His Master's Voice

This is science fiction of the highest order: a meditation on man’s place in the cosmos, an examination of the limits of our knowledge, and a scathing condemnation of how politics influences the practice of science. Originally published in 1967, this title, along with a number of Lem’s other works, was reissued in 2020 by MIT press. Like Solaris, His Master’s Voice aims far above run-of-the-mill sci-fi. You can see it in the depth and breadth of the author’s reflections and in the quality of his prose. Lem touches on on the birth and death of the Cosmos; the structure and limits of language, culture, and mathematics; how the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics manifest in both biology and culture, and much more. It’s one of those books you can read a dozen times, coming away with a different reading each time. As in Solaris, Lem packs more thought into a single volume than many writers cover in their entire ouvre. Put this one on your list. You’ll be thinking about it long after you finish reading.

The book unfolds to open the mind to many possibilities of first contact. It asks some sobering questions about whether we are mature enough to understand the voice of a much more advanced sender. I loved this thought - you can communicate with a 2 year old but will it understand what an adult has to say about science?

I read this book first time 25 + yrs ago. It still is one of the most intelligent and entertaining book of it's genre which I actually do not view so much to be sci-fi but "sociology of science". It is author at his best and together with the "Invincible" consider this to be jos best work over the better known ones like Solaris. I think it is tremendously enjoyed anybody working in academia or research in general, but should be fun and educational also to people that want to understand what scientific practice is about and scientific knowledge generation in general. And from less philosophical perspective it is just an extremely well written story ...

I'm a big fan of Lem. I'm currently reading "Invincible" and enjoying it very much. HMV was a difficult read despite the fact that it was written well and had done very interesting concepts. It was written in first person and that can get tedious. There isn't really a lot of action as it's more of a memoir. To his credit, Lem, in the voice of the protagonist, explains this to the reader. Would recommend for hard core fans.

I am inclined to think of Lem as a Romanticist who writes in science fiction. His Master's Voice (much like Lem's masterpiece, Solaris) explores events and phenomena which elude or transcend rational understanding. The novel revolves around the discovery of an inexplicable neutrino emission. Examination leads scientists to believe the emission a kind of "letter" from other planetary beings. Despite their best efforts, and numerous complex theories and experiments (of which Lem has imagined at least two dozen), nothing about the code can be comprehended by the methodologies the scientists have available. Like the rambling Ishmael of Melville, or the detached Miles Coverdale of Hawthorne, the narrator's thoughts wax philosophical in long arcs of meditation on the nature of humanity and existence. The narrator, Dr. Hogarth, has been recognized in the field as an iconoclast of scientific principles; it is his ability to immediately draw out hasty assumptions of theoretical and mathematical proofs that is both his burden and virtue. The character is left wandering through a philosophical wasteland, a kind of temperate nihilism, though his own biases are soon unearthed by his colleagues. Ultimately, His Master's Voice is about the pretension of ultimate knowledge. For a work that insists on science, it is highly critical of the biases of the methodology; and yet, there are numerous diatribes against individuals who rest solely upon the imagination, as well. The hesitancy of the narrator (and I would extend this to Lem) to propose a positive argument with any hint of certainty is the epistemological crux of the novel. Even the narrator tires of the futility and impossibility of comprehending the signal, a signal that may very well originate from non-human organisms, in a language which does not presuppose the binaries at the base of our language (if such binaries even exist), from a civilization that has so surpassed our own that their reality is beyond our understanding. Or--particularly mystifying--the signal may be entirely natural in origin, a possibility which challenges our ability to distinguish between nature and artifice. In the final pages, the author tries to force an order onto the chaos of the project, and yet he cannot bring himself to any more evidence for his beliefs than intuition--a difficulty that he both rejects and embraces. There is a kind of Romantic postmodernism at play in Lem, and this novel is (in my opinion) a better expression of it than even Solaris.

This novel is more of a philosophical treatise than anything else, and it does require concentration and active thinking on the reader's part. Lovers of space opera, or stories about monsters will be disappointed. There is no dialogue, no action sequences, no special effects in this book. However it is probably the most realistic depiction of how scientists would try to decipher a first contact message ever written. It is probably more realistic than the (rightly) highly praised movie The Arrival. What is most valuable to me in this book is how it reveals the mind set and attitudes of scientists as they attempt to solve a puzzle not knowing how many pieces there are, or if its even a puzzle. Views on government and military involvement in scientific endeavors will anger and frustrate. The ending will likely disappoint most readers. But read as a philosophy book gussied up in sci fi trappings, its a rich and rewarding read.

迅速に発送されて良かった

Great book, will make you think after you read and it is great read.

as others have mentioned, if you're expecting sci-fi, look elsewhere. the language is necessarily heavy-going in places, but this fictional tale is an important philosophical consideration regarding the very nature of our universe & our sometimes arrogant understanding of our place in it. it answers no questions, but corrects what those questions should be. ultimately, like the story's protagonists, you come away empty-handed but wiser. & damn, if you come to this from one of lem's lighter works (such as his munchausen-in-space, pirx), you'll probably think that there were two writers with the same name. after this, all other "first contact" works are going to seem like a waste of ypur time; stuff like sagan's 'contact', especially in cinematic form, will seem hopelessly inadequate, human-centric, sentimental &.. well, basically, duff. read this. it may make your head spin, but in a good way. profound. challenging. the central device is fictional, but the issues it raises are very real.

His Masters Voice is the perfect antidote to all those mainstream Hollywood movies that have cannibalised the literary science fiction of the last 100 years. Unlike Sagan's 'Contact' this is a message from the stars that cannot be wholly understood even to the point of them doubting that it was a message at all. The question is left open, no ends are neatly tied and no conclusions reached. If SETI ever recieves a message from the stars I expect it to be as difficult to interpret as the message in His Masters Voice. Not for fans of Star Wars...

This was at times like reading a masters thesis by a nuclear physicist,tedious and complicated. The first 30% of the book was difficulty the extreme but when in most cases I would have dropped it I kept at it. It got interesting and yet as I repeat it was a hard read ....Lem is obviously a brilliant man but the book almost seems aimed at a very limited audience, like maybe grad students of MIT or Cal-tech.