Authors > Stanislaw Lem

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Eden

A 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 violence and to a cruel truth-cruel precisely because it is so human. Translated by Marc E. Heine. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Year: 1959     Genre: Science Fiction

Fiasco

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.

Year: 1987     Genre: Alien Contact

Imaginary Magnitude

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 in this book a googleplex of variations on his basic themes (New York Times Book Review). Translated by Marc E. Heine. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Year: 1973     Genre: Science Fiction

Microworlds

In this bold and controversial examination of the past, present, and future of science fiction, Lem informs the raging debate over the literary merit of the genre with ten arch, incisive, provocative essays. Edited and with an Introduction by Franz Rottensteiner. Translated by Rottensteiner and others. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Year: 1984     Genre: on Science Fiction

Peace on Earth

Lem's hilarious send-up of militarism, espionage, scientists, and psychiatrists goes to unprecedented extremes as Ijon Tichy, unflappable as always, fights for truth and justice in a world gone mad.

Year: 1987     Genre: Satire, Science Fiction

Solaris

When psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds himself confronting a painful memory embodied in the physical likeness of a past lover. Kelvin learns that he is not alone in this and that other crews examining the planet are plagued with their own repressed and newly real memories. Could it be, as Solaris scientists speculate, that the ocean may be a massive neural center creating these memories, for a reason no one can identify?

Year: 1961     Genre: Science Fiction

Summa Technologiae

In Summa Technologiae--his major work of nonfiction, first published in 1964 and now available in English for the first time--Lem produced an engaging and caustically logical philosophical treatise about human and nonhuman life in its past, present, and future forms.

Year: 1964     Genre:

The Star Diaries

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

Year: 1957     Genre: Science Fiction