After a miscalculation a spaceship crashes onto the planet Eden, and while figuring out how to repair it its six crewmen (who we get to know only by their roles: the Captain, the Engineer, the Chemist, the Doctor, the Cyberneticist and the Physicist) set out to discover the surroundings. Step by step it leads to an encounter with an alien culture that is, well, very alien. They discover an automated factory that appears to be stuck in a loop, encounter strange vehicles and the creatures that they call “Doublers”. As more discoveries about these Doublers are made, questions arise regarding the health of their society.

Written in a way that is elaborate but still not excessively wordy – perhaps “dense” is the correct term – Eden feels like more of a heavy read than its 260 pages hint about. Much of it is dialog, whenever they encounter something new the involved characters debate their finding, but even if they reach an agreement Lem leaves many loose ends for the reader to speculate about. And I think that is the strongest point of Eden, the way in which Lem both creates an alien world, and skillfully uses it to ask questions and stimulate thoughts about how we would perceive something so utterly alien (with a few reflections about how someone utterly alien would perceive our world as well).

All in all, Stanislaw Lem’s Eden is a good novel that is well worth to be remembered – a classic, but still a bit from something I’d mention as “one of the great…”.

Related links:
Stanislaw Lem, Official site and Wikipedia entry
Eden at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk