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A review by atagarev
His Master's Voice by Stanisław Lem
5.0
I was a little nervous going into this reread after a decade but this is still my favorite sci fi book of all time. It is a tale about First Contact but that is more a framing narrative for what amounts to a series of essays on the history, philosophy and morality of science and scientists. It is a thought-provoking work chock full of interesting ideas that play off each other.
As can be expected from a book published in 1968, there are some things that haven't aged very well. The geopolitical landscape drawn is very strongly based on the Cold War for obvious reasons yet the concerns it raises are still applicable in today's landscape of ineffectual response to climate change. Certain scientific theories around the future of the universe, the CMBR, populaton explosion and others have been proved incorrect or supplanted by improved theories in the intervening decades. I don't find that to be much of a detriment but other similar limitations are much more obvious in today's context e.g. the fact that this wide-ranging examination of human thoughts on First Contact never once mentions the thoughts of anyone who is not a European-descended man. For real, women are literally non-existent in this book. I see this as an artifact of the time but it is still something to keep in mind as you read.
If there is one major downside to the book, even though I hesitate to call it exactly a weakness, its how strongly it is based on the PoV of a mathematician and natural scientist. I see this as one of its greatest strengths as it is the reason the main character's PoV speaks so strongly to me yet without a strong grounding in mathematics, physics and information theory, a lot of the subtlety of expression and details of the concerns raised would be hard to appreciate or even notice. At the same time, I have spoken to some friends who found the viewpoints presented very one sided... I cannot say I agree as I find them no more one-sided than those of any other author but it is not the one-sidedness common to authors submerged in the world of literature so perhaps that can be seen as a shortcoming to some.
As can be expected from a book published in 1968, there are some things that haven't aged very well. The geopolitical landscape drawn is very strongly based on the Cold War for obvious reasons yet the concerns it raises are still applicable in today's landscape of ineffectual response to climate change. Certain scientific theories around the future of the universe, the CMBR, populaton explosion and others have been proved incorrect or supplanted by improved theories in the intervening decades. I don't find that to be much of a detriment but other similar limitations are much more obvious in today's context e.g. the fact that this wide-ranging examination of human thoughts on First Contact never once mentions the thoughts of anyone who is not a European-descended man. For real, women are literally non-existent in this book. I see this as an artifact of the time but it is still something to keep in mind as you read.
If there is one major downside to the book, even though I hesitate to call it exactly a weakness, its how strongly it is based on the PoV of a mathematician and natural scientist. I see this as one of its greatest strengths as it is the reason the main character's PoV speaks so strongly to me yet without a strong grounding in mathematics, physics and information theory, a lot of the subtlety of expression and details of the concerns raised would be hard to appreciate or even notice. At the same time, I have spoken to some friends who found the viewpoints presented very one sided... I cannot say I agree as I find them no more one-sided than those of any other author but it is not the one-sidedness common to authors submerged in the world of literature so perhaps that can be seen as a shortcoming to some.