The Futurological Congress

Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006) was born in Lviv, then part of Poland. He is probably the most original and influential European science-fiction writer since H.G. Wells. Best known in the West for Tarkovsky's film of his novel Solaris, Lem wrote novels and stories that have been published all over the world. He is credited with anticipating in his writing artificial reality, e-books and nano-technology. His most famous works include The Cyberiad, Mortal Engines, The Star Diaries, The Futurological Congress, Tales of Pirx the Pilot and Solaris.

"This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management". Both gruesome and very funny, The Futurological Congress is the story of an ill-fated gathering of scientists who meet in a vast luxury hotel in the smog-bound, chronically over-populated Costa Rica of the future. Caught up in a revolution, the congress ends in a shambles as the authorities try to quell discontent by pouring hallucinogenic drugs into the water-supply. The beleaguered hero, Ijon Tichy (well-known to readers of Lem's The Star Diaries) is shot, frozen and thawed out years later, to find the Earth he had known changed in entirely unexpected ways.