His Master's Voice (novel)

The voice of the Lord is a novel by the Polish author Stanisław Lem, which stands in the tradition of scientific fantasy, the Eastern European - Russian equivalent of the western science fiction. The novel was first published in 1968 under the original title " Glos Pana "; a German translation by Roswitha Buschmann was published in 1981 in the island of publishing and publishing folk and world.

Content

The fictional author of the novel ( ostensibly an unfinished bequeathed manuscript ), an American professor named Peter E. Hogarth, in his brilliant mathematician, describes his experiences and thoughts from the time of his participation in the fictional Master's Voice Project ( MAVO ), the in the last third of the 20th century dealing with the decryption of a mysterious, constantly repeated neutrino signal. The constant repetition of the signal gives rise to the speculation that there may have been generated by intelligent beings must - superior aliens, or, as some joke project participants, the Lord himself (hence the name voice of the Lord ). In the course of the investigation some rather minor discoveries are made. So proves Hogarth, that the signal represents a " circle phenomenon " or the description of a "circle process". Then, the researchers suspect that the signal could describe a living organism, and it is possible to produce on the basis of information from a fragment of the signal, a gelatinous substance (called " frog spawn " or " Lord of the Flies " ), to " certain stimuli " responding and produced by cold fusion energy, but no biological metabolism has. Directed to this substance, the signal has the property of promoting the formation of amino acids in this - want the mysterious aliens thus promote the emergence of life on other heavenly bodies?

Finally, it turns out that you could build a terrible weapon using the signal. The narrator and one of his close friends in the project to discover this, but keep it secret at first to even investigate further ( that this property of the signal is eventually discovered by others, them is at all times clear. ) It turns out, that the construction of such a weapon is only theoretically possible for a realization, however insurmountable " backups " are inserted in the stars code. Did the aliens to make sure that their input from an immature, yet warlike civilization should be collected, this would not be able to use?

At the end of the novel, then dive on completely new theories on the origin of the signal. The signal itself, however, can not be translated or read. Rather Lem serve Reflections on the failure of the decryption attempts to hanger for philosophical reflections on the general level of maturity of modern civilizations. To exaggerate Lem these considerations in a comparison: he muses, what advantage could have a group of Stone Age people from finding a construction plan of a Gothic cathedral. This benefit could exist for the Neolithic in the heat value at the campfire - the true meaning of the plan would have them but inevitably remain hidden because they had no adequate level of culture that allowed them access to comprehensive understanding.

Topic and form

Lem presents in the novel is the awkwardness of man and all his technical skills, given the arrival of a "message" from space, which is not even sure if it is such. Characteristic is the sentence: " The ants that get on their wanderings to a dead philosophers draw also their profit. " The author focuses not so much in the voice of the Lord on the presentation of an action sequence in the classical sense. The plot, which strictly occurs only with the third chapter presents during the whole work only the framework for a philosophical work is, his statements Lem wants to bring close to a wide readership. The fictional author discussed in the novel repeats the inadequacy of language to describe real processes and addresses the problem of individual evaluation of absolute categories. The Polish literary critic Jacek Rzeszotnik notes in an essay on Solaris and the voice of the Lord, that the latter novel " yet flagrant ... typical genre of fiction narrative patterns " devoid.

Reception

For the Encyclopædia Britannica is the voice of the Lord along with Solaris and the Cyberiad one of the " three great books" Stanislaw Lem, a "classic traditional themes of science fiction ."

Peter S. Beagle refers to the 1983 English translation of the novel in the New York Times as " fascinating, disturbing and frustrating at times ." The first third is difficult to read; the confused and bored readers yearning for pilot Pirx. In the last chapters arrived, one rushing, however, as a " romance addict " by, eager to learn the nature of the created with the help of the signal substance. Beagle praises the voice of the narrator Hogarth, which affects the reader and bring to listen. The reviewer concludes that he would not suggest the voice of the Lord as the easiest introduction to Lem's work, but the book can anyone recommend urgently that was interested in a piece of gentility ( " anyone in need of a taste of nobility " ).

German editions

The novel was translated by Roswitha Buschmann and was published in 1981 simultaneously in the Insel Verlag in Frankfurt am Main and in the publishing world and people in Berlin ( GDR ). Later editions of this translation appeared as a band 97 ( then as a band 311 ) of the fantastic library at Suhrkamp Verlag Volk und Wissen and in the GDR book club book club 65

First editions:

• The voice of the Lord. Island, Frankfurt aM 1981 ( translated by Roswitha Bushman ), ISBN 3-458-04887-1.
• The voice of the Lord. Nation and world, Berlin, 1981 ( translated by Roswitha Bushman ).

Current paperback edition:

• The voice of the Lord ( = Suhrkamp paperback. Vol. 2494 ). 5 edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011 ( translated by Roswitha Bushman ), ISBN 978-3-518-38994-2.