Stanislaw Lem was not only a well-known writer of science fiction, but he also published a wide range of critical writings on the genre. It is perhaps the latter side of his work that helped him identify accepted and often unrecognised assumptions popular within the genre, and develop themes in reaction to these.
One of his recurring themes is the problem of communication with alien life forms. This is the main theme of his arguably most well-known work, Solaris, and it was one of the reasons for the disagreement between Lem and Andrei Tarkovsky on the film version of Solaris. While Tarkovsky emphasised the "human angle" and the necessity to depart from the book while making a film, Lem intended to make an illustration of the sort of communicational problems mentioned above, which are related to that very human angle. It should perhaps be noted that as far as I can tell, the film version did not completely destroy Lem's intention, but the way Lem reacted to the acknowledged change of emphasis indicates very strongly the importance of the theme of communication in his work. Another one of his well known works, His Master's Voice takes this theme even further. In Solaris the problem can be summarised as: do two utterly different intelligent life forms - the human race, and a gigantic living ocean - have anything meaningful to tell each other at all? In HMV, the problem is even more academic: a regular sequence of signs coming from space is discovered, a message from the stars. Can we make head or tail of it without knowing anything at all about the sender? HMV is related as the reminiscences of a scientist working on the decipherment project, in one long stream of ideas without any organisation of the text into parts, chapters at all. The shear number of possibilities of understanding and misunderstanding is devastating, and the project would culminate in complete confusion except for the fact that the project leads to new discoveries as a by-product.
Lem's Fiasco is yet another take on this problem of communication. This perhaps lesser known work of Lem would deserve more attention. For one thing, it is easier to read than HMV. True, it still has passages that depending on my mood I either put down as the love of detail of a careful architect of imagined futures, or a pseudo-technological mambo-jumbo prolonging the prelude to content. To make this latter point clear one must admit that it is reassuring to know that whoever wrote this, took the pains to imagine a world in full detail, this commands respect. But it may not be necessary to reveal all this. If I compare the novel to a television broadcast of the theatre play, than a well done background is something everyone appreciates, but imagine what would happen if between the dialogues the commentator would go into detailed descriptions of that background. Interestingly, I found some of Lem's critical writings sometimes easier to read then e.g. HMV, for they were full of observations without interruptions of abundant detail. In Fiasco, the most critical part for me from this respect was the first chapter with its technological descriptions and Titanian landscapes.
Having said this, I think Fiasco is in many ways a more effective medium to convey Lem's warning about communicational problems than either Solaris or HMV. There is some sort of certainty of contact in Fiasco, where there is only a question mark in HMV. In Solaris the contact as far as possible creates a new psychological reality coupled with a number of other themes. Fiasco on the other hand is primarily a kind of caricature of contact attempts. These are treated as completely anthropocentric in scope, and the novel asks the question what if the others don't want contact? Fiasco puts the human race into the shoes of the UFOs of science fiction: humans visit a planet as a technologically superior race who have to find the means to communicate with the locals. The situation allegorically could be described as follows: a man travelling through a desert encounters two quarrelsome foreigners, and rejoicing in the possibility of company offers them friendly relations, but as he is ignored, and eventually even attacked he becomes more agitated and willing to show an upper hand. This is perhaps a good metaphor, except that we only imagine that what we meet in the novel can be interpreted in terms of human behaviour. Lem revolts against many popular themes here. In many sci fi novels, the relations with alien races are either peaceful or inimical but they always assume that there is a mutual understanding of concepts such as war and peace. In other words Lem says that humans don't look for alien civilisations, they look for humans in an alternative physical form. The object of criticism is the overwhelming optimism that contact is possible. I don't think Lem rules it out completely, but he finds the idea of the underlying assumption of blind optimism to be plainly stupid as there is plenty of room for less ideal scenarios. Fiasco is one such possible scenario, where at the same time this optimism eventually turns into an obsession and into the titular Fiasco.
There are several interesting characters in the novel. The ship's captain, Steergard, and a delegate, Arago, from the Vatican represent confronting opinions regarding their mission. Steergard aided by the ships omnipresent computer, DEUS, represents the colder calculating attitude, who is nevertheless in conflict with himself over his decisions. Arago, although a man of the church is not significant as a representative of an organisation but as a kind of consciousness amplifying some of the inner doubts of the captain in their conversations, but eventually it seems without little practical consequence. I would risk a guess that these conversations are perhaps semibiographical, as the atheist Lem is reported to have had long conversations with his friend Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) perhaps about similar matters. There is also a pilot, Tempe, recovered from a state of hibernation after an accident centuries ago. He is to some extent a twentieth century observer in the novel, although this angle is not very emphasised. Tempe is the person who finally lands on the alien planet, and in a way more personally related to the eventual fiasco. Finally, a Japanese physicist, Nakamura, whose zen philosophy sides him with Arago, while officially he takes stand by the captain. He also advices Tempe in a number of ways before the descent, most importantly he advises humility in the face of something completely unknown. The advice perhaps, taken more seriously, could have changed the ending of the novel.
