Gwern's Reviews > Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanisław Lem
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Feb 24, 2016

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Read on February 18, 2016

Another Lem high-concept entry in the 'incomprehensible higher force/universe' vein akin to Solaris & His Master's Voice, with a military-espionage theme. It is much less successful: the military satire is inferior to other works like Catch-22, with perhaps the funniest part being the introduction's historical speculations on & comic misinterpretations of 20th century societies, and there aren't many of the interesting intellectual confections you expect from Lem. At his best, Lem can dispense all sorts of peculiar paradoxes or proposals or bravura interpretations, but in Memoirs, hardly any appear aside from one late in the book after a drinking party, perhaps because the world-building is so cursory (eg where does this giant bomb shelter get all these resources and adult humans from in the first place?).
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02/17 marked as: to-read
02/24 marked as: read

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