In this novel, Lem departs from his normal batch of science fiction, and uses a detective story to probe the nature of reality, and man’s rational means of discovering it. The plot revolves around a Doyle-esque detective story and a plague of reanimating corpses. A detective uses all rational means of discovering the truth. Throughout the mystery, an eerie fog permeates the novel, which matches the story perfectly, as well as the point Lem is trying to make. I do not want to go further in this review, as I don’t want to give away the ending. However, Lem’s point can best be summarized by the following passage:“But what if it isn’t really that way? What if there isn’t anything to imitate? What if the world isn’t scattered around us like a jigsaw puzzle—what if it’s like a soup with all kinds of things floating around in it, and from time to time some of them get stuck together by chance to make some kind of whole? What if everything that exists is fragmentary, incomplete, aborted, events with ends but no beginnings, events that only have middles, things that have fronts or rears but not both, with us constantly making categories, seeking out, and reconstructing, until we think we can see total love, total betrayal and defeat, although in reality we are all no more than haphazard fractions. Our faces and our fates are shaped by statistics—we human beings are the resultant of Brownian motion—incomplete sketches, randomly outlined projections. Perfection, fullness, excellence are all rare exceptions—they occur only because there is such an excess, so unimaginably much of everything! The daily commonplace is automatically regulated by the world’s vastness, its infinite variety; because of it, what we see as gaps and breaches complement each other; the mind, for its own self-preservation, finds and integrates scattered fragments. Using religion and philosophy as the cement, we perpetually collect and assemble all the garbage comprised by statistics in order to make sense out of things, to make everything respond in one unified voice like a bell chiming to our glory. But it’s only soup…. The Mathematical order of the universe is our answer to the pyramids of chaos. On every side of us we see bits of life that are completely beyond our understanding—we label them unusual, but we really don’t want to acknowledge them. The only thing that really exists is statistics. The intelligent person is the statistical person.” (179)
Opinión con spoilersNo considero como leídos aquellos libros de los cuáles no puedo pasar de las pocas páginas, pero aquellos en los que paso del tercio y, aún así, no consigo tragarme, sí que los considero leídos. Dicho esto, "La investigación" es uno de ellos. Tras un primer capítulo prometedor, todo lo que viene luego es carente de interés y sin sentido. Me explico. En dicho primer capítulo encontramos todo aquello que la contraportada nos vende: un misterio interesante sobre unos cadáveres que, o bien no se encuentran en la posición o lugar donde se les había dejado o directamente desaparecen. Y todo ello a través de una discusión de unos personajes en Scottland Yard. Ahí pensé: el libro tiene buena pinta, hay una buena historia entre manos. Pero todo se hace añicos en un segundo capítulo decepcionante y aburrido, donde la acción se centra en uno de los investigadores, la casa donde reside y los extraños hábitos de los propietarios con los que convive. Un anticlímax, pues corta en seco aquello que se había ido construyendo en el primer capítulo. Y en el tercero, tras un lento arranque sin sentido, volvemos a la investigación, pero ya no nos resulta interesante.Otro de los errores del libro además del argumental es que la narración resulta confusa en algunos puntos, muchas veces por la casi incapacidad del autor de describir y narrar de forma clara y concisa. Muchas veces te sorprendes llegando a puntos donde te preguntas: qué está pasando? A ello se suma que el autor es incapaz de imprimirle el ritmo del primer capítulo a los siguientes y de definir unos personajes que se alejen del arquetipo. Solamente se nos perfila detalladamente al protagonista principal, aunque este resulta aburrido y carente de interés. Los demás apenas se definen, a excepción de los propietarios de la casa, que son descritos en exceso (y te des cuenta de que ni te va ni te viene como sean).En conclusión, el cortar la trama principal para retomarla mucho más adelante, cuando ya ha transcurrido un tercio o más del libro y el lector ya ha desconectado después de tantos pasajes carentes de interés y absurdos, se convierte en el principal handicap de "La investigación". La confusa narración y unos personajes arquetípicos acaban por adornar un pastel nada vistoso, convirtiendo un interesante inicio en lo que acaba siendo una novela perfectamente olvidable.
Do You like book The Investigation (1986)?
After reading Solaris, and loving nearly every page of it, I decided to read the rest of Stanislaw Lem's books in my roommate's collection. The Investigation is the second of those books. It has a great premise: bodies that vanish after death, reports of fog and dying cats. Unfortunately, the premise is as good as the book gets. The Investigation on the surface asks what makes these bodies disappear. On a deeper level, a Scotland Yard detective and a brilliant mathematician seek to unravel the nature of truth. Their conclusions, or lack there of, are rather unsatisfying. Honestly, I don't care if Lem was writing a satire on modern scientific thinking--good mystery writers do not leave the mystery unsolved at the end of a book. Sometimes a lackluster plot can be redeemed by interesting characters. In The Investigation, the characters fall flat just like the story. Gregory, the detective, is your typical hardboiled "just the facts, ma'am" sort of man. The mathematician, whose name I've already forgotten, is socially inept and cold. Even their dialogue seems nonsensical at best.If you're looking for a great sci-fi read, or one of Lem's best, skip this book. Focus instead on Solaris or perhaps The Futurological Congress.
—Sara
This began as a sort of off-beat police procedural with a not-too bright copper trying desperately to seem smarter than he is and to come up with something other than a supernatural explanation for the dead bodies being moved around and then seemingly climbing out windows into the wider world. That was the book I loved and couldn't put down but it didn't last for long enough...it unwound into soliloquies and long rather absurd conversations that hover on the edge of depth but don't always and entirely manage it.
—Andrea
An eerie and unsettling Lem novel, and one that needs to be more well known. It has that characteristic Lem blend of philosophy, dark comedy, and something that might--- might ---be theological. "The Investigation" is Lem's riff on the detective novel and logical deduction. It just might be a very dark mystery. Or a zombie tale. Or a speculation on statistics and just what happens when you take statistical analysis very, very seriously. Don't expect closure or even a single clear explanation. Just let the story carry you and follow the links of logic and the arcane probability sets. A book for late nights with Jameson's...and long-lasting memories.
—DoctorM
