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His Master's Voice

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About this listen

 Here is a witty and inventive satire of "men of science" and their thinking, as a team of scientists races to decode a mysterious message from space. "I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament...we as the posthumous heirs of Them...."©1998 Stanislaw Lem (P)2009 Audible, Inc. Classics Science Fiction Fiction Witty Mathematics
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This was heavy for long sections of the book. Interesting topic matter, but many of the science terms had me looking things up. The actual concept of a message from the cosmos kept me going. The final part was the clincher. 😀👍

Redeeming Conclusion

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A chilling, disturbing dissection of humanity's inability to escape its club-wieldind, genocidal roots, even and moreover when they think they are at the peak of their climb to God-like serene rationality.
Also, an eulogy to our bold anthropocenthrism.
Finally, buyer beware: this is not your classic, action packed sci-fi. Lem was a physics PhD, and a philosopher. Most of the book develops as a reflection, which may be puzzling when unexpected, but believe me, action and suspense are embedded in the long reflections and asides, all coming to a synthesis more and more apparent as the events slowly develop, while the reader helplessly witnesses the ethical horror unfold, endowed by those long musings with an understanding of further ethical horrors to come, yet unable to prevent them. This is sci-fi that changes your assumption on humanity. Straight to my "to be read in schools" shelf.

A masterpiece of uneasiness of the mind

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Well, this is an interesting book. There's practically no story or characters. It's told as a memoir of a now gone mathematician who worked on the project called His Master's Voice where they tried to interpret an extra terrestrial signal. The premise is great, but to be honest, the story is barely there. It's more of an exercise in philosophy, like reading an academic paper. It delves into some interesting aspects of that, sure, but the lack of any more meat to the soup made it hard to keep my engagement up. Lem's style of writing very often delve head first into philosophy, which is cool, but I feel he does better with that in other works where you still have an underlying story to follow.

It might be recommended for fans of Lem, but for people looking for a philosophical sci-fi novel, other works by Lem are better in my opinion.

Frog eggs!

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..and put the book down. Large vocabulary but not science fiction as I know it. Very boring treatise on Philosophy.

4 Chapters of Philosophy , take the authors advice

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