["The Chain of Chance"] is narrated, in traditional pitiless side-of-the-mouth style, by the protagonist/detective, an American ex-astronaut named, we belatedly learn, John—no last name given…. "The Chain of Chance" was written … as an Eastern European's speculation upon some possible short-term extensions of such Western topical developments as terrorism, space exploration, and chemical pollution…. Making his hardboiled investigator a cast-off astronaut is witty, for the book breathes the poisoned atmosphere of technological backfire, and the latest by-product of our Puritan resolution is rarely the astronaut, consecrated, like the cowboy and the private eye, to bleakly masculine missions. Also, the astronaut's training gives Lem easy access to the scientific terminology where he is at home, and a poet…. (p. 115)
A thrilling ride it is, especially for those whose hearts beat faster when the Scientific American arrives each month. Lem has learned the formulae of fictional suspense almost too well; there is so much we don't know at the outset that by the time we do know it the book is two-thirds over. John, it may not be too much to say, is of the same age and physical type as a number of men who have behaved and died mysteriously in the vicinity of Naples; by assuming the identity of Adams, he is attempting to induce the same conspiracy of circumstances to attack him. The heart of this small novel is taken up with lengthy descriptions of the previous victims, a list that has its own statistical fascination, and the gloomy charm of all raw information…. Lem's novel, in which little more than information-processing occurs for over ninety pages, abruptly redeems itself, as thriller and dissertation both, with a stunningly persuasive account of our hero's descent into drug induced madness…. Only a mind habituated to seeing the human mind from the outside, as a chemical and electrical machine, could evoke derangement with such cool clarity. Under the glare of his violent "psychotropic reaction," John's normal emotions and metaphysics—his humanity, in short—seem pathetically fragile epiphenomena. The moral of the novel I take to be: "Mankind has multiplied to such an extent that now it's starting to be governed by atomic laws." In our "dense world of random chance," "common sense isn't worth a damn." Improbabilities are all subjective, and everything sooner or later is bound to happen…. (pp. 115-16)
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