Stanisław Lem

The Invincible (Polish: Niezwyciężony) is a science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, published in 1964. The Invincible originally appeared as the title story in Lem's collection Niezwyciężony i inne opowiadania ("The Invincible and Other Stories"). A translation into German was published in 1967; an English translation by Wendayne Ackerman, based on the German one, was published in 1973. An interstellar 2nd-class cruiser called Invincible, lands on Regis III which seems bleakly uninhabited, to investigate the loss of sister ship, Condor.

A brilliantly funny collection of stories for the next age, from the celebrated author of Solaris. Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.

This is the 1st Avon printing. Cover Artist: Daniel Mroz 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 successful of his books... here Lem comes closest to inventing a real universe” (Boston Globe). Illustrations by Daniel Mr—z. Translated by Michael Kandel.

Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought-provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1996, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, The Truth, a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; The Journal appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes—until at the end, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in An Enigma, beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer than can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

Kosmiczny krążownik drugiej klasy Niezwyciężony ląduje na planecie Regis III. Celem przybycia statku kosmicznego jest odszukanie Kondora – bliźniaczej jednostki, która lądowała tu wcześniej i z którą stracono łączność. Zachowując najwyższe środki bezpieczeństwa załoga rozpoczyna poszukiwania. Jednocześnie naukowcy przystępują do badań planety, starając się określić źródła potencjalnego zagrożenia. W trakcie poszukiwań zaginionego okrętu odkryte zostają nieznane konstrukcje, tworzące prawdopodobnie odpowiednik ziemskiego miasta. Podczas gdy grupa badaczy dokonuje zwiadu ruin, trzysta kilometrów dalej odnaleziony zostaje Kondor. Okazuje się, że jego załoga straciła życie w bardzo dziwnych okolicznościach. Wkrótce po tym jeden z odkrywców nagle traci całkowicie pamięć – ludzie zaczynają podejrzewać, że został zaatakowany przez nieznaną formę życia. Pozycja zawiera także: * Czy człowiek to szczyt stworzenia? Rozmowa z Piotrem Słonimskim, genetykiem, o pułapkach i ślepych uliczkach ewolucji * Cały ten złom. Posłowie prof. Jerzego Jarzębskiego

Opowieści Cyberiady łączą postacie Trurla i Klapaucjusza, którzy używając swojej fantastycznej wiedzy i zdolności, pomagają mieszkańcom różnych planet, zazwyczaj neutralizując panujących tyranów. Duet ten stanowi parę najlepszych przyjaciół, ale też rywali. Ich spory o miano najlepszego konstruktora przybierały nawet dość brutalne formy (opowiadanie Wielkie lanie). Kiedy nie są oni zajęci konstruowaniem kolejnych wspaniałych mechanizmów, podróżują po Wszechświecie, pomagając potrzebującym. I jakkolwiek są oni opisywani jako dobrzy i praworządni, nie oponują i nie wstydzą się przyjmować hojnych nagród za ich usługi. Oszukani w tej materii nie zawahają się sami ukarać niesłowne osoby. Pozycja zawiera także: * Summa smocologiae. Esej Adama Michnika o totalitaryzmie. * Czy kosmos jest śmieszny? Posłowie prof. Jerzego Jarzębskiego.

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 supply him with a host of theories and clues.

A classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem. When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts.

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.

Wspaniała literatura science fiction i to w najlepszym wydaniu. Stanisław Lem rozpoczął „Eden” okres swojej tzw. dojrzałej twórczości. Audiobook to adaptacja powieści, która powstała u schyłku lat 50. XX wieku. Klimatem i tematem nawiązuje do twórczości Orwella, wizji społeczeństwa ograniczonego, żyjącego w systemie, funkcjonowania którego nie jest w stanie do końca pojąc, bo na końcu czyha śmiertelne niebezpieczeństwo. Mimo że od powstania „Edenu” minie niedługo sześćdziesiąt lat, po tę opowieść wciąż sięga się z zainteresowaniem. To coś więcej niż historia pewnej planety. To opowieść, która trzyma w napięciu i odsłania się przed słuchaczami powoli. „Eden” to historia pełna nadziei, ale i nieporozumień, które wynikają z faktu, że przybysze i tubylcy używają różnej technologii. Czy to może być przeszkoda w nawiązaniu współpracy? Cóż, w świecie stworzonym przez Lema to odpowiednik innego języka, a jak się w takim przypadku porozumieć?

