The e-book edition I read has a relatively new *real* introduction by Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI Institute, who relates the story to real-world SETI efforts and real-world physics, while more or less ignoring its deeper social and psychological themes. While I do feel that this introduction misses the point of the novel to some degree, it's an interesting brief take on one aspect of it. Shostak notes that we have informal protocols for what to do in the event of a message receipt, but not much of a procedure in place for how to interpret it if it proves as resistant as the one in the book.
He also mentions that neutrino astronomy is a real thing now--though without the fictional physics of the "neutrino inverter" that Lem makes up for the novel, it's rather more difficult an endeavor than he imagined.
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Date: 2022-06-26 04:23 pm (UTC)He also mentions that neutrino astronomy is a real thing now--though without the fictional physics of the "neutrino inverter" that Lem makes up for the novel, it's rather more difficult an endeavor than he imagined.