SOURCE: “The Divided Self,” in Times Literary Supplement, June 23, 1995, p. 27.

In the following review, Foden offers a positive assessment of Peace on Earth.

Born in 1921 in Poland, where his medical studies were interrupted by the Nazi occupation, Stanislaw Lem has had a long and successful career. “A science fiction writer worthy of a Nobel Prize,” the New York Times has said. Among his works is the novel Solaris, filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Lem's writing combines a wild, dystopian vision—wittily, absurdly logical—with a firm grasp of actual scientific and philosophical issues. In Peace on Earth, he introduces us once again to his cynical but essentially warm-hearted space traveller Ijon Tichy.

Given the Other and (indeed) other well-traded types of binary sensibility, it was only a matter of time before someone wrote a novel with a narrator whose brain has divided into two. Last hope in (or off...