are denied, and anyone with the knowledge of them is eliminated. The doubler explains that the information disseminated to the higher echelons of doubler society was that humans, having been subjected to the effects of cosmic rays throughout their space journey, were mutant monsters that were being quarantined, but he had seen it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and chose to pursue it, a choice the humans greatly empathize with. Finally the ship is repaired and the crew is ready to leave Eden. The astronomer doubler, although recovering fully from his radiation exposure, decides to stay behind, and as the starship takes off, much to the crew's sadness, the two doublers stand by the ship's exhaust, choosing to die rather than return to their oppressive society. The planet is seen from the distance once again, a beautiful violet sphere, whose beauty, they now recall, was the very reason they crashed while attempting too close a fly-by and hitting the atmosphere by mistake. It was because of its beauty that they called it, when first seeing it, Eden. Literary criticism Lem's own opinion about the book was unflattering. He wrote "From today's perspective Eden is neutral in my eyes. It is so-so. From the point of view of literature it is a rather unsuccessful book; its characters tend to be schematic and the pictured universe is a bit "flat" and one-dimensional." Marek Oramus in his essay Doktryna nieingerencji ("Doctrine of Noninterfence") writes that the novel marks the beginning of the full maturity of Lem as a writer. He also notes that although the technology in the novel overall is rather archaic from today's point of view, the novel describes something that is called nanotechnology today. He also remarks that Eden is the first of Lem's stories about failed "first contact". Later Lems's writing of this type are much more skeptical, the best known case being Solaris.<ref>Doktryna nieingerencji, In: Marek Oramus, Bogowie Lema</ref> Background The book was written in Poland while under Soviet-style regime, which in all Soviet bloc countries had a system of all-pervasive censorship and information control and stratification. See also Double bind Some other novels in which information manipulation is a major part of the plot The Bull's Hour (planet-wide totalitarian state through information control and stratification) Prisoners of Power (anonymous totalitarian oligarchy through propaganda and mind control) The Lucifer Principle (society as memes carrier, shaped by them in return)