Stanislaw Lem: 17 books

**Wojciech Orlinski's story 'Stanlemian', translated from the Polish by Danusia Stok, short-listed for the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards.** Featuring: Stanislaw Lem, Brian Aldiss, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Annie Clarkson, Dr Sarah Davies, Jacek Dukaj, Prof Steve Furber, Trevor...

Essays by the author of Solaris: “Lem’s delightful sense of humor accentuates his essential seriousness about humanity’s possible fate” (Publishers Weekly). In One Human Minute, Stanislaw Lem takes a hard look at our world and technology—what it means now and what dire implications...

The author of Solaris critiques science fiction in a collection of provocative essays. Celebrated science fiction master Stanislaw Lem turns his always sharp and insightful pen to criticism in this bold and controversial analysis of the genre for which he is most known. In this collection of...

Ingenious essays from “a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays in earnest with every concept . . . from free will to probability theory” (The New York Times Book Review). In A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem steps outside of his fictional comfort zone to try his hand at reviewing...

Prima che Stanislaw Lem scrivesse i suoi capolavori, l’immaginario fantascientifico era ostaggio dei propri deperibili eccessi, ossia di congegni mirabolanti, di abissi siderali sempre minacciosi, di astruserie pseudomatematiche: un armamentario godibile, ma spinto a rapida obsolescenza dall’innovazione...

From the author of Solaris, this novel of an encounter with an alien intelligence creates “a terrifyingly plausible picture of a world gone mad” (Kirkus Reviews). Six explorers—the Captain, Doctor, Engineer, Chemist, Physicist, and Cyberneticist—crash land on a beautiful but strange...

Robot armies, an arms race in space, and a brain at war with itself add up to “a futuristic version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (The Boston Phoenix). Anxious to avoid a war that would destroy the entire planet, the major powers of Earth have come to an ingenious compromise. Each country...

An ex-astronaut investigates a string of potential murders in this novel by the Kafka Prize–winning author of Solaris. Vacation is supposed to be relaxing. But while traveling in Naples, several American tourists die in a most macabre and unusual way: committing suicide in a fit of madness....

Brilliant stories of a bumbling astronaut, and the human desire to discover the unknown, by the much-loved author of Solaris. Set in the not-too-distant future, when space flight has evolved to the point where humanity is ready to colonize the solar system, Tales of Pirx the Pilot follows one...

“Lem has an almost Dickensian genius for vividly realizing the tragedy and comedy of future machines.” —The New York Times Book Review These are the stories of Trurl and Klapaucius, master inventors and engineers known as “constructors,” who have created marvels for kingdoms. Friends...

“A stunningly inventive fantasy about cosmic travel” from the Kafka Prize–winning author of Solaris (The New York Times). The Hermes explorer ship represents the epitome of Earth’s excellence: a peaceful mission sent forth to make first contact with an alien civilization, and to use...

Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride. Line drawings by the Author. Translated by Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure. Translated by Michael Kandel.

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 "bitistics." "Lem, a science fiction Bach, plays...