The Invincible

The Condor has not returned from a distant planet and so her sistership, The Invincible, is sent out to find answers. They land on the planet and immediately it becomes apparent that there is disharmony between the crew. The commander is distant, his second in command is wary, various crew communities such as the scientists have differing views from the technicians.

The covers of many of the various editions of the book show a space helmet with a skull inside, so it's no surprise that they find the Condor crew dead. It's the why and the how that form the rest of the novel. The book is reminiscent of Lem's Solaris in that the humans are on a strange planet thinking they can overcome anything that comes against them. But, once again, they can only guess at the reality of the alien intelligence that they find. Just as in Solaris we have a divided crew, an enemy that can take over the minds of the humans, and a crew that does not have any women but differs from Solaris in that the planet does not conjure any into existence.

Portions of the later story are taken up with longish discussions between crew members of what is really happening on the planet and Lem goes deeply into a similar philosophical position as in Solaris that just because a planet is there does not mean that humans have the right or the ability to take it. Calling the ship Invincible is part of his ironic look at such human endeavour. And the final image is one of failure and defeat.

So the Condor goes missing on Regis III, and our titular ship, the Invincible is tasked with finding out what happened. They land, locate the craft, and find all sorts of unexplainable and mysterious remains. It appears the crew succumbed to some sort of madness, leading them all to die of hunger or exposure, despite there being ample food, water, and shelter available. The environment on land is devoid of life, while the seas show marine creatures with a curious magnetic field sensitivity. There's a strange black cloud that blocks all form of communication, and a strange rain of molten metal. All signs point to something not right on the planet, but nobody's sure quite what that something is immediately. The captain decides to stick around, and his navigator (and our viewpoint) Rohan is tasked with investigating things.

It's an old book, but the story and writing still hold up. The author does an excellent job with characterizing the book's main players, and I was really intrigued with the mystery that the author sets up here on this desert planet. The captain and Rohan butt heads (in a professional way) frequently, as the captain is more of a traditionalist manifest destiny type and Rohan is more practical. The setting and feelings of the crewmates are also done well, leaving me well invested in the outcome of the ship.

I did feel like it lingered a bit too long in the last half of the book on matters of philosophy and characterizing what constitutes life, but it's something that I feel is somewhat common in sci-fi books of this era. Once the author pulls the curtain back a bit behind what's really going on on Regis III, I wanted more movement and resolution, and less musings on various aspects of technology and biology, and feeling beat over the head with the idea that sometimes doing nothing at all is the better route to take.

Still, really enjoyable read. Highly recommend to classic sci-fi fans.

A mind-blowing book for the early 1960s. It still holds well with the questions it asks about biodiversity, species, intelligence, etc. Quite brilliant take on evolution as well. Highly recommended!

I read the brand new MIT Press translation. Very happy to see Lem's books finally getting some decent translations, after the many “Polish > shitty French translation > shitty English translations” releases we've had throughout the years. Definitely planning on picking more of them up– if you like Lem, be sure to check it out, because they've done over ten books in their initial batch I believe, with more planned.

This was my third Lem after Solaris and The Cyberiad, both excellent works. This was another really interesting one. I particularly liked its take on evolution and what that means about sentience (when is something considered “sentient”? Can or do machines evolve in the same way that humans do?). Apparently this book was one of the first to explore the idea of “necroevolution”, evolution of non-living matter.

It gets very hard SF at parts but it never went too hard for me.

Story: 5 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 7
Prose: 7

Interesting parallels to Solaris, but ultimately only a mediocre read.

This one grabbed me from the start.