The Futurological Congress

The Franz Kafka Prize-winning author invites you to a doped-up dystopia. "Nobody can really know the future. But few could imagine it better than Lem." -The Paris Review

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Polish author Stanislaw Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress in Costa Rica to discuss the overpopulation problem. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a cure. But when he awakens in 2039, he is faced with a future unlike any that the Congress could have ever imagined. Translated by Michael Kandel.

"A vision of Earth's future where the authorities dose the population with 'psychemicals' to make life in a desperately over-populated world worth living." -The Boston Globe

"Lem's view of the overcrowded future is original and disturbing. A pessimistic, mordantly funny book." -Kirkus Reviews

"Lem writes with a humor underlined by his commentary on the way the world is." -SF Site