Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem. New York. 1979. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Translated From the Polish By Louis Iribarne. 206 pages. Jacket design by Jean-Marie Troillard. 0151879788.
Pirx, simpleton or genius? Pirx the Pilot is the Good Soldier Schweik sent into space.
DESCRIPTION - In Pilot Pirx, Stanislaw Lem has created an irresistibly likable character - an astronaut who gives the impression of still navigating by the seat of his pants. He is a bumbler, but an inspired one. We are at a moment in time when the Transgalactic tine flies regularly to the Moon, which by now provides excellent tourist accommodations; space travel has become routine, Yet things go wrong, mysteriously and suspiciously, and Pirx is the one to investigate strange accidents, either because his superiors consider him expendable, or because they trust his flair. Whimsical, spellbinding, infused with Lem's uncannily vivid 'familiarity' with the day-to-day realities and regions of space travel, the tales of Pilot Pirx build up to a towering climax. We meet Pirx in school, embarking on a training mission that is to drive home to him, with devastating impact, the inadequacy of textbook knowledge in an astronaut's arsenal. In 'Terminus,' the last and longest adventure, Pirx deciphers a spaceship's sinister past with the help of a robot's retentive memory; the writing develops a new dimension, revealing Lem's imaginative affinity with robots, whom he endows with something akin to feelings by investing his central character, Pirx, with the full range of human foibles, Lem offers here a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and intuition that may give man the courage to confront the vastness of outer space.
Stanislaw Lem (12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. In 1996, he received the prestigious Polish award, the Order of the White Eagle. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humanity's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns.
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