Rating: 
Summary: Let them eat opium!
Review: "The Futurological Congress" opens on an unremarkable and flaccid note, seeming to be an overlong tract on the freedom of will; then it becomes an impassioned tale about solipsism; quickly it changes into a first-hand account about the drastically different life of the far future, only to expose the visible world to be an extensive, manyfold illusion - Matrix-style, but predating it by a quarter century.The book opens with the viewpoint character - Ijon Tichy, who has by now become familiar to the reader - attending the 28th Futurological Congress in tumultous Nicaragua. As the Congress opens the floor, a revolution erupts outside. There are a few humorous moments, such as Ijon writhing in the throes of universal love brought about by the chemicals in the tap water, and his occasional run-ins with the representatives of the Liberated Publishing Groups, who advocate total debauchery and fulfillment of bodily urges. Soon it becomes apparent that the revolution is being suppressed by chemical means - the government floods the streets with pacifying gases that cause violent altruism and a deep sense of guilt - and all hell breaks loose. In the resulting chaos Ijon slips in and out of the real world, totally unsure of its reality - the gas takes its toll on everyone. Soon the reality appears to solidify and he is told that he was earlier nearly destroyed, frozen, and reanimated in the future, in the year 2039. The entire world is an idyll. Knowledge, oblivion, and any emotion can be induced chemically. One can literally go into a bank and take out a free loan for any sum of money - only to be chemically compelled to repay it eventually. But soon deep suspicions rise in Ijon, who is totally alienated from this futuristic, robotic utopia. For example, why is everyone constantly panting? And then he discovers the terrifying truth. "The Futurological Congress" pulls off the Matrix's premise with startling potency - Lem has no need for rebelling robots - this apparent hell is humanity's last refuge from extinction. So the next time you ride your car to work, think: are you really riding, or is the sensation merely generated by a chemical? Maybe you're not riding, but merely jogging along? Or perhaps even that is an illusion? Perhaps your rotting body is lying in a snowdrift alongside a road, pathetically wriggling its skeletal legs in a pretense of jogging, its heart beating in a plastic box of red-and-blue plasma? Or is even that a mirage, masking an even more horrifying truth?
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite sci-fi novels
Review: A brilliant novel that is at once hillarious, disturbing, and thought provoking. This book is both philosophy, recalling Plato's parable of the cave, and satire, commenting on our prescription drug-obsessed society, told with Lem's trademark punnery and absurdity. My favorite novel by Lem. Highly, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The Word Is ... Unreal!
Review: Here I am sitting on a chair and pecking at a keyboard with a monitor and computer in front of me. At least I think so. But what if the sushi I had for lunch was spiked with a psychotropic drug that makes me believe that this typing at the keyboard activity is real? Especially when, in actual reality, I may be strung up stark naked and upside-down in a subterranean dungeon with rats gnawing at my vitals while happily thinking up what to write about Stanislaw Lem's greatest book, THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS. The reason why I believe that some of the best sci-fi since WW2 came from Eastern Europe (Lem from Poland and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky from Russia) is that the mind set of communism was conducive toward what is referred to as "aesopic writing" (The term comes from Solzhenitsyn.) If you protested anything, you were regarded as a traitor to the state; but if you wrote fables as the Greek writer Aesop did which were not set in a particular unnamed repressive regime at a particular time, you might be able to get away with it scot free. Lem had a field day by speculating on a congress who members are drugged into thinking they are drugged into acting as if they were drugged ... it goes on and on. The more or less classical beginning descends into multiple levels of questioning every level into reality, until even the most utterly solipsistic stance is questioned. By that time, you are either confused or, if you're like me, laughing your head off. As they say in another context, unreal!
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Summary: One the three funniest books I have ever read
Review: I am a list fiend. I make lists of every conceivable form and fashion. One such list is "The Funniest Books I have Ever Read." This one makes that list, finishing in a three-way tie for first with CATCH-22 and John Barth's THE SOTWEED FACTOR (Jerome K. Jerome's THREE MEN IN A BOAT is next in the list). The plot: the future is a very, very bad place to be. Inconceivable overcrowding, deplorable living conditions, shortages of every imaginable form. How to cope? Drug the world! Social engineering and better living through the use of mind altering drugs. Democracy and Socialism have given way to the government of the future: Pharmacocracy! The world isn't a better place; it just seems to be. But when terrorists put LSD into the water supply at the 116-story Costa Rica Hilton during the meeting of the world's foremost futorologists, the thin veneer holding society together becomes flayed. Lem has written three of my favorite books in the world: this one, THE STAR DIARIES (also featuring Ijon Tichy--I believe in the original Polish these two were part of the same volume), and SOLARIS. The latter is equally superb, but oddly enough, completely without humor. It is almost difficult to comprehend that these works all came from the same writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting Idea With Poor Execution
Review: I didn't enjoy this book so much as admire its premise. Luckily, it wasn't too long.
