Download or read book The Invincible written by Stanislaw Lem and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 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, Stanisław Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from autonomous, self-replicating machines—perhaps the survivors of a “robot war.” Rohan and his men are forced to confront the classic quandary: what course of action can humanity take once it has reached the limits of its knowledge? In The Invincible, Lem has his characters confront the inexplicable and the bizarre: the problem that lies just beyond analytical reach.
Download or read book Return from the Stars written by Stanislaw Lem and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astronaut returns to Earth after a 10-year mission and finds a society that he barely recognizes in science fiction novel by the Solaris author, whose works “make our weary universe seem pale and undistinguished by comparison” (The Washington Post). Stanisław Lem’s Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission that lasted ten years—although because of time dilation, 127 years have passed on Earth. Bregg finds a society that he hardly recognizes, in which danger has been eradicated. Children are “betrizated” to remove all aggression and violence—a process that also removes all impulse to take risks and explore. The people of Earth view Bregg and his crew as “resuscitated Neanderthals,” and pressure them to undergo betrization. Bregg has serious difficulty in navigating the new social mores. While Lem’s depiction of a risk-free society is bleak, he does not portray Bregg and his fellow astronauts as heroes. Indeed, faced with no opposition to his aggression, Bregg behaves abominably. He is faced with a choice: leave Earth again and hope to return to a different society in several hundred years, or stay on Earth and learn to be content. With Return from the Stars, Lem shows the shifting boundaries between utopia and dystopia.
Download or read book Fiasco written by Stanislaw Lem and published by HMH. This book was released on 2012-07-18 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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 the expansive space technology developed by humanity to seek new worlds, friendships, and alliances. But what its crew discovers on the planet Quinta is nothing like they had hoped. Locked in a seemingly endless cold war among themselves, the Quintans are uncommunicative and violent, refusing any discourse—except for the firing of deadly weapons. The crew of the Hermes is determined to accomplish what they had set out to do. But the cost of learning the secrets hidden on the silent surface of Quinta may be grave. Stark, startling, and insightful, Fiasco has been praised by Publishers Weekly as “one of Lem’s best novels.” It is classic, thought-provoking hard science fiction, as prescient today as when it was first written.
Download or read book A Perfect Vacuum written by Stanisław Lem and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a perfect vacuum, Stanislaw Lem presents a collection of book reviews of nonexistent works of literature - works that, in many cases, could not possibly be written. Embracing postmodernism's "games for games' sake" ethos, Lem joins the contest with hilarious and grotesque results." "Most of the "reviews" target the postmodern infatuation with antinarratives by lampooning their self-indulgence and exploiting their mannerisms. Lem exposes the limits of postmodern fiction, showing how its studious self-consciousness frequently conceals intellectual paucity. Beginning with a review of his own book, Lem moves on to tackle (or create pastiches of) the French new novel, James Joyce, pornography, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky, while at the same time ranging across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book A Polish Book of Monsters written by Michael Kandel and published by Piasa Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Polish Book of Monsters contains five stories of speculative fiction edited and translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel, award-winning translator of the fiction of Stanislaw Lem. From dystopian science fiction to fabled fantasy, these dark tales grip us through the authors' ability to create utterly convincing alien worlds that nonetheless reflect our own.
Download or read book A Stanislaw Lem Reader written by Stanisław Lem and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-12 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lem Reader, Peter Swirski has assembled an in-depth and insightful collection of writings by and about, and interviews with, one of the most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Tales From The Planet Earth written by Frederik Pohl and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1986-10-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel with nineteen authors. In this collaborative novel of international science fiction, Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull have compiled nineteen facets of a single dilemma, the fantastic situation of human beings and aliens coexisting in one body. Each story's plot is organized around this single theme, but the voices that color each telling come from all corners of the world.
