His Master's Voice

By Stanisław Lem

Book Overview

Scientists must decode a message from intelligent beings in outer space in this classic science fiction tale by the legendary author of Solaris.

"The universe is still struggling to catch up with the vast creative force that was Stanislaw Lem." --Washington Post

By pure chance, scientists detect a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this message, knowing nothing about the senders--including whether or not they even exist?

Written as the memoir of a mathematician who participates in the government project (code name: His Master's Voice) attempting to decode what seems to be a message from outer space, this classic novel shows scientists grappling with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, the confines of knowledge, the limitations of the human mind, and the ethics of military-sponsored scientific research.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262538458
• ISBN13: 9780262538459
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

an incredibly intelligent read

Wow. HIS MASTER'S VOICE, as others have alluded, it's an incredibly intelligent read. Thick in it's diction, it demands your attention, to say the least. Admittedly, I had a difficult time with the first 50 pages or so, but I became completely engrossed by the halfway point.Told in essentially diary format, HMV tells the story of one scientist's involvement in a secret goverment project established to decipher what appears to be a message from possibly superior, intelligent life. While most scientists spiral their theories into the fantastic, ours manages to poke sensible holes in each assertion...unfortunately escalating the Project's sense of hopelessness and ineptitude along the way.Somehow, the scientists manage to produce possibly random effects from the recorded signal, but what does it all mean in the grander scheme? It's a wonderful moment when the main character finallly establishes his own theory of the signal, the effect, and his own short-comings.I loved it.

Proceed with Caution

HMV is a very heavy read. Not in its weight but in its content.This story reads more like philosophy than sci-fi so I can understand if people struggle with it.Another point is that nothing is really ever solved in HMV. Just like the scientists trying to understand the message from the stars, the reader is left with the same frustration because we are told the outcome in the first few pages of HMV; defeat.The message that Mankind has stumbled upon is an enigma so complex it would be like explaining the laws of physics to a baboon. The slight progress man does make is so subjective that it can't be considered true progress at all.I would recommend HMV only to avid Lem fan's and to the others I would point in the direction of Fiasco, Solaris, or The Invincible.

Lem's greatest work. And that's saying a lot.

If you're familiar with Lem, you know he can dash off deep insights as asides. Now imagine his intellect focused on what it means to be human trying to understand the universe. A masterpiece.This is not his best science fiction (Fiasco gets that honor) nor his most revealing psychological work (ironically that's Cyberiad). It doesn't explore technology to the greatest extent (try the Golem lectures). However, it may stand as simply the most important work of fiction of the information age.

If "Contact" is kindergarten level, "HMV" is PhD level

If you ever happened to watch the misfortune that is the movie "Contact" (I have to admit that I have not read Carl Sagan's book, but I do hope it was better than the movie), know that this book deals with many of the same topics. But, if "Contact" is a kindergarten-level treatment of the topics in question, "His Master"s Voice" is a PhD-level treatment. A must for anyone for who likes science fiction to be more than just badly written fantasy with a few techie terms thrown in.

An irritating but rewarding SETI novel

A synthetic signal from outer space is detected. In Sagan's "Contact", the signal encodes plans for a spaceship; here it's not so simple. The signal seems to carry many levels of meaning, each one more bizarre and mind-boggling than the last. Lem, as always, weaves together ideas from the fringes of modern science. He also explores the human aspects of scientific research. This book is not light reading. Many parts require a mental effort like, say, that needed to play chess. This can be irritating, even infuriating. For readers are up to the task, however, the book rewards the effort many times over.