Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth (Pokój na Ziemi) is a novel by Stanisław Lem. Despite featuring Ijon Tichy as the protagonist, it's done in a lot more serious tone compared to The Star Diaries. The novel takes place some time after a global disarmament achieved by moving arsenals of the entire Earth to the Moon, with each one setting up a simulated evolution to ensure the arms race continues. However, before long the powers behind the project find themselves worried about a possible Robot Uprising. That's when Tichy enters the picture, and finds that between the Moon surface and the Earth politics, the former just might be a safer place, after all...

Unmarked spoilers ahead.

---

This work includes examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Discussed and averted. It's impossible to determine if automated weapon development systems went rogue, or were programmed to break the disarmament rules by their creators. Additionally, the ultimate threat from the Moon does not appear to be sentient at all.
• Affably Evil: One of the robots Tichy encounters is surprisingly talkative, telling Tichy that he doesn't want to fight anyone. Right until he disables Tichy's scout robot and cuts it open.
• Apocalypse How: On the last pages, Class 1, due to global electronic disruption. Caused by the lunar Grey Goo Tichy accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) brought with him.
• Attack Reflector: The first defensive trick Tichy encounters on the Moon. It was enough to stop previous exploration attempts in their tracks.
• Continuity Nod: Tichy mentions he had beaten himself up before, once because of Time Travel (in The Star Diaries) and once under the influence of weird chemicals (in The Futurological Congress).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Some of the Moon robots were designed to kill or disable humans, rather than destroy other robots. When a free-for-all war between sectors had begun, those models were quickly sidelined due to the lack of appropriate targets.
• Evil Hand: Tichy comes back from the Moon with disabled corpus callosum, causing his right brain to develop a personality of its own. As the right brain controls the left side of the body, Tichy's left hand (and left leg) begins pinching womens' butts, randomly hitting people (himself included) and generally acting independently.
• Finagle's Law: During the flight to the Moon, things keep failing (and random items accidentally left by technicians keep flying out of nooks and crannies). The start alone takes ten tries. Later discussed, as Tarantoga explains that machines break down, the more often the more complicated they are, and the lunar ship was very complicated.
• Flock of Wolves: Nearly everyone in the Lunar Agency has a hidden agenda.
• Fun with Acronyms: LEM robots, or Lunar Excursion Modules. Named after the Apollo mission modules, so people would confuse them and Tichy's top secret mission would fly under the radar.
• Gambit Pileup: The novel. First, automatic weapons research projects on the Moon attack each other, later the Lunar Agency attempts to investigate the issue by sending Tichy over, then several conflicting forces attempt to get him to tell them what happened there.
• Gone Horribly Right: The demilitarisation of Earth by moving all war machines to the Moon. It does ensure lasting peace - especially after the machines get back and disable all electronics on the planet.
• Grey Goo: Downplayed. The ultimate Moon threat can reproduce itself, but only does so in a limited manner. It also completely ignores older tech and living creatures.
• He Knows Too Much: The mere possibility of this is enough to put Tichy's life in jeopardy. Some parties are worried about what he might've actually discovered on the Moon, while others are more worried about what he could decide to tell instead of the truth. He himself can't remember the key information, but nobody cares about that.
• How We Got Here: A good chunk of the novel is a retrospective recorded by Tichy. It's generally told in non-chronological order.
• Job-Stealing Robot: In a rare variant, robots stole military jobs, being better soldiers, strategists, weapon designers, et cetera. Most civilian specialists have also been replaced, although the ending (with all computers on Earth becoming useless) might change that.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Tichy loses the key memories of his mission. For pretty much the entire novel, everybody thinks his right brain remembers them, but "he" doesn't either.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: The Lunar Agency pulls this when someone attempts to assassinate Tichy.
• Mechanical Animals: Some of the products of the automated lunar arms race look like this. Or at least that's the best way Tichy can describe them.
• Mechanical Evolution: The lunar arms race runs itself on evolutionary principles, with disastrous results.
• Microbot Swarm: The ultimate scout robot used by Tichy during the mission is this, bordering on Nano Technology. A simpler versions are mentioned, as well.
• Patriotic Fervor: One of the lunar robots keeps yelling phrases like "Glory for the fatherland!".
• Poor Communication Kills: Tichy's split personality was trying to communicate with his dominant personality using Morse code. Despite being fluent in it, Tichy failed to notice those attempts. He did teach his "other half" sign language, though, which specialists note is incredibly difficult.
• Remote Body: The scout robots Tichy uses during his mission are operated like this. They transmit not only visual and radio data, but also temperature and vibration, much to Tichy's discomfort. In the backstory this technology also caused a crisis on Earth, especially when sexbots hit the market.
• Shown Their Work: According to Lem himself, the book grew from his interest in corpus callosotomy which he researched extensively, and so does Ijon Tichy in the novel. Lem estimated that about eighty percent of the book is science. In the novel, Tichy encounters several characters unhealthily fascinated with his state.
• Split Personality: Tichy suffers this to an extent after his Moon mission, probably as a side effect of an experimental weapon. It takes a while for them to get along.
• They Would Cut You Up: Not to the point of literally cutting him up, but every single neurologist on Earth (and one very determined philosophy student) is fascinated with Tichy's condition and tries to experiment on him, which is why he's on the run for the first part of the book. Lunar Agency is also trying to get their hands on him, although in this case it's because of what (they think) he knows.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tichy is expected to become one, since the results of his investigation of the state of the Lunar project could upset the delicate political balance on Earth. He turns out to be one for an entirely different reason.