This is the 2nd time I tried to read this book. I ran into the original bookmark along the way and made it further this time. But, alas! Despite how much I love Lem, this one just did not work for me. It had that same headlong, breathless rush of The Chain of Chance but with the barest thread of a plot. It is a concept book. It is very funny at times and crazy in the vein of Gogol. But it requires a lot energy too. In this sense, I am not an ideal reader at the moment.

I can imagine a time when I might want to read this....just not now.

I read to page 79.

Stanislaw Lem isn't the first person to ask whether we can be sure what we see is really real, nor is "The Futurological Congress" the best exploration of this philosophical chestnut, but this one is worth a read anyway. While it's still a wild, even disorienting ride from first page to last, Lem's future also belongs to yesterday, defined, as it is, by the student protest and sexual liberation movements of the late sixties and early seventies and the dire prophecies of Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb." It's the sort of book that could have only been written in 1971, featuring, as it does, bearded would-be assassins, shamelessly liberated literary movements, brutal Latin American dictatorships, and controlled psychotropic substances by the trainload.

The prose is not the main attraction here. While our hero, Ijon Tichy, undergoes wild transformations in the course of this one, living, as he does, in a future where it's easier to switch bodies than to change a car tire, Lem doesn't really dwell on the import of these changes, and it can often seem as though too much is happening too fast. I had to reread the first half of this one just to keep my bearings. As might be expected from a science fiction novel from this period, there isn't much indirect in Lem's third person: he didn't write "the Futurological Congress" to explore the subjective nature of consciousness and identity. What surprised me, though, is how funny the book often is. Lem and his translator worked overtime to come up with bizarre, humorous drug names and charmingly redefine existing words to fit in their manic, buzzed, and horribly overcrowded future. I can't think of another book that would define an expectorant as a conception aid.

I'm sure that a good amount of readers will enjoy "The Futurological Congress" for its retro charm: it is, at the very least, a curio from an era that, as Louis Menand put it, conceptualized almost everything as a drug trip. But some more durable themes do emerge. The author draws a neat parallel between lazy, underperforming and rebellious robots and the way that capitalists, according to communist critiques, view the working class. The book is also, in a roundabout way, one in a long tradition of literature that warns readers of our desires to distance ourselves from the harshest aspects of our reality: it could be argued that the difference between Lem's "psychem" and Zuckerberg's Meta is that one relies on chemistry and the other on circuitry. And Lem both echoes and criticizes contemporary postmodernists who aim to show that language provides the key to divining and creating our future. Interesting as all of this sometimes is, it's the very weirdness of "The Futurological Congress" that hits you hardest: it's a short book, but it describes a constant, freaked-out stream of events that barely pauses to catch a breath. It's not exactly a life-changer, perhaps, but it's certainly a trip. Whether you grok it or not, there isn't too much out there that's quite like this one. ( )

En el universo narrativo de Stanislaw Lem, sólidamente cimentado en una formación científica y humanista, los temas tradicionales de la CF adquieren una inusitada trascendencia debido a la visión filosófica, el claro sentido de los valores y el dominio poco común del lenguaje que caracteriza su escritura. Continuador del relato filosófico de Jonathan Swift o de Voltaire, la sátira y la alegoría siempre presentes en su obra se aúnan en una imaginación inagotable al servicio de una extraordinaria capacidad de análisis. Congreso de Futurología, publicado en 1971 y perteneciente al ciclo de relatos protagonizados por Ijon Tichy, describe la aspiración al bienestar del hombre contemporáneo a través de la ironía y el humor. Tras un periodo de hibernación, Ijon Tichy es reanimado en el año 2039 y encuentra un mundo en que impera la paz y reina un bienestar general; en esa sociedad controlada por la "psiquímica", se aprende y se ama por medio de productos químicos, los sentimientos son manipulados y toda espontaneidad ha dejado de existir. Bajo una apariencia exterior de abundancia y confort, Tichy descubre, sin embargo, una realidad sobrecogedora que supera a la más fantástica alucinación.

Malgré une première partie qui ne m’a pas beaucoup passionné, la seconde partie redonne un intérêt à ce roman. Écrit en 1971, le roman reste très marqué par les inquiétudes de l’époque notamment la crainte d’une explosion de la démographie et d’une terre surpeuplée. La vision d’une société totalement contrôlée par des produits chimiques, psychotropes, permettant de transformer la réalité, contrôler la population par une pharmacopée de tous les jours est très inquiétante et annonce ce phénomène récent des réalités alternatives. Remarquable travail des traducteurs pour créer des mots restituant ce nouveau vocabulaire imaginé par l’auteur.

La futurologie linguistique explore l’avenir d’après les potentialités évolutives du langage (…) L’homme n’est capable de maîtriser que ce qu’il peut concevoir. D’autre part, il ne peut concevoir que ce qu’il est possible d’exprimer ; tout ce qui est inexprimable est également inconcevable. En explorant les étapes successives de l’évolution d’une langue, nous arrivons à anticiper les découvertes, transformations et révolutions des mœurs dont celle-ci pourrait être un jour le reflet. (P128)

Le critère du bon sens n’est guère applicable à l’histoire de l’humanité. Averroes, Kant, Socrate, Newton, Voltaire pouvaient-ils se douter qu’au XX° siècle le fléau des villes, le poison des poumons, le meurtrier universel, l’objet du culte suprême serait un chariot de tôle monté sur roues, et que les gens préfèreraient périr broyer à l’intérieur au cours des départs massifs plutôt que de rester chez eux sains et saufs ? (p159) ( )

Very funny utopian satire that starts out in an academic conference in a Third World hellhole and ends up somewhere really unpleasant. The translator did a good job with the technological puns, which are actually part of the plot for once -- one character has a theory that society evolves to meet the demands of jargon. ( )