The Futurological Congress
 Cover for the English edition | |
| Author | Stanisław Lem |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ze wspomnien Ijona Tichego Kongres futurologiczny |
| Translator | Michael Kandel |
| Language | Polish |
| Genre | Science Fiction / Black Humour |
| Publication place | Poland |
Published in English | 1974 |
| Media type | Print () |
| ISBN | 0-15-634040-2 |
| OCLC | 11812537 |
| 891.8/537 19 | |
| LC Class | PG7158.L39 Z413 1985 |
The Futurological Congress (Template:Lang-pl) is a 1971 black humour science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem detailing the exploits of the hero of a number of his books, Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World Futurological Congress at the Costa Rica Hilton. The book is Lem's take on the common sci-fi trope of an apparently Utopian future that turns out to be an illusion.
Plot
The book opens at the eponymous congress: when a riot breaks out, the hero Ijon Tichy is hit by various psychoactive drugs, which are being used as weapons by both the government and rebels. Ijon and a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where the congress was being held, where he goes through a series of hallucinations and false awakenings which cause him to be confused about whether or not what's happening around him is real. Eventually he believes that he falls asleep and wakes up 150 years later, where the bulk of the story takes place.
At first glance he Rip Van Winkle´s into an utopian future, where money is no object, nor food, housing or energy. Society works not through coercion or fear, but out of psychoactive drugs that normalize behaviour. Drugs are all pervasive in regulating mood and thought, a social state referred to as 'psychem'. Tichy eventually grows weary of this: he resolves to stop taking any drugs. That is his first step into peeling the many layers of drug-induced illusion that separate people´s perception of reality from reality itself.
The book is reminiscent of works of Philip K. Dick such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly, and explores the theme of social control through direct technological interference in the individual´s cognition, which is recurring in Sci-Fi literature and cinema.
Movie
Ari Folman, the director of Waltz with Bashir is adapting the book into a movie.
