The Futurological Congress (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy)

The Futurological Congress is the fourth satirical science fiction novel in the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy series from Kafka Prize–winning author Stanislaw Lem.

“Nobody can really know the future. But few could imagine it better than Lem.”—Paris Review

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure—a future whose strangeness exceeds anything the congress conjectured.

Translated by Michael Kandel.

“A vision of Earth’s future where the authorities dose the population with ‘psychemicals’ to make life in a desperately over—populated world worth living.”—Boston Globe