SOURCE: “Hell in Space,” in Times Literary Supplement, February 9–15, 1990, p. 149.

In the following review, Clute offers a positive assessment of Eden, but notes that archaic qualities in the novel may be attributed to its original 1959 publication date.

Of all the writers of science fiction who work in languages other than English, only Jules Verne has been more translated than Stanislaw Lem. This may seem remarkable. Verne fabricated his planetary prospectus for an audience as universal as he could conceive, while Lem seemingly directs his barbed deconstructions of the world to an audience of daunting peers. An Eden built by Verne would be a safe haven for the many; Lem's Eden (as now translated by Marc E. Heine) is a planet of snares for the unwary human mind, a maze of disinformation, a hell.

It is a book whose deep premises contradict (as so often in Lem) an innocently...