Rating:
Summary: Pulp Fiction Made Smart
Review: I don't what made me pick this up when I was nineteen, but I've never been the same since. Lem takes some of the hoariest cliches in the genre and rethinks them, never falling into the traps that are set for so much of the genre. This is science ficion with Idea as its character, extrapolation as its plot diagram. It is one of the smartest skiffy novels I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece by a great master
Review: I have been for a long time a fan of the Stanislaw Lem works. I got acquainted with some of his novels (Solaris, Star Diaries and Eden) when I was a kid, and without any doubt the great master has shaped my world outlook. I have been lucky enough to be able to read the Lem's works in Russian (my native language), which is of course much closer to the original Polish than English. I have heard that the Lem's translations by Michel Kandel to English are simply great. Luckily enough he has also translated this book - the Futurological Congress, which I consider to be one of the best works written by Stanislaw Lem. Futurological Congress is a bright example of the great master's ability to combine "uncombinable": SF spirit, deep philosophy and inflammatory humor. I don't want to retell here the content of the book - it is immeasurably funnier to read the novel itself. I dare to rate the novel higher than for example the celebrated Rendezvous with Rama by A.Clark. The latter is unique in its detailed trustworthiness, but is left far behind by the Futurological Congress' spectrum of adventures for the reader's mind.
Rating:
Summary: Chemical Warfare and the Reality of Illusion
Review: I never read a Polish book I didn't like. I read this for a philosophy course; and saw immediately the relevance. Lem treats us to a viewing of reality, but in terms of chemistry and belief.
The narrator is in the future where terrosism is rampant. Society is conditioned by chemicals. All things, from Baptism to steaks, are supplemented by drugs. The humour is on every page. The world he sees-of robots and clean streets-is a fake representation. The real world, he it told, is naked and ugly. But the society is fed a master drug through the air, which puts up pleasanter appearances. However, he has about 500 hallucinations in the book and you don't always know until after the "fact." I strongly recommend this.
Rating: 
Summary: Very refreshing
Review: I was surprised by how thoughtful the book turned out to be, given the way it began. I picked up this book for a college lit class not knowing at all what to expect. I loved the first 36 pages - the biting irony made me laugh out loud. After that it got dead serious. Lem raises some very tough questions, the main one being, "When does the government have the right to conceal the truth from the governed?" It was a roller coaster ride to read, but the ending was a real let-down.
Rating:
Summary: Level upon level of illusion
Review: Ijon Tichy is the calm, but worried and fascinated witness of a world gone astray. In the book's first part, he arrives at the Hilton hotel to participate in the eighth futurological congress, which is soon ruined by the local revolution; the situation degenerates further when the governement awkwardly tries to control it by using various substances. After what appears to be a 40 year-long 'stay' in liquid nitrogen, Tichy has to encounter a world profoundly affected by 'psycho-chemistry'. In all of the worlds - 'real' or illusory - that he visits, Tichy walks in the middle of prisoners (in the Platonic sense) rendered defenseless in the bottom of their cavern; the prisoners are not only the unknowing victims of the illusions, but also the vain and mischievous demiurges who perpetrate them. In such worlds, craving for knowledge has been reduced to a mere search for formulas and chemical products whose only role is to provoke the desired reactions and keep all the citizens in a state of sleep. Tichy is alone in perceiving what is positive about getting rid of complete servitude, but the world Lem depicts in the book is so oversaturated with different levels of illusions that such a hope can only lead to failure. Thus, even though Tichy is one of the sole half-liberated prisoners of the whole book, he remains a prisoner all the same and is ultimately comforted by the least threatening of the various lies. Like the others, Tichy is caught up in a world whose web of illusions he can't totally understand.
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