The Futurological Congress

by Stanislaw Lem

ISBN: 978-0-241-31278-0

First published 1971

129 pages

Cover illustration: Hayley Warnham

4/5 Stars

An impressive and believable vision of the future.  The future is chemically driven and chemically possessed. A new form of government is created, we live in the first chemocracy. Ijon Tichy has been ‘saved’ from a riot in Costa Rica, but the new world that saves him is anything but the paradise it seems.

There is a drug for everything, christendine, or anabaptiban? How about authentium to create realistic synthetic memories?

When trapped in the Hilton in Costa Rica, Ijon has to hide in the sewers to escape the effects of carpet bombing. But the bombs aren’t made of TNT, but of LTN.  LTN bombs  cause the most long-term damage, imagine, if you will, Love Thy Neighbour bombs, where aggression gives way to feelings of unbounded love and altruism.

Knowing that Stanislaw Lem was Polish, that he was writing within a communist state, and that his work could have been removed by the censor at any time, gives the reader a necessary sense of perspective. Parallels with Philip K. Dick are valid, and make for an interesting comparison and discussion.