Eden (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book)

Lem has become my thing as of this year, this "year of the scientist" for me, 2020. And Eden is a very good mental work-out for someone interested in reading a book whose whole-spanning reality is represented in one object in the story: Some kind of machine that is complicated, totally unfamiliar to its observer, and impossible to figure out by even the greatest minds of our different sciences.The vocabulary is not too difficult, but the extent to which alien things are described--even doorways they go through, and fields of plants--makes reading this book something like climbing a craggy cliff face, promising you you can have more, and enjoy more, if you don't breeze through, but stop to truly visualize.Lem pushes with magnetic determination to be understood by the reader. And if all them heft the understanding, pushing back to learn with the same force... that is an incalculable amount of human will.

Quite the unique story teller. I started with Solaris. I was really captivated by his writing style so I immediately tried to read everything published. This story is about failed "first contact" on our part. The protagonists are humans crash landing on another world. Not suspecting life. Lem's ability to imagine the impossible or things most of us would not is extraordinary. Puts you right there going "Oh yeah, that makes sense we could not have foreseen this". Lem tell his stories like a scientist would I think. One that knows very well the human condition.

This is the second Lem book I’ve read, after Solaris.Like that other book, Eden builds up a really interesting world for the characters to interact with. But unlike Solaris, Eden falls way flatter in terms of characters and plot than Solaris did. Which is hard because I have hears the notable thing about Solaris being that nothing really happens and it’s more a philosophical novel. But this was a letdown even in comparison to that book.

This is only my 2nd Lem novel (the other being Solaris) and I would have to say that, without reading any of his other works, he certainly tries to capture the tedium of his characters and their struggle to understand alien intelligence. Unlike Solaris, this story is pure mystery until the end, you will undoubtedly be confused by most of the alien's technological and sociological happenings. There is very little action, but the author makes up for that in intrigue, not really giving anything away until the last minute, keeping the reader just as confounded as his characters. At first, I didn't like that the characters have no names (they are merely called 'The Captain' or 'The Engineer') it made the characters feel a bit hollow and cliched, but once I got over that, it didn't bother me much near the end, because I had fleshed out each character in my mind, and it didn't matter that they didn't have names. This is a pretty good book, but probably only for real sci-fi fans, the rest may just find it boring.

A spaceship crash lands on a planet that is thought to be tranquil, what they find is quite out of the ordinary. Yet how they go about investigating, and trying to repair the ship is very exciting and they all can't wait to return home to planet Earth.

An alien planet, reached by accident, instead of a fly-by. What the men from earth find is beyond understanding. But the Captain, the Engineer, the Doctor, the Physicist, and the Cyber (computer) scientist — all male, of course —each use very human skills to save themselves. The question is, will this planet they call Eden, and the living plants and animals on it, survive their visit.

Misnamed Eden...never matured anythingg interesting. Sticky, clumsy sentences and the characters were about as interesting as reading the headings in a phone book

The book was great but there is a lot of visual description that I think gets lost in translation. It requires an intense visual imagination but if read deliberately, creates an intensely weird and unnerving experience.

Lem is a great author, read a few of his books in the past, now if you get past the fact that some things are a bit dated (he did write a while back and things have changed a lot people!) it is a good little read, polish off in a day or two at a push. If you are a Lem-virgin maybe try a more popular book of his before you venture further afield.

As stated, great price and fast delivery

Me gustaron otras obras de Stanislaw, como Solaris o Diario de las estrellas, pero este libro es demasiado fantasioso para mi gusto.

The first book written by Lem that I ever read was Fiasco. This is other story about the difficulties that two civilizations can find to understand each other, a recurrent argument in Lem's imaginary, and also a warning on how we barely understand ourselves.

Excelente obra maestra de la ciencia ficción de Stanislaw Lem, Apasionante, interesante, y como es característico en la obra de Lem, triste y pesimista.