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 Earth. As they approach Quinta, a dark poetry takes over and leads them into a nightmare of misunderstanding. Translated by Michael Kandel. The novel was published in German translation (translated by H. Schumann) in 1986. The Polish text published in 1987, the English translation (by M. Kandel) the same year.

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

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 in a hermetically sealed underground community. Translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose.

Twenty-five hundred scientists have been herded into an isolated site in the Nevada desert. A neutrino message of extraterrestrial origin has been received and the scientists, under the surveillance of the Pentagon, labor on His Master's Voice, the secret program set up to decipher the transmission. Among them is Peter Hogarth, an eminent mathematician. When the project reaches a stalemate, Hogarth pursues clandestine research into the classified TX Effect--another secret breakthrough. But when he discovers, to his horror, that the TX Effect could lead to the construction of a fission bomb, Hogarth decides such knowledge must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the military.

Pilot Pirx is an astronaut, a fresh-faced physical powerhouse, but no genius. His superiors send him on the most dangerous missions, either because he is expendable, or because they trust his bumbling ability to survive in almost any habitat or dilemma. Follow Pirx now through a world of hyper-technology and super-psychology from his early days as a hopelessly inept cadet soloing with a pair of sex-crazed horseflies… to a farside moon station built by bickering madmen… to a chase through space after a deadly sphere of light… to an encounter with a mossy old robot whose programming has slipped.

Space wasn’t half so scary, half so strange, or even half so alien, as what Hal Bregg returned to. He had been away from Planet Earth for ten years space-time. But that was 127 years back home and a lot of things had changed. Sex. Money. Transit. Violence. There’s no more violence. Everyone gets it “betrizated” out of them in childhood. And that’s just the beginning… Naturally, Hal refuses to be acclimated by the “Adapt” people. He prefers to figure it out all by himself, be a stranger in a strange land, draw his own conclusions. And he does. “In the unlikely event that a science-fiction writer is deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize in the near future, the most likely candidate would be a Pole named Stanislaw Lem,” states THE NEW YORK TIMES. And FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION writes, “One of the world’s finest writers… Lem has accomplished the difficult illusion of showing us a future world which may be distasteful to us, but which may be seen as quite legitimate and even desirable by its own people, and by us, if we were to change certain ways of seeing and understanding.”

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 Lieutenant Gregory consults scientific, philosophical, and theological experts, who supply him with a host of theories and clues. The plethora of rival technical and metaphysical solutions to the crime baffle the investigator but delight the intellect in Lem’s unique contribution to the mystery genre. FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem Born in Lvov, Poland (now part of the Soviet Union), Stanislaw Lem is an internationally acclaimed master of speculative science fantasy whose worldwide book sales number in the millions. His works have earned him a special, honorary Nebula Award. He lives in Vienna.

Like A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem's collection of reviews of books which have never been written, Imaginary Magnitude is an anthology of Introductions to those which never will be: stylistic burlesques ofprefaces that lead nowhere; dazzling conceits of forewords followedby no words at all. An appropriate introduction' is followed by introductions to erotic X-ray photography, verbal communication between humans and bacteria, literature created by non-human authors, a continually evolving encyclopaedia of future knowledge and a Pentagon supercomputer that rebels against its intended use. Effortlessly leapfrogging the bottomless depths of a supremely indifferent universe, Lem touches lightly on those Great Questions which will always remain incomprehensible to man -but increasingly within the reach of his technological children. 'The computer may ultimately be right. But for the time being, in Imaginary Magnitude, an entertaining and intelligent mortal has thefirst word' Time 'Lem, a science-fiction Bach, plays in this book a googolplex (thefigure 1 followed by a staggering number of zeroes) of variations onhis basic theme' Philip Jose Farmer, New York Times

A former astronaut turned private detective is dispatched to Naples to discover the pattern in a mysterious series of deaths and disappearances occurring at a seaside spa.

Pilot Pirx is an astronaut, a fresh-faced physical powerhouse, but no genius. His superiors send him on the most dangerous missions, either because he is expendable, or because they trust his bumbling ability to survive in almost any habitat or dilemma. Follow Pirx now through a world of hyper-technology and super-psychology from his early days as a hopelessly inept cadet soloing with a pair of sex-crazed horseflies… to a farside moon station built by bickering madmen… to a chase through space after a deadly sphere of light… to an encounter with a mossy old robot whose programming has slipped.

Pilot Pirx is an astronaut, a fresh-faced physical powerhouse, but no genius. His superiors send him on the most dangerous missions, either because he is expendable, or because they trust his bumbling ability to survive in almost any habitat or dilemma. Follow Pirx now through a world of hyper-technology and super-psychology from his early days as a hopelessly inept cadet soloing with a pair of sex-crazed horseflies… to a farside moon station built by bickering madmen… to a chase through space after a deadly sphere of light… to an encounter with a mossy old robot whose programming has slipped.

In this bold and controversial examination of the past, present, and future of science fiction, internationally acclaimed grand master Stanislaw Lem informs the raging debate over the literary merit of the genre with ten arch, incisive, provocative essays. Lem believes that science fiction should attempt to discover what hasn’t been thought or done before. Too often, says Lem, science fiction resorts to well-worn patterns of primitive adventure literature, plays empty games with the tired devices of time travel and robots, and is oblivious to cultural and intellectual values. An expert examination of the scientific and literary premises of his own and other writers’ work, this collection is quintessential Lem.

Pilot Pirx is an astronaut, a fresh-faced physical powerhouse, but no genius. His superiors send him on the most dangerous missions, either because he is expendable, or because they trust his bumbling ability to survive in almost any habitat or dilemma. Follow Pirx now through a world of hyper-technology and super-psychology from his early days as a hopelessly inept cadet soloing with a pair of sex-crazed horseflies… to a farside moon station built by bickering madmen… to a chase through space after a deadly sphere of light… to an encounter with a mossy old robot whose programming has slipped.

Are the self-programming robots on the moon ensuring “peace on Earth,” or are they secretly plotting a terrestrial invasion of their own? Only Ijon Tichy, sent on a dangerous mission to report on the robots’ activities, knows for sure. But, as luck would have it, he is caught by a highly focused ray, which severs his corpus collosum and leaves the left side of his brain at odds with the right. Has he returned to Earth with the secret that could save all humanity? His left brain can’t remember, and his right brain can’t tell. Agents from the East and the West race to get to Tichy’s forgotten but priceless information first; Tichy, whose left hand keeps punching him and pinching ladies’ bottoms, struggles for control of the lost memory and of his own two warring sides. FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem Stanislaw Lem, called by a reviewer “one of the jewels of twentieth-century literature,” is internationally renowned for his science fiction, satire, philosophy, and literary criticism. He was born in Lvov, Poland, and lives in Krakow.