His Master's Voice

Originally published in 1968, His Master's Voice is a transitional work between Stanislaw Lem's more or less straightforward science fiction of the earlier years and the searching, difficult, and frequently experimental works of later decades. The novel takes the form of a posthumously published diary by an eminent mathematician, Peter Hogarth, a key participant in the His Master's Voice project, a blunt analogy to the Manhattan Project. Twenty-five hundred elite scientists have been herded into an abandoned nuclear testing site in Nevada, where, surveilled by the Pentagon, they work in secret to decipher a neutrino message of extraterrestrial origin.The neutrino message is the philosophical catalyst behind this extraordinarily deep and tragic novel in which Leto takes to task the military takeover of scientific research, Cold War -- era politics, and humanity's perpetual capacity for (self-)destruction. His Master's Voice is a mordant satire on scientific micro-worlds and the monstrous political and military system bankrolling them.