Helpful Score: 2
a perfect work of art, March 15, 2005
Reviewer: JR (New York)
Hilarious bureaucratic master-work reduces every paranoid cliche to the realm of the absurd. After a brief prologue (explaining the current state of the world), the memoirs take over the book and create an environment both instantly insane and memorabley accurate. Lem was always the funniest of the sci fi writers- he makes you think, the same time he causes you to laugh out loud. (it's like Kafka mixed with the Marx Brothers.) The un-named narrator will have you rooting for him from the first sentence. Even the final stark scene is somehow uncomfortabley amusing.
Maddening, Labrynthian, Perfection, April 2, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
this book drove me completely insane while reading it, as there seemed to be no real concrete...anything. And I think that was the point. A wonderfully funny, often maddening read from Stanislaw Lem, whos other books are no less good than this one. I would even hazard a guess that this would make a great movie, in the right hands.
Reviewer: JR (New York)
Hilarious bureaucratic master-work reduces every paranoid cliche to the realm of the absurd. After a brief prologue (explaining the current state of the world), the memoirs take over the book and create an environment both instantly insane and memorabley accurate. Lem was always the funniest of the sci fi writers- he makes you think, the same time he causes you to laugh out loud. (it's like Kafka mixed with the Marx Brothers.) The un-named narrator will have you rooting for him from the first sentence. Even the final stark scene is somehow uncomfortabley amusing.
Maddening, Labrynthian, Perfection, April 2, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
this book drove me completely insane while reading it, as there seemed to be no real concrete...anything. And I think that was the point. A wonderfully funny, often maddening read from Stanislaw Lem, whos other books are no less good than this one. I would even hazard a guess that this would make a great movie, in the right hands.