„Dzienniki gwiazdowe” to audiobook na podstawie zbioru opowiadań tworzonych na przestrzeni blisko trzydziestu lat. Stanisław Lem doskonale połączył w nich klimat baśni osadzonej w kosmosie, opowieści przygodowej i rozważania na temat natury świata, który znamy i tego, do którego dążymy w marzeniach i wraz z technicznym postępem. Nagranie należy do cyklu Lemoteka i jest wspaniałym przykładem uniwersalnej, ponadczasowej twórczości, która od lat wciąż zyskuje nowych fanów. Audiobook to również świetna okazja dla tych, którzy jeszcze raz chcieliby sięgnąć po dzieła mistrza gatunku. „Dzienniki gwiazdowe” zabierają słuchaczy w kosmos, przygodę ogranicza tu jedynie wyobraźnia, a ta w przypadku Lema zaskakuje nawet najśmielszych fantastów. Znajdziemy tu pełną powagi fabułę i niezwykły, charakterystyczny dla Stanisława Lema humor. Poznamy Ijona Tichy, gwiazdokrążcę, który niczym Guliwer przemierza świat – obcy i zimny, ale pełen niespodzianek. „Dzienniki gwiazdowe” zinterpretował na potrzeby nagrania Wojciech Żołądkiewicz. A w ramach Lemoteki polecamy także inne audiobooki, między innymi „Katar”, „Cyberiadę” czy „Eden”.

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.

'What use to a being that lives beneath a sun are jewels of gas and silver stars of ice?' From a giant of twentieth-century science fiction, these four miniature space epics feature crazy inventors, surreal worlds, robot kings and madcap machines. The four stories are "The Three Electroknights", "The White Death", "King Globares and the Sages", and "The Tale of King Gnuff". All have previously been published in the collection Mortal Engines.

"Fiasko" jest chyba najbardziej ponurą powieścią Lema. Wystarczy powiedzieć, że jej główny bohater dwakroć w jej trakcie ginie, nie spełniwszy zresztą ani za pierwszym, ani za drugim razem swej misji. Historia powstania tej książki była niecodzienna, autor bowiem napisał zrazu pierwszy rozdział, Las Birnam, by zarzucić rozpoczęte dzieło i dokończyć je dopiero w wiele lat później, kiedy przyszedł mu pomysł na domknięcie fabuły. "Fiasko" ukazało się drukiem w 1987 roku, jako ostatnia spośród powieści Lema. Potem publikował już tylko nieliczne krótkie opowiadania i kilka tomów esejów; do większych form prozatorskich nie powrócił już nigdy."

Discovery of a unknown neutrino interaction begins a new era in neutrino astronomy. An indecipherable message is repeated in the neutrino stream. Once belatedly recognized, it sparks a secret project in the American desert, bent on decipherment. The more discovered, the more enigmatic, vital & potentially destructive it seems. The novel is written as 1st-person narrative, the project memoir of irascible mathematician, Peter Hogarth. There's a preface in which he dissects his own personality & two rambling introductory chapters, one of which reviews fictitious literature on the subject. It gets moving with a satirical 3rd chapter, in which the message passes thru the hands of a scientific crackpot whose delusions are almost correct. The narrative accelerates as Hogarth arrives at the project & learns two research groups have independently managed to translate part of the message into a chemical formula for a substance with remarkable properties. He & a physicist make a series of disturbing discoveries about what might be done with the stuff. Hypotheses about the origin of the message & revelations about its properties fly like sparks. His Master's Voice might sound like one of Lem's most remote & forbidding novels, being about cosmology & the form & motives of extraterrestrial intelligence--& even more so given that, at the outset, we're told the true secret of the message was never discovered! It manages to fascinate, nevertheless. The reason is that between all of the exposition about contradictory cosmological theories, each more spectacular than the last, it's grounded in well-built characterizations of scientists, philosophers, bureaucrats, military officers, pseudoscientists & their followers.

Legendarne dzieło Lema. Synteza myśli człowieka ery techniki i nauki. Prorocza wizja rozwoju świata, która spełnia się na naszych oczach. Co się stanie, gdy cywilizacja wyzwoli się z ograniczeń materialnych i technologicznych? Jakie będą etyczne i filozoficzne konsekwencje rozwoju technologii? Czy sztuczna inteligencja zastąpi człowieka? Summa technologiae po raz pierwszy ukazała się w 1964 roku. Lem, zafascynowany różnymi dziedzinami nauki i techniki, chciał w niej zawrzeć – oczywiście w swoim niepowtarzalnym stylu – najważniejszą wiedzę i wyzwania człowieka współczesnego. Kilkaset lat wcześniej podobny cel przyświecał św. Tomaszowi z Akwinu, który w dziele Summa theologiae dokonał syntezy człowieka średniowiecza. Lem widział przyszłość, która teraz staje się naszą rzeczywistością.

