The doubler that has joined the group proves to be uncommunicative, leading some of the crew to suggest that it has some sort of intellectual disability.

It turns out they were bombarded with 'micromechanical devices', from which a wall of glass begins to grow and eventually assembles into a dome, an attempt to isolate the ship. Shortly thereafter the area around the ship is bombarded for several hours, with all hits falling into a circular ditch made earlier. While the expedition explored the settlement, a large group of doubler vehicles had reconnoitered the crash site and then fled.Īfter a while the crew learns that the local civilization is planning to act against them. One doubler however, comes to the jeep and refuses to return to the settlement, and is brought back to the ship. Two expedition members exploring the settlement become caught in a stampede of doublers, who seem totally indifferent to the presence of the alien expedition. The jeep team eventually discovers structures resembling graves and hundreds of preserved skeletons, and adjacent to it, a settlement. After an attack never comes, they assemble their jeep and half the team sets out to explore further, the other half remaining behind to repair the ship.

Killing the pilot and fleeing in his vehicle, they return to the ship and prepare defenses. Eventually they come into conflict with a vehicle's pilot, who is a doubler. The next day the expedition begins to come into contact with the local civilization, and their strange, wheel-like vehicles. They name these large creatures, with small torsos retractable into their large bodies, doublers (a translation of Lem's neologism dubelt, to mean 'double-bodied'). At the crash site they find a local sentient alien has entered their vessel. There they find a constant cycle of materials being produced and then destroyed and recycled.

After escaping their wrecked ship they set out to explore the planet, first traveling through an unsettling wilderness and coming upon an abandoned automated factory. It was first published in English in 1989 ( ISBN 0-15-127580-7).Ī starship crew-Captain (in the original, Coordinator), Doctor, Engineer, Chemist, Physicist and Cyberneticist (robotics expert)-crash land on an alien world they call Eden. It was first published in 1958 in issues 211-271 of the newspaper Trybuna Robotnicza. Eden is a 1958 social science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem.

Eden stanislaw lem