Book Club Review: "The Invincible" by Stanislaw Lem

"No one's conscious intentions, no hostile thought stood in our path"

Wow! I got The Invincible in the mail yesterday, and read the whole 219 pages within 24 hours. I could not put the book down. A hard science fiction book written in 1964, only five years before Neil Armstrong took the first steps on our moon. The space race still in full swing. What an exciting time for science fiction!

I got turned on to this book from The Invincible video game that came out this November 2023. The video game, more like a visual novel, is based on the world of this book. I plan to do a seperate review for the game. I’m very intrigued by human storytelling, the different mediums chosen, and how adaptations change the story… or perhaps evolve is a more fitting term. I was not disappointed.

The story of the book follows a group of humans landing on the planet Regis III in their ship the Invincible. Their mission is to discover what happened to their sister ship the Condor. They come across anomaly after anomaly, with no immediate logical answer. The descriptions of the landscapes are beautiful. You feel pulled into the alien world, and want to know more of what happened. Just like the crew.

I won’t go into deep spoilers, but will talk a little about the books premise. The idea of self replicating machines being a threat to the human condition, is not far from a possible future. There is a physicalist assumption by the characters in the book that the machines cannot be conscious, hence the famous quote: "No one's conscious intentions, no hostile thought stood in our path". But cracks begin to form in this initial thesis as the book continues to explore “necroevolution” - the evolution of small machines. Could these life forms be more than they seem?

I love when science fiction is able to take a premise, and ask through the story; but is this true? I think The Invincible does this really well with the nanobots. The book also ponders ethical questions of “galactocentric” thinking, which is not putting humans first, vs. “anthropocentrism”. Should the machines be destroyed? Should the humans try to interfere with their evolution? Should the Invincible just leave the planet and forget it exists? Might that create a threat in the far future? Should the humans try to communicate with the machines? I’m reminded of the Prime Directive in Star Trek, which was ironically broken in most episodes.

I would definitely recommend this book with a few caveats. This book is not human centric in the sense of Dune or Game of Thrones. There are characters in the book, but it feels like their purpose is to illustrate and observe the strange happenings on the planet. I personally loved this planetary analysis, along with the hard science, but realize it is not for everyone. It is also good to keep in mind the English version is translated from Polish, and translations vary in quality. Lastly, there are depictions of violence and madness that might be too much for some people. If none of these are blockers, check this book out ASAP!