Observation on the Spot

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Observation on the Spot (Polish Wizja lokalna, with the common meaning of the expression being crime scene reconstruction) is a social science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem. The novel is a report of Ijon Tichy's travel to a faraway planet Entia (in Polish text: Encja) to study their civilization. This report was supposed to fix a misunderstanding arisen from Tichy's Fourteenth Voyage to supposedly Entia (then known as Enteropia), which turned out to be a satellite of Entia, masqueraded by Entians to misguide explorers. The travel was also to verify the results of the "Institute of Historiographical Computers" (Polish: Instytut Maszyn Dziejowych), which use predictive modeling to overcome the speed of light limitation and get information about the state of the affairs on remote planets based on information obtained from previous expeditions.

Major themes of the book are: the problems of the society of abundance based entirely on automated production where individuals have little to do; imposition of ethical laws through technology i.e. the "ethicsphere" which has made it impossible to harm individuals physically; and the ideological opposition of two dominant systems, which is basically a parody of Western World-Soviet Union split taken to the absurd.

The original novel was first printed by Wydawnictwo Literackie in 1982. It was translated into German by Hubert Schumann under the title Lokaltermin in 1987 (ISBN 3-518-37955-0).

Lacking English translation, the novel title was also translated in literary criticism works as "Eyewitness Account" and "The Scene of the Crime".^[1]

Science Fiction Studies published a collection of excerpts from Lem's letters which show the chronology of the creation of the novel (during 1979-1981). In the first one Lem confesses that he tried to approach the subject several times in the past few years.^[1] Also, in his essay The Philosophy of Chance Lem confesses that he struggled with the novel for many years.