The Futurological Congress

As the first day of the Eighth Futurological Congress draws to a close, the one-hundred-story-plus Hilton Hotel in Costa Rica that hosts it has been reduced to rubble by the protesters, insurgents, and armed forces fighting outside. Ijon Tichy, whose space travels Stanislaw Lem chronicled over many years, has retreated along with a handful of other delegates to the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the destroyed structure. They wear oxygen masks to combat the chemical weapons deployed to calm the rioters, but some psychotropic elements seem to be getting through their defenses. Human-sized, bipedal rats infest the sewers. When another attack fatally wounds our hero, he is frozen and put away for defrosting in a future that will be able to remedy his injuries.

Tichy awakes in a world so free of political and social unrest that the greatest danger, for the reader at least, comes from neologisms. Lem is at his extravagant best unleashing the vocabulary adopted in this world that has found a pharmacological solution to every problem, even those created by their pharmacological solutions. Tichy is of course skeptical of what he witnesses, and of course he has good reason to be. Don't read this short novel for twists and turns in its essentially non-existent plot. Settle back to be dazzled by Lem's linguistic invention, and his staggering facility at mixing screwball comedy with social satire and philosophical speculation.