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The Astronauts (in Polish Astronauci) is the first science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem published as a book, in 1951. (The sci-fi novel The Man from Mars was serialized in a weekly during 1946.)

To write the novel, Lem received advance payment from publishing house Czytelnik (Warsaw). The book became an instant success and was translated into several languages (first into Czech, published in 1956). This success convinced Lem to switch to careers to a science-fiction author.

The Astronauts was written for the youth in form of an Utopian space opera. Inability to ever understand alien civilizations, a frequent motive of Lem's future works, does appear here for the first time. To get published under the communist regime in Poland Lem had to insert frequent references to the ideals of communism. Decades later, Lem didn't value The Astronauts very much:

Everything is so smooth and balanced; among the heroes we have a positive Russian character and a sweet Chinese; naiveté is present on all pages of this book. The hope that in the year 2000 the world would be wonderful is indeed very childish.... ^[1]

The term cosmonauts used in countries of Eastern Bloc was not yet created when the text was written, hence the name Astronauts.

The introduction describes the fall of Tunguska meteorite (1908) and subsequent expedition of Leonid Kulik. The hypothesis about the crash of a cosmic ship is mentioned.

It's the year 2003. Communism has won worldwide and humankind, freed from oppression and chaos, is engaged in gigantic engineering projects - irrigation of the Sahara, the construction of a hydro-energetic plant over the Strait of Gibraltar and the ability to control the climate. The latest project is to thaw the Antarctic and Arctic regions by artificial nuclear-powered "suns" circling above.

During the preparation of earthworks in the Tunguska area a strange object is found and later identified as an extraterrestrial data record. The record contains details about the travel of the cosmic ship from Venus (crashing in Tunguska) and the data ends with an ominous message: "After two rotations the Earth will be radiated. After the radiation intensity drops to half, the Great Movement will commence". Scared, the government of the Earth (consisting of scientists) decides to send the newly built cosmic ship Kosmokrator (equipped with vacuum tube based computer Marax) to Venus.

After a few weeks the international crew of Kosmokrator arrives on Venus but finds no traces of life, only strange, half-destroyed technological structures like White Globe, a giant anti-gravity device.

It turns out that Venus was inhabited by a warlike civilization planning to occupy the Earth. Before they managed to destroy the life on Earth they themselves perished in nuclear civil war, leaving only ruins of the cities and scattered electronic records.

In 1960, a movie Der Schweigende Stern (The Silent Star, in Polish Milcząca Gwiazda) based on the book was shot in East Germany, directed by Kurt Maetzig. The 1962 release in the USA used name First Spaceship on Venus. Lem had disowned the movie.

"First Spaceship On Venus" was featured in the 2nd season of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

• List of published Lem's novels in all languages
• The Silent Star at the Internet Movie Database
• Reviews of the novel (in Polish)