Peace on Earth, by Stanislaw Lem

I finished Peace on Earth and I think it’s possible that I didn’t ‘get’ this book. I have found afterward that it was meant to be a satire, and though some of it was funny, I took it more of a straight up sci fi adventure/thought piece. Maybe that is why I was a bit disappointed.

The idea of someone with a split brain was the most interesting factor to me, and the reason I wanted to read the book in the first place. So when the story veered off into moon robots and different technologies in the society, I got a bit bored. A huge amount of time is spent describing technologies on the moon, and different kind of weaponry that has evolved, and the main characters experiences there. But all of this is told as a flashback, so there is no tension. Even then, the character is experiencing all this through a ‘remote’, a robot he is controlling with his mind–so he’s not even on the moon himself to be in any danger.

Quite often I think sci fi writers forget that there needs to be danger and excitement, and plot and characters even, when they get excited showing off all the cool things they dreamed up.

Got kind of bored with this one, but the parts about consciousness were thought provoking and interesting. I’d still recommend it because Lem is a great writer.