Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This deeply philosophical first contact tale, originally published in 1967, showcases the brilliant, often prescient mind of the late Lem (1921--2006). Humanity's struggle to interpret what may or may not be a message from extraterrestrial intelligence is recounted in the manuscripts of professor Peter Hogarth, "discovered" by Lem after Hogarth's death. Hogarth introduces himself in a disarmingly self-deprecating preface as a scientist whose fundamental character traits are "cowardice, malice, and pride," easing readers into the cerebral tale of a series of chance events which lead a group of scientists to detect a message embedded in recordings of neutrino emissions from "certain selected patches of the sky." Though little action animates the story, the complexities of the subsequent debate around how best to understand the alien communication--which may be billions of years old--are thought-provoking and entirely plausible. This thorough, intellectual take on a classic hard sci-fi trope is Lem at his best. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In the messages-from-the-stars tradition of such as Hoyle's A for Andromeda and Varley's The Ophiuchi Hotline: a fictional memoir, less a novel than an extended lecture, with Leto simultaneously at his thoughtfully provocative best and irritably didactic worst. Math professor Peter Hogarth, the formidably dry narrator, is called to Nevada's ""His Master's Voice"" project to help analyze a seemingly modulated burst of neutrino emissions from space. Surrounded by military paranoia and scientific jealousies, Hogarth demonstrates that HMV is indeed a message--but one from an ancient, highly advanced culture, addressed to civilizations developed far beyond Earth's, and involving the message's actual ability (via neutrino beam) to create primordial matter: one tiny message fragment, decoded, yields ""Frog Eggs,"" a pseudo-living jelly that sustains itself by means of nuclear reactions. But the message's real meaning remains a mystery. And Hogarth, convinced of the Senders' benevolence, reasons that the message must be designed so that primitive cultures like Earth's will be unable to misconstrue it and, out of ignorance or malice, create (as the Pentagon hopes) terrible new weapons--a faith that is shaken when further studies of Frog Eggs reveal just such a horrifying possibility. The rewards here are Lem's absorbing, profound analyses of the message--its purpose, its interpretation. The scientific-military-political struggles that accompany them, however, often come across as mere academic hectoring--sometimes incisive, often arbitrary or banal in the anti-West rhetoric. Complex, extremely demanding work altogether (originally published in Polish in 1968), only for alert and determined readers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