The Futurological Congress is the fourth satirical science fiction novel in the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy series from Kafka Prize–winning author Stanislaw Lem. “Nobody can really know the future. But few could imagine it better than Lem.”— Paris Review 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—a future whose strangeness exceeds anything the congress conjectured. Translated by Michael Kandel. “A vision of Earth’s future where the authorities dose the population with ‘psychemicals’ to make life in a desperately over-populated world worth living.”— Boston Globe

In un lontano futuro, tra le rovine di una costruzione sepolta dalla lava, viene ritrovato un manoscritto appartenente al Tardo Neogene. Su questa base un anonimo studioso tenta di ricostruire i caratteri di quella civiltà ormai in crisi, scomparsa improvvisamente in seguito a una misteriosa epidemia che distrusse la carta, cancellando quasi ogni memoria scritta dell'umanità, e riporta alla luce il contenuto dell'unico documento miracolosamente scampato alla catastrofe: le Memorie trovate in una vasca da bagno. L'autore di queste ultime e protagonista del romanzo è un agente segreto dell'era Precaotica, giunto in un luogo ermeticamente chiuso e retto da oscuri rituali, detto l'Edificio, dove gli viene affidata una cruciale missione, il cui oggetto egli cerca invano di conoscere, mentre viene coinvolto in un labirintico meccanismo di ossessioni, doppi giochi, paradossi, codici indecifrabili, macabre rivelazioni. Intrecciando abilmente diversi generi, dalla spy story al racconto gotico-fantastico, fino al romanzo distopico, e riecheggiando illustri precedenti, primi tra tutti Potocki e Kafka, in questa originalissima opera Lem affronta i grandi temi a lui cari: il rapporto tra individuo e potere, l'impenetrabilità del mistero, la necessità e l'inutilità assieme della ricerca di senso. Grazie all'inesauribile invenzione linguistica e a un irresistibile effetto straniante, la farsa della fine dell'era Precaotica messa in scena da Lem diventa lo specchio deformante, ricco di mille possibili interpretazioni, in cui riflettere il caos della nostra epoca e delle nostre anime.

Ijon Tichy is an ordinary space traveler whose extraordinary curiosity leads him to the very fringes of science. Their plans are grandiose, the bargains they make too often Faustian, for the ends these scientists pursue concern humanity's greatest and most ancient immortality, artificial intelligence, and top-of-the-line consumer items. By turns philosophical, satirical, and absurd, Lem's stories follow Ijon's adventures as both an observer of--and participant in--strange experiments. Faulty time machines, intelligent washing machines, suicidal potatoes--Ijon Tichy navigates them all with common sense and in so doing shows why he endures as one of Lem's most popular characters.

Ijon Tichy travels undercover to a robot world, joining an organization to clean up world history thru time travel. Things go crazy immediately. His spaceship runs into gravitational vortices at relativistic speeds, resulting in massive time anomalies. It may be a blessing in disguise. The reason he couldn’t get out of the way was that a meteor had shattered the drive regulator & rudder. He could no longer steer his ship. He had a spare rudder, but couldn’t install it. It was a two-man job & he was alone. So when other versions of him start appearing, all he should need do is team up with one of them, fix the rudder & leave the gravitational vortex field. After that gets straightened out, he goes undercover. A ship’s computer has mutineed & started its own colony, reproducing itself on a previously uninhabited planet. The insurance company paid the shipowner’s claim, & now believes that the ship, it’s computer & all its progeny belong to them. Tichy disguises himself as a robot & goes to investigate. On another voyage, he heads to a planet where the government irrigation agency has irrigated beyond all need & refused to give up power. People live in water & are jailed in dry cells if they violate the love of water. After his modern voyages, he comes back from 2166 to recruit himself as a member of THEOHIPPIP, the Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming & Interplanetary Planning. History is in a mess because of all the time travelers. THEOHIPPIP's mission is: “For World History to be regulated, cleaned up, straightened out, adjusted & perfected, all in accordance with the principles of humanitarianism, rationalism & general esthetics. You can understand, surely, that with such a shambles & slaughterhouse in one’s family tree it’s awkward to go calling on important cosmic civilizations!...If need be, alterations will be made even before the rise of man, so that he arises better.”

An 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 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.

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.

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 offers a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and intuition that can give humans the courage to confront outer space. Translated by Louis Iribarne. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.