Monday, November 27, 2006

Return from the stars

The beginning of this novel by the late Stanislaw Lem is one of the better depictions of "future shock" ever put to paper. Really top-notch science fiction. The rest of the book, while still interesting, doesn't quite live up to the promise of that exceptional beginning. Nevertheless, the occasional flashbacks to an ill-fated space mission manage to convey extremely well the grandeur and awe of space, in a manner that brings to mind Kubrick's "2001".

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