Book review: The Invincible
The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem (1964)
I read the book, because i played the game and did not like it.
First of: The Invincible is a great title. You read the title and your thoughts start running wild. 'Whoah, The Invincible. Who is this guy? Is he really invincible? Wow, what does he do? Who is he? Can nothing beat him?'
Amazing title. Makes you pick up the book immediatly. Sparks interest.
I first started reading the book in english, but switched to a german version soon. The sentences and descriptions are long and detailed and even in my mother tounge often a bit hard to comprehend.
I would describe the writing style as techical and dry. Not much happens in the beginning of the story so it can be a bit hard to get trough.
We follow Rohan, the first Navigator on board of the enormous space ship The Invincible. They are on a rescue mission for their sister space ship The Condor, which got lost on an uninhabitet planet.
The crew on the ship act all very professional. There are orders, the orders are followed. There are no emotional outbursts or discussions. When the ship lands on the planet for example, the crew is eager to get outside because they have been holed up on the ship for months at this point. But the order from the Astrogator (which is the captain in this world, the big boss, the commander) is that everyone stays inside and that only a few robots will start to investigate the surroundings. And the crew obeys. And that's that.
The book is written in a realistic style in that way. Traveling thorough space is extremely dangerous and when you are on a rescue mission you would probably be extra cautious. On a ship like the Invincible there would need to be very strict discipline and clear chains of command.
They find that the planet is a dessert. Dead. No life anywhere. Just a few fish in the ocean. No signs of civilization. Only a few weird metal structures deeper in the ground.
Eventually they find the Condor. The crew is dead. Everyone. They can not explain the chaos that they find on board of the ship. People seem to have randomly gone mad. Some apparently died of starvation, even though there is plenty of food on the ship.
One scientist from the Invincible suddenly looses his memory while on an expedition. All his memory. He forgets how to speak and to eat. He does not know how to walk or to do anything. He is like a newborn in a grown mans body.
The doctors can not explain it. The man is otherwise fine. Day by day he relearns stuff. But slowly, like a baby.
It starts happening to other crew members as well. People who go outside and start exploring loose their memory and must be rescued.
One day they see the Cloud, as they call it. A massive black cloud consisting of tiny robots. It seems that the cloud is responsible for the memory loss of the crew members and also for the demise of the condor. But the cloud is not controlled by anyone. It acts on it's own. Is is like a force of nature. They try to fight it. Even with nuclear weapons. But without success. Their biggest weapon, the cyclops also just looses it's 'memory', in that it suddenly stops the fight and starts wandering around aimlessly.
The scientists of the Invincible have some theories of how the cloud came to be, how it could function, but ultimately, they have no idea what to do.
Strangely the first Navigator Rohan, seems somehow immune to the effects of the cloud. On one expedition led by Rohan they get attacked by the cloud, but Rohan is spared.
No one can explain it.
They are running out of ideas and out of options. Should they just leave again? They would be coming back with more questions then answers it seems. But they can not do anything against the cloud. The Invincible in all it's power is helpless against a swarm of seemingly mindless nano-bots.
The book never fully explains what the cloud is or how it works. And partly that's the point of the story. The scientists have ideas and theories, but can not really test them and also the theories can never explain everything.
It is about this hubris of the humans. Naming their ship Invincible. Landing on foreign planets. Discovering things that they do not understand but immediately start shooting at. Thinking that everything in the universe needs to bow to the will of the humans.
And then they encounter this force. And this force just says: 'No'.
Your strongest weapons mean nothing. Here are things that you can not comprehend and you can not beat.
The cloud is not evil. It does not hate the humans. It does not feel anything. It is not even alive in the traditional definition of the word. It's robots. It does things. The humans do not know why and they can not force it to do different things.
As a reader i came to this point where i was thinking: 'What are you guys doing? Just pack your things and go home. There is nothing here for you.' And Rohan also reaches this point. We hear him thinking that it would be best to just leave now. That the cloud is basically a force of nature. You can not get revenge on a force of nature. That would be like beating the water in the ocean because a ship sank. At this point in the story there are still four people missing. They are most likely dead. So why risk the life of even more people now.
While Rohan thinks all of this he gets called in the Astrogators office. And the Astrogator tells him: Look, i do not know what to do. I am letting you decide: Should we leave now, or should we keep looking for the four missing crew members?
And suddenly Rohan realizes that they can not leave. Suddenly the lifes of the four people lie in his hands. And he can not abandon them. Now that it is his decision he can not do what he was convinced was the right decision a few moments ago. The burden of responsibility.
It is easy to complain about the decisions of someone higher up than you. To say: 'What are they thinking? It is obvious what to do! If i were in charge...'
Rohan gets a change of perspective and realizes: I can not leave them behind.
This was my favorite moment in the book. It is one of those moments the people who hate self-help books talk about when they say that fiction is a much better medium to change your thinking.
Overall i think i liked the book. I would recommend that you read it. It was not necessarily pleasant to read though. The style is clunky and technical and is for the most part not very exciting.
But it made me think. It stuck with me for a while.