Lem's books. While very funny and short, there was also a scary message here.

Even if you are not a sci-fi fan, you are in for a treat with this book. It would take anyone out of a reading slump or maybe even a deep depression. Get it and enjoy, now!"

Chock-a-block full of ideas

This is a very enjoyable quick book. There is so much packed into it that my interest never flagged. In fact, there are numerous ideas that could have generated at least short stories of their own, but they are only a part of this world.

I found myself thinking of many different novels that at least share an idea with this, enough so that I began to wonder how many authors and filmmakers perhaps read this and were influenced. There are moments like Stand on Zanzibar but crossed with Vonnegut. I thought of Inception, the Manual of Detection, Philip K. Dick, Matrix, with some Nabokovian wordplay tossed in.

Funny in places, thought provoking in others. For a novel written in 1971 (and translated In 1974) I thought there was a lot of great satire about the direction society was/is heading and it is surprisingly relevant to current society in many ways, and I think there are many serious cautionary items blended into the fabric of the world of the novel.

Here's one sample: Lubricrat: one who gives bribes. Derived from "greasing" of palms.

Tell me that's not applicable to our entire system of government, summed up in one word.

I'm not going to spoil anything, so have fun with it, I did.

Also, there's a movie coming soon, The Congress, which looks interesting, but from the movie blurb, it does not appear it will follow the novel. It may be they seized upon some element and developed something, we'll see. As I said, there are so many ideas which could easily be developed into some tangential story.

unique and super smart

what an amazing story. great concept and vision.. i was left with my jaw dropped! highly recommend.

An ingenious, concentrated look into the future!

Prepare yourself, read this when there are no distractions, you will need all your attention for this book. Pushes your vocabulary to another level! Very amusing at the same time. The author needs to be reintroduced to the library's of North America.

Why is this in the top 100 list?

I imagine this is on the top 100 list that was circling around the Interwebs around 2015, because the list was created by Boomers who we know loved experimenting with all sorts substances. Basically, the narrator is tripping on this thing or that throughout the book, while making predictions about the 2000s, specifically, how everyone will be medicated on this thing or that. I didn't look at the copyright and thought this book was written in 1930s because the future predictions are so simple. Other than that, there are a lot of modern catch and brand words that are mentioned in this book, which was fun to hear. I gave it 3 stars because there is little to take away.

Good performance of a satirical farce.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to get on with satirical farce. Lots of interesting ideas, all of which were stuffed into a short book instead of giving them the time that they needed to be explained properly. I enjoyed some of the humourous elements, but the winding, repetitive story arc just annoyed me after a while and from there on on I was lost on the books many ideas.

Linguistically Psychedelic

What an amazing book. The futurological use of language is a joy and I'm sure I missed half of the psychedelic drug aptonyms. I probably need a sniff of lingorememberall gas. The stark dystopian future of a veneer of drug induced normality that avoids even seeing, let alone dealing with, the truth of life has a darkly appealing mirror of today's slide into shallow celebrity. Is it all a dream, or does he wake up in the future? I love the image of doped up half robot people getting absolutely knackered climbing up a lift shaft, believing they are actually just standing in an elevator ... is brilliant!