Return from the Stars

infobox Book |
name = Return from the Stars
title_orig = "Powrót z gwiazd"
translator =


image_caption = Cover of first English edition
author = Stanisław Lem
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = Poland
language = Polish
series =
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Czytelnik (first Polish edition)
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (first English edition)
release_date = 1961
english_release_date = 1980
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages = 247 pp (first English edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-151-77082-4 (first English edition)
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Return from the Stars" ( _pl. Powrót z gwiazd) is one of the better known science fiction novels of Stanisław Lem, the most famous Polish science-fiction author. Written in 1961, it revolves around the story of an astronaut returning to his homeworld, Earth, and finding it a completely different place than when he left. The novel touches among the ideas of alienation, culture shock and dystopias. It was translated into English in 1980.

Plot summary

The novel tells the story of an astronaut, Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth after a 127 year mission to Arcturus. Due to time dilation, the mission has lasted only 10 years for him. On Earth he faces culture shock, as he finds what looks like a utopian society, with no wars or violence. For Hal it is a civilization he does not recognize, one that is too comfortable, too safe, every aspect of the environment designed to ease the burden of life. Accidents are almost unknown, as technology has made human life extremely safe – and long.

Hal soon finds out that at least part of this is achieved through the procedure called "betrization", which effectively neutralizes all aggressive impulses but that also has some negative psychological side effects – or at least what he views as the side effects. Humanity, now completely "betrizated", is now very risk-averse. Society disapproves of space travel and space exploration as youthful and dangerous adventurism.

For Hal, coming home was in effect anything but: Earth has become "another, alien planet". He and the other returning astronauts are alienated and regarded as "resuscitated Neanderthals". They are faced with social pressure to accommodate the betrizated society or refuse it and become outcasts. Or, as some of his fellow astronauts have done, leave Earth again for few hundred years, hoping to come back to a more familiar world.

Olaf Staave, a fellow astronaut, protests this tranquilized state, and Hal, too, initially rebels from such a world: "... they have killed the man in man". Yet, after Hal's marriage to Eri, a girl born and raised in this new world, he comes to accept the new ways. He begins to share the current disapproval of space expeditions. Even when he discovers that members of his former group are planning a mission to Sagittarius, he is unmoved, presumably content to leave the stars to others.

Major themes

"Return from the Stars" can be viewed as Lem's only "passable" utopia. Compared to his other works, it is less pessimistic about the consequences of technological progress and their effect on our sociocultural evolution. Even so, the depicted world is not perfect: in a society deprived of conflict, stress, and danger, man loses his capacity for moral commitment and self-assertion.

"Return from the Stars" asks whether some sociocultural advances are worth the price. Is a monotone, denatured safe world worth sacrificing direct experiences in a nature that is open, unknown, risky; it portrays a world where dangers have disappeared along with human emotion and initiative. Individuals have few means left to test physical capacity or mental endurance.

Hal's acceptance of his new life does not cancel out intense memories of another time when he dared traverse distant planets. He remembers the moon "Kereneia", a magnificent canyon "made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent... through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines... all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you". He gained love, but he lost something else.

The novel also anticipates electronic paper with its "opton", sometimes cited as the first published appearance of the idea of digital paper which can present various texts.Fact|date=August 2008

Bibliography

Polish Editions:
* Czytelnik 1961,1968
* Wydawnictwo Literackie 1970, 1975, 1981, 1985
* Interart, 1994
* Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1999

English Editions:
* Harcourt Brace, 1980
* Secker & Warburg, London, 1980
* Avon Book, New York 1982
* Penguin Books, 1982 (together with "Tales of Pirx the Pilot" and "The Invincible")
* Harcourt Brace, San Diego, 1989
* Mandarin, London, 1990

Quotes

* "The society to which you have returned is stabilized. Life is tranquil. Do you understand? The romance of the early days of astronautics is gone. It is like the achievements of Columbus. His expedition was something extraordinary, but who took any interest in the captains of galleons two hundred years after him? There was a two-line note about your return in the real."
* "Today there is no tragedy. Not even the possibility of it. We eliminated the hell of passion, and then it turned out that in the same sweep, heaven, too, had ceased to be. Everything is now lukewarm..."
* "What did Arne Ennesson do?" "He lost beam focalization. His thrust began to go on him. He could have stayed in orbit, I don't know, another twenty-four hours; he would have spiralled, then finally fallen into Arcturus, so he chose to enter the protuberance at once. Burned up before my eyes."

References

* [http://www.lem.pl/english/dziela/powrot/powrotpl.htm Return from the Stars] , Official English page of the book, last accessed on April 3, 2006
* Marilyn Jurich, THE PSEUDO-UTOPIAN COSMOGRAPHIES OF STANISLAW LEM, Utopian Studies, 1998, Vol. 9, Issue 2, ISSN 1045-991X