Word: lem
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...LEM ENDOWS HIS narrator with an urbane wit which frequently turns upon Western decadence and indicts the depersonalized world of modern technology. John's sarcastic wit carries the novel through its occasional slow stretches such as his lengthy drive from Naples to Rome...
...lost. The Chain of Chance's most distinctive feature, when seen in the context of Lem's body of work, is that it purports to have a solution. In the book's denouement, John unravels the mystery and at last everything becomes understandable. This may be routine for a detective story, but for Lem it is a radical break from his tradition of leaving stories open-ended...
...Lem's protagonist is both a product of the scientific community and an outcast from it; his cynicism seems to stem from wounded pride after he was relegated to the position of back-up astronaut. In modern technology, where remote-control computers are "the highest order, the symbol of our civilization," John says facetiously, there is no room for human failings: acute hay fever forced his demotion when a space mission unexpectedly discovered vegetation on Mars. Rather than remain a member of the backup crew, he quit, joining the undercover investigation in the hope that it would satisfy his attraction...
Occasionally John succumbs to a flaw Lem's other protagonists do not: his witty cynicism turns to bromides and offending overstatement, as in the remark "despite the exhaust fumes, I could make out the scent of flowers in the gently fluttering breeze." For this we have Lem to blame: in his eagerness to emphasize the irony behind scientific progress that has backfired, he commits the sin of self-indulgence...
...Lem's earlier works, this novel parodies those institutions claiming to have achieved static perfection or ultimate knowledge. Like Lem's earlier protagonists, usually human scientists studying alien civilizations, John is struggling to discover truths inherently too complex or mysterious to be understood. The utter failure of man's scientific explorations in past novels manifests the author's conviction that man cannot apprehend the universe in a meaningful, objective...