His Master's Voice (Mit Press)

I suspect some of the negative reviews are from people who were expecting sci-fi, or, to steal a line from a Woody Allen movie, they liked Lem's "earlier, funnier ones". Lem certainly wrote a range of books, from the Kafkaesque (Memoirs Found in a Bathtub), to the grim, to the philosophical, to mystery (Chain of Chance). I thought his autobiography very unusual, in that it focused not on his adult interpretation of his childhood, but his memories of how he saw it as a child. Thus the early part focuses on food and sensations, etc. Quite unusual.But now to His Master's Voice. I believe people will be reading this book in 200 years, long after most sci-fi has faded from print, the way most of us have not read the various fads of fiction of the Victorian era. Time winnows the seed from the chaff. HMV has important things to say, and to my scientific mind Lem says it in a beautiful and moving and wholly believable way. When, as the project gets started, Lem ends a chapter with the line: This is the story of an ant, I literally got goose bumps, for he has so perfectly described the very best of the human brain, man's semi-coordinated attack on puzzles and problems, and yet its weaknesses and limitations, for as effective as a hoard of ants are, they are also a bit chaotic; and that chaos is to be embraced, for perfect human union can lead to both great AND terrible things. Mortality and chance are important, necessary, for they periodically shuffle the deck.I could go on for pages on what this novel stimulated me to ponder. I read it first at age 22, during the height of public feminism, and it did take me a bit of time to accept that Lem does not seem to attribute women with any ability or interest in science, but once over the oddity of an all male world devoid of all sexual tension, the book feels fully rounded (imagine the statue of David with the genitalia airbrushed out. I'm not talking about "sex scenes", I'm talking about the absolute divorce of men from women, children, parents, FAMILY.) Decades later, having long forgot the details of who did what, the book still reads as very fresh to me.

A strong sci fi classic- the writing is reasonably good, the thought behind it excellent, as always with Lem, and sci fi is first and foremost about mentally exploring. Several of his others (Solaris, Eden, Invincible) are more gripping, but for those of you looking for food for thought, this one works well as well.

I am inclined to think of Lem as a Romanticist who writes in science fiction. His Master's Voice (much like Lem's masterpiece, Solaris) explores events and phenomena which elude or transcend rational understanding. The novel revolves around the discovery of an inexplicable neutrino emission. Examination leads scientists to believe the emission a kind of "letter" from other planetary beings. Despite their best efforts, and numerous complex theories and experiments (of which Lem has imagined at least two dozen), nothing about the code can be comprehended by the methodologies the scientists have available.Like the rambling Ishmael of Melville, or the detached Miles Coverdale of Hawthorne, the narrator's thoughts wax philosophical in long arcs of meditation on the nature of humanity and existence. The narrator, Dr. Hogarth, has been recognized in the field as an iconoclast of scientific principles; it is his ability to immediately draw out hasty assumptions of theoretical and mathematical proofs that is both his burden and virtue. The character is left wandering through a philosophical wasteland, a kind of temperate nihilism, though his own biases are soon unearthed by his colleagues.Ultimately, His Master's Voice is about the pretension of ultimate knowledge. For a work that insists on science, it is highly critical of the biases of the methodology; and yet, there are numerous diatribes against individuals who rest solely upon the imagination, as well. The hesitancy of the narrator (and I would extend this to Lem) to propose a positive argument with any hint of certainty is the epistemological crux of the novel. Even the narrator tires of the futility and impossibility of comprehending the signal, a signal that may very well originate from non-human organisms, in a language which does not presuppose the binaries at the base of our language (if such binaries even exist), from a civilization that has so surpassed our own that their reality is beyond our understanding. Or--particularly mystifying--the signal may be entirely natural in origin, a possibility which challenges our ability to distinguish between nature and artifice. In the final pages, the author tries to force an order onto the chaos of the project, and yet he cannot bring himself to any more evidence for his beliefs than intuition--a difficulty that he both rejects and embraces. There is a kind of Romantic postmodernism at play in Lem, and this novel is (in my opinion) a better expression of it than even Solaris.

His Master's Voice tells the story of a project set up after a "message" is received from outer space. The story is narrated by a somewhat self-satisfied scientist involved in the project.HMV has little in the way of plot. It is more of an exploration of ideas relating to the source and meaning of the message - and a gentle satire on the machinations of top scientists. It's pretty heavy going and only marginally worth the trip.If are are thinking of reading this because you enjoyed Solaris (as I did), then you may be disappointed.

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Great book, will make you think after you read and it is great read.

His Masters Voice is the perfect antidote to all those mainstream Hollywood movies that have cannibalised the literary science fiction of the last 100 years. Unlike Sagan's 'Contact' this is a message from the stars that cannot be wholly understood even to the point of them doubting that it was a message at all. The question is left open, no ends are neatly tied and no conclusions reached. If SETI ever recieves a message from the stars I expect it to be as difficult to interpret as the message in His Masters Voice. Not for fans of Star Wars...

Bought for a present.

I got to a third of the way in. I'm calling that a draw.Wordy garbage, far more about fending off what the putative author thinks others might think about the revelation to come than anything else. I'm sure it all leads up to something wonderful if you have a few human lifetimes to get to the meat of it.Lem was a genius, to be sure, but this is not his best.