Stanisław Lem’s last novel Fiasco (1986) is divided into two parts. In the first part, the pilot Parvis lands on Saturn’s moon Titan where he learns that several “striders” (mechas) have been recently lost in the unmapped “Birnam Wood” region of the moon. Parvis commandeers another strider and sets off on a rescue mission, but when he is trapped by collapsing ice, he is forced to resort to the “vitrifax”, a risky form of cryogenic preservation. The second part opens a hundred years later, when the revivified pilot finds himself aboard the Hermes, a spaceship on a mission to “Quinta, the fifth planet of Zeta Harpyiae”, where intelligent alien life has perhaps been discovered.
Is there a connection between the two parts of the novel, beyond the survival of the pilot from the first part to the second?
