The Invincible warns, as Lem himself has said, that the time of “seamless, unified philosophical systems” is over. Science and technology have failed to bridge the enormous gap between human knowledge and the universe, and encounters with “the Other” continue to expose human ways of understanding as illusory. Ursula K. Le Guin has interpreted Lem’s work as emphasizing the need for human beings to continue to act, in spite of this lack of understanding, because actions “retain, in the very depths of the abyss, their unalterable moral value.” Rohan’s impossible and unfulfilled excursion on behalf of the missing crewmen, climaxed by his renunciation of unbridled heroics and his redemption through an individual ethical decision, suggests that one may still attribute worth and purpose to human activity.