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Stanislaw Lem
In Stanislaw Lem: Life and Selected Letters Peter Swirski brings the unknown elements of Lem's legacy to light. Filled with a welter of personal and historical detail and enriched by Lem's comments from personal letters to the author, the biographical section traces the thread of Lem's life and career in the context of his cultural influence, telling the story of one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the century. It is followed by a comprehensive critical overview of Lem's belletristic and philosophical oeuvre which comprises not only the classics like Solaris, but his untranslated first novels, realistic prose, experimental works, volumes of nonfiction, latter-day metafiction, as well as the final twenty years of polemics and essays. The letters deliver an annotated translation of Lem's fifteen-year correspondence with his principal American translator. Covering the entire central period of Lem's life and career, they offer unparalleled vistas on the raw intellectual powers, smouldering literary passions, as well as startling and revealing personal concerns.
A Polish Book of Monsters
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.
A Perfect Vacuum
"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.
Strange Invasion
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Highcastle
A playful, witty, reflective memoir of childhood by the science fiction master Stanisław Lem. With Highcastle, Stanisław Lem offers a memoir of his childhood and youth in prewar Lvov. Reflective, artful, witty, playful—“I was a monster,” he observes ruefully—this lively and charming book describes a youth spent reading voraciously (he was especially interested in medical texts and French novels), smashing toys, eating pastries, and being terrorized by insects. Often lonely, the young Lem believed that he could communicate with household objects—perhaps anticipating the sentient machines in the adult Lem's novels. Lem reveals his younger self to be a dreamer, driven by an unbridled imagination and boundless curiosity. In the course of his reminiscing, Lem also ponders the nature of memory, innocence, and the imagination. Highcastle (the title refers to a nearby ruin) offers the portrait of a writer in his formative years.
Panda Ray
When his mother threatens to scoop him out because he boasted to his classmates, ten-year-old Christopher Zimmerman, the youngest member of a family of aliens, goes on a journey through space, time, and other dimensions to escape his punishment.
Captain Jack Zodiac
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Fiasco
“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.
Nest of Worlds
Polish science fiction master Marek S. Huberath’s mind-bending Nest of Worlds—his first novel to appear in English—is a metafictional adventure through a dystopian world that owes as much to Borges, Saramago, and even Thomas More as it does to Stanislaw Lem. In this world, every thirty-five years residents must move to a new “Land," and each person bears a "Significant Name" that foretells the manner of their deaths. A rare married couple in the Land of Davabel, Gavein Throzz and Ra Mahleiné each make sacrifices to stay together. As they navigate the difficult terrain, the two find themselves amidst a series of deaths linked only by their connection to Gavein himself. Struggling to ...
On the Road to Babadag
"Andrzej Stasiuk is a restless and indefatigable traveler. His journeys take him from his native Poland to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine. By car, train, bus, ferry. To small towns and villages with unfamiliar-sounding yet strangely evocative names. "The heart of my Europe," Stasiuk tells us, "beats in Sokolow, Podlaski, and in Husi, not in Vienna." Where did Moldova end and Transylvania begin, he wonders as he is being driven at breakneck speed in an ancient Audi--loose wires hanging from the dashboard--by a driver in shorts and bare feet, a cross swinging on his chest. In Comrat, a funeral procession moves slowly down the main street, the open coffin on a pickup truck, an old woman dressed in black brushing away the flies above the face of the deceased. On to Soroca, a baroque--Byzantine--Tatar--Turkish encampment, to meet Gypsies. And all the way to Babadag, between the Baltic Coast and the Black Sea, where Stasiuk sees his first minaret, "simple and severe, a pencil pointed at the sky." A brilliant tour of Europe's dark underside--travel writing at its very best"--
