A dialogue with Stanislow Lem, best known for his work in science fiction. His novels and short stories have been translated into over 40 languages and have sold 25 million copies.[...]

The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem is best known to English-speaking readers as the author of the 1961 science fiction novel "Solaris," adapted into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and remade in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh. Throughout his writings, comprising dozens of science fiction n[...]

After a long journey to a distant star, Hal Bregg returns to the earth where he finds that technology has developed beyond his imagining, prosperity is limitless, and peace reigns and where he discovers new meaning in life[...]

Written in the style of a detective novel, "The Chain of Chance" is classic Lem: a combination of action, hard science, and philosophical investigation. An ex-astronaut is hired to look into the death of several wealthy businessmen. The authorities suspect a pattern, but neither the police nor a sup[...]

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 ex[...]

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 fut[...]

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 googlep[...]

These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Lem's fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be. "Astonishing is not too strong a word for these tales" (Wall Street Journal). Translated and with an Introduction by Michael Kandel.
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A psychologist arrives at a research space station called Prometheus, his mission to ascertain whether research into the mysterious planet of Solaris should be terminated. He finds Prometheus all but deserted, its straggling crew seemingly haunted by hallucinations of figures from their pasts.[...]

Ijon Tichy is the only human who knows for sure whether the self-programming robots on the moon are plotting a terrestrial invasion. But a highly focused ray severs his corpus collosum. Now his left brain can't remember the secret and his uncooperative right brain won't tell. Tichy struggles for con[...]