| The Astronauts | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Stanisław Lem |
| Original title | Astronauci |
| Country | Poland |
| Language | Polish |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication date | 1951 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Hospital of the Transfiguration |
| Followed by | The Magellanic Cloud |
The Astronauts (in Polish Astronauci) is the first science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem published as a book, in 1951. (The SF novel The Man from Mars was serialized in a weekly during 1946.)
To write the novel, Lem received advance payment from publishing house Czytelnik (Warsaw). The book became an instant success and was translated into several languages (first into Czech, published in 1956). This success convinced Lem to switch to careers to a science-fiction author.
The Astronauts was written for the youth in form of an Utopian space opera. Inability to ever understand alien civilizations, a frequent motive of Lem's future works, appears here for the first time. To get published under the communist regime in Poland Lem had to insert frequent references to the ideals of communism. Decades later, Lem didn't value The Astronauts very much:
The term cosmonaut, used in countries of Eastern Bloc, was not yet created when the text was written, hence the name Astronauts.
Contents |
The introduction describes the fall of Tunguska meteorite (1908) and subsequent expedition of Leonid Kulik. The hypothesis about the crash of a cosmic ship is mentioned.
Fast-forward to the year 2003. Communism has won worldwide and humankind, freed from oppression and chaos, is engaged in gigantic engineering projects - irrigation of the Sahara, the construction of a hydro-energetic plant over the Strait of Gibraltar, and the ability to control the climate. The latest project is to thaw the Antarctic and Arctic regions by artificial nuclear-powered "suns" circling above.
During the preparation of earthworks in the Tunguska area a strange object is found and later identified as an extraterrestrial data record. The record contains details about the travel of the cosmic ship from Venus (which crashed in Tunguska) and the data ends with an ominous message: "After two rotations the Earth will be radiated. When the radiation intensity drops to half, the Great Movement will commence." Scared, the government of the Earth (consisting of scientists) decides to send the newly built cosmic ship Kosmokrator (equipped with vacuum tube-based computer Marax) to Venus.
After a few weeks the international crew of Kosmokrator arrives on Venus but finds no traces of life, only strange, half-destroyed technological structures like the White Globe, a giant anti-gravity device.
It turns out that Venus was inhabited by a warlike civilization planning to occupy the Earth. Before they managed to destroy the life on Earth they themselves perished in nuclear civil war, leaving only ruins of the cities and scattered electronic records.
In 1960, a movie Der Schweigende Stern (The Silent Star, in Polish Milcząca Gwiazda) based on the book was shot in East Germany, directed by Kurt Maetzig.[2] A much shortened 1962 Crown International Pictures English dubbed release in the USA used the name First Spaceship on Venus. Lem had disowned the movie.