The Cyberiad

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 Truth and Other Stories written by Stanislaw Lem and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared 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 1993, 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, 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 that 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.

Download or read book Mortal Engines written by Stanisław Lem and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1992 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description: Translated from the original Polish text, and with an introduction by Michael Kandel. These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Stainslaw Lem's fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be. The first eleven stories, a cycle called "Fables for Robots," are set in a cosmos inhabited exclusively by machines. Revolving around an assortment of electroknights and cyberkings, the stories combine the timeless quality of fairy tales and parables with a twist that is unmistakably Lem.

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 Dialogues written by Stanislaw Lem and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of a nonfiction work by Stanisław Lem, which was "conceived under the spell of cybernetics" in 1957 and updated in 1971. In 1957, Stanisław Lem published Dialogues, a book "conceived under the spell of cybernetics," as he wrote in the preface to the second edition. Mimicking the form of Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Lem's original dialogue was an attempt to unravel the then-novel field of cybernetics. It was a testimony, Lem wrote later, to "the almost limitless cognitive optimism" he felt upon his discovery of cybernetics. This is the first English translation of Lem's Dialogues, including the text of the first edition and the later essays added to the second edition in 1971. For the second edition, Lem chose not to revise the original. Recognizing the naivete of his hopes for cybernetics, he constructed a supplement to the first dialogue, which consists of two critical essays, the first a summary of the evolution of cybernetics, the second a contribution to the cybernetic theory of the "sociopathology of governing," amending the first edition's discussion of the pathology of social regulation; and two previously published articles on related topics. From the vantage point of 1971, Lem observes that original book, begun as a search for methods "that would increase our understanding of both the human and nonhuman worlds," was in the end "an expression of the cognitive curiosity and anxiety of modern thought."

Download or read book Lemography written by Peter Swirski and published by Liverpool Science Fiction Text. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Lemography' is a unique collection of critical essays on Stanislaw Lem, writer and philosopher hailed on more than one occasion as a literary Einstein. Its aim is to introduce aspects of his work hitherto unknown or neglected by scholarship and evaluate his influence on twentieth-century literature and culture - and beyond.

Download or read book The Star Diaries written by Stanisław Lem and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1990-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: @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@@