Download or read book History of a Disappearance written by Filip Springer and published by Restless Books. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the World War I. After Stalin's post-World War II redrawing of Poland's borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc's uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to the town being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated. Today, it exists only in ruins, with barely a hundred people living on the unstable ground above its collapsing mines. Springer catalogs the lost human elements: the long-departed tailor and deceased shopkeeper; the parties, now silenced, that used to fill the streets with shouts and laughter, and the once-beautiful cemetery, with gravestones upended by tractors and human bones scattered by dogs. In Miedzianka, Springer sees a microcosm of European history, and a powerful narrative of how the ghosts of the past continue to haunt us in the present--Provided by the publisher.
Download or read book The Cyberiad written by Stanisław Lem and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Futurological Congress from the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy written by Stanisław Lem and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1985 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Peace on Earth written by Stanislaw Lem and published by HMH. This book was released on 2002-12-04 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 sends a force of adaptable, self-programming robots to the surface of the moon to play out the conflict there and, hopefully, reach a mutually agreeable stalemate. But when the robots stop responding, it is up to Ijon Tichy to travel to the lunar war zone and discover what went wrong. Tichy finds what he needs to know, but falls victim to an attack that severs the left and right sides of his brain: one of which knows nothing about the status of the moon, the other of which isn’t telling. Now Tichy finds himself at the center of a new sort of war of attrition, with each world power clamoring for his knowledge and each half of his stubborn brain clamoring for control. Wry and action-packed in equal measure, Stanislaw Lem’s absurd, insightful sendup of the Cold War is required reading for any fan of science fiction. Here, “humor and a breathless pace create a delightful and thought-provoking read” (Publishers Weekly).
Download or read book The Adventures of Mr Nicholas Wisdom written by Ignacy Krasicki and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST POLISH NOVEL EVER WRITTEN IN 1776.
Download or read book Solaris written by Stanisław Lem and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kris Kelvin lands on the space station Solaris only to face a cruel miracle.
Download or read book The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem written by Peter Swirski and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2006-07-27 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars examine the social and cultural significance of technology and science in the work of Stanislaw Lem, the author of Solaris.
Download or read book The Chain of Chance written by Stanisław Lem and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On a trail leading from Naples to Rome to Paris, the ex-astronaut barely escapes numerous threats on his life. Having set himself up as a potential victim, he realizes that he may now be the target of a deadly conspiracy - and that the conspiracy is not the work of a criminal mind but a manifestation of the laws of nature. The population has numerically exceeded its critical mass; certain patterns have begun to emerge from the chaotic workings of society.
Download or read book The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy written by Wiesiek Powaga and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poland's strong Catholic faith engendered in its literature a lively awareness of the Devil and a love of the supernatural. The Devil is a popular figure in Polish fantastic fiction, and we see him in many different roles and guises: from the personification of pure malice to a pitiful, unfortunate individual and even a patriotic hero. The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy offers the best of this tradition from the Romantics to the new generation of authors writing in post-communist Poland.
Download or read book The Motion Demon written by Stefan Grabiński and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Macabre trains and maverick railwaymen inhabit the world of THE MOTION DEMON, a translation of the highly-original short story collection from the pen of Stefan Grabinski, first published in 1919. Sometimes called the "Polish Poe" or the "Polish Lovecraft," Grabinski is a unique voice in fantastique literature who crafted his own style and addressed themes that no other horror/fantasy writer at the time was exploring. Grabinski's work was largely ignored in his native country during his life, but in recent times there has been growing international interest in this writer, with notable voices, such as author China Mieville, proclaiming him a master of horror/fantasy. Translator Miroslaw Lipinski introduced the writings of Stefan Grabinski to English-speaking readership, first with translations in the small press, and then with the short story collections THE DARK DOMAIN (1993), THE MOTION DEMON (2005) and ON THE HILL OF ROSES (2012). Of Polish ancestry and British-birth, Lipinski resides in New York. He is currently working on a mammoth volume of Grabinski stories for Centipede Press' "Masters of the Weird Tale" series.
