Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers. 'The most completely suc...
Eden (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book)
Stanislaw LemA six-man crew crash-lands on Eden, fourth planet from another sun. The men find a strange world that grows ever stranger, and everywhere there are images of death. The crew's attempt to communicate with this civilization leads to vio...
The planet Quinta is pocked by ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network. It is a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted by madness. In stark contrast, the crew of the spaceship Hermes represents a knowledge-seeking E...
His Master's Voice (The MIT Press)
Stanislaw LemScientists attempt to decode what may be a message from intelligent beings in outer space. By pure chance, scientists detect a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this ...
These wickedly authentic introductions to twenty-first-century books preface tomes on teaching English to bacteria, using animated X-rays to create 'pornograms,' and analyzing computer-generated literature through the science of 'biti...
The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped i...
Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further ...
Stanislaw LemThe travels of Ijon Tichy, a Gulliver of the space age, who encounters faulty time machines, intelligent washing machines, suicidal potatoes, and other puzzling phenomena. Memoirs of a Space Traveler follows the adventures of Ijon Ti...
These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Lem’ s fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be. “ Astonishing is not too strong a word for these talesR...
Contains three essays--'One Human Minute,' 'The Upside-Down Revolution ,' and 'The World as Cataclysm'--from science fiction master Stanislaw Lem.
Ijon Tichy is sent on a mission to report on the activities of certain self-programming robots on the moon. Sent there to ensure peace on earth, the robots are suspected of plotting an invasion of their own. While attending to a call ...
Return from the Stars (The MIT Press)...
Stanislaw LemAn astronaut returns to Earth after a ten-year mission and finds a society that he barely recognizes. Stanislaw Lem's Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission t...
In Pilot Pirx, Lem has created an irresistibly likable character: an astronaut who gives the impression of still navigating by the seat of his pants-a bumbler but an inspired one. By investing Pirx with a range of human foibles, Lem o...
The Hospital of the Transfiguration (...
Stanislaw LemAn early realist novel by Stanislaw Lem, taking place in a Polish psychiatric hospital during World War II. Taking place within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, Stanislaw Lem's The Hospital of the Transfiguration tells the sto...
A young officer at Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a puzzling and eerie case of missing-and apparently resurrected-bodies. To unravel the mystery, Lt. Gregory consults scientific, philosophical, and theological experts, who s...
The Invincible (The MIT Press)
Stanislaw LemA space cruiser, in search of its sister ship, encounters beings descended from self-replicating machines. In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent ...