Synopsis
|
If
the worst must
happen to Earth's
beleaguered
planet, cosmonaut
Ijon Tichy always
hopes he will have
taken off for the
stars. No
such luck.
Something in the
water at the
luxurious
116-floor Costa
Rica Hilton blows
the century's last
Futurological
Congress and
Tichy's mind.
Drugged to the
eyeballs, shot by
death squad,
flashfrozen in
time and at last
revivified in the
year 2039, Tichy
awakens to a
psychemised world
- society's final
solution to the
problem of
overpopulation
that had defeated
the
futurologists.
But this was
beyond their
wildest dreams.
Steadfstly
refusing the
staggering choice
of psychotropic
delights and
horrors offered by
psychedelicatessens
and almost
everyone he
encounters, Tichy
is determined to
run to earth the
chemocrats who
exert such
absolute control
over
reality. But
no sooner has
Stanislaw Lem's
stupendously
ill-starred
cosmonaut stripped
away yet another
layer of
linguistic
delusion than his
own grip on it is
that much weaker
... |
