https://speculiction.blogspot.com/2023/12/review-of-his-masters-voice-stanisaw-l... ( )

La voz de su amo es en parte fascinante autobiografía (la historia de un matemático genial y excéntrico) y el relato de los conflictos psicobiológicos, interpersonales y políticos que se generan entre investigadores que participan en una portentosa aventura científica: el desciframiento de un mensaje enigmático y cargado de posibilidades (quizá peligroso) captado en el promontorio de Monte Palomar y enviado a nuestro planeta por seres de otra civilización desde los confines del universo. Este bello texto es una meditación sobre el destino de la humanidad y de las fronteras de la fantasía más pura. El clásico más importante de la ciencia ficción rusa.

This is definitely not for everyone, but I did enjoy it. The first half is really dry but also really interesting. The second half there's actually some dialogue and more story. As with stories about "first contact" there's always that excitement about "How is this author going to handle it?" And are they ever going to actually figure it out or meet the aliens (Looking at you Rendezvous with Rama).

In this one there were a bunch of different really cool theories and maybe one of them was right and maybe they figured it out, I'm not telling, don't want to spoil it for anyone. ( )

The philosophical, semi-scientific meanderings of a grumpy old man who thinks man is but a dumb ass.

If you read the top reviews for this book on Goodreads, you quickly find out that if you didn't love this, you are in fact a peasant. Only intelligent and deep thinking lovers of Real Scifi will love this, so be warned.

I am, obviously, a dumbass.

This book is a mostly abstract "memoir" of the fictional man who worked on a project the aim of which was to decode an interstellar letter of sorts. There is very little plot or dialogue, and the narrator is a self professed asshole. Mostly this book handles different philosophical takes on humanity and life (both the nature and origin of them) and spirals down semi-scientific tangents that don't really have any other point than being vaguely interesting.

What I'm trying to get at is that this is not a novel, as such, and definitely not a novel I was interested in reading. I am the reader who enjoys the science fiction at which the narrator continually took jabs at during the course of the book.

This is the second Lem I've read, and I really enjoyed the previous one, so I'll probably keep reading his book despite this one, but boy was I disappointed. ( )

Lem is such a philosophical writer that it often feels like his characters are simply mouthpieces for his viewpoints, in worlds that only exist so that he can make a few points and then move on to the next part of his thesis. While I do have a problem with this in general, since if I want a lecture I can simply pick up an actual textbook, I think Lem does a much better job than most writers of integrating his philosophy organically into his stories, even when the stories consist mainly of characters just thinking about stuff (Exhibit A: Solaris). His Master's Voice is by far the most didactic of his books that I've read (not counting more literary Borgesian stuff like A Perfect Vacuum), since it consists solely of the diary of a scientist recounting his experiences as part of a team investigating what they think is a signal from an alien civilization, and the diary format is unfortunately perfectly suited to a book of monologue. Some of the material feels a bit recapitulated from Solaris and Fiasco; the idea of truly communicating with or even vaguely understanding an alien civilization is something Lem was skeptical of throughout his entire career, and I'm not really sure he needed to keep plowing that same field over and over again. Life isn't like Star Trek where all aliens are just humans with funny noses, I get it! However, by setting this particular instance of humanity trying to decipher a (potentially) alien message on Earth in the 1960s, Lem is able to satirize the Cold War mentality with a great economy of effort. The entire RAND-ish research project immediately brought to mind a more serious version of Dr. Strangelove, but Contact also seems like it might have taken some inspiration from the way that the protagonist Dr. Hogarth and his fellow scientists approached the study of a puzzle that's as much about their own intellectual and moral limits as it is about the contents of the message itself. This is shown in the frequently childish interactions the scientists have with each other - you hear a lot about the "wisdom of crowds" and "group intelligence" and so on, but Lem's illustrations of the inherent flaws and foibles in any group of people who try to work together, even on something as abstract and impersonal as scientific research, really brought home his larger points about maturity, as Hogarth wonders if the message, even if it was from aliens, wasn't specifically intended to be incomprehensible to species as fractious and immature as humanity. Would a group of ten-years-olds, no matter how bright, be able to translate some rock carvings that might or might not be Linear B in to English? This examination of problem-solving naturally leads into some interesting commentary on the relationship between technology, science, and morality too, when the working groups explore the potential military applications of the message; what if Prometheus had brought back gunpowder instead of fire? What kind of attitude should a scientist take towards the weapons he's working on, and what attitude should he take towards the society that sent him to work on it in the first place? Overall I really enjoyed the book in spite of the first chapter, which I thought was a little too much navel-gazing on the part of the protagonist, and it was nice to be reminded that even as science fiction concentrates on the future, it's still really about the here and now. ( )