The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem

The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773575073
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Leading scholars examine the social and cultural significance of technology and science in the work of Stanislaw Lem, the author of Solaris.

The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem

The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773575073
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Leading scholars examine the social and cultural significance of technology and science in the work of Stanislaw Lem, the author of Solaris.

Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem PDF Author: Peter Swirski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1781381860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future brings a welter of unknown elements of Lem's life, career, and literary legacy to light in order to mete out cognitive justice to the writer who preferred to be known as the philosopher of the future.

Highcastle

Highcastle PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538466
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
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.

Return from the Stars

Return from the Stars PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538482
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
An astronaut returns to Earth after a ten-year mission and finds a society that he barely recognizes. Stanisław Lem's Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission that lasted ten years—although because of time dilation, 127 years have passed on Earth. Bregg finds a society that he hardly recognizes, in which danger has been eradicated. Children are “betrizated” to remove all aggression and violence—a process that also removes all impulse to take risks and explore. The people of Earth view Bregg and his crew as “resuscitated Neanderthals,” and pressure them to undergo betrization. Bregg has serious difficulty in navigating the new social mores. While Lem's depiction of a risk-free society is bleak, he does not portray Bregg and his fellow astronauts as heroes. Indeed, faced with no opposition to his aggression, Bregg behaves abominably. He is faced with a choice: leave Earth again and hope to return to a different society in several hundred years, or stay on Earth and learn to be content. With Return from the Stars, Lem shows the shifting boundaries between utopia and dystopia.

A Perfect Vacuum

A Perfect Vacuum PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810117334
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"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.

The Chain of Chance

The Chain of Chance PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810117303
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
"On a trail leading from Naples to Rome to Paris, the ex-astronaut barely escapes numerous threats on his life. Having set himself up as a potential victim, he realizes that he may now be the target of a deadly conspiracy - and that the conspiracy is not the work of a criminal mind but a manifestation of the laws of nature. The population has numerically exceeded its critical mass; certain patterns have begun to emerge from the chaotic workings of society.

A Stanislaw Lem Reader

A Stanislaw Lem Reader PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081011495X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
In The Lem Reader, Peter Swirski has assembled an in-depth and insightful collection of writings by and about, and interviews with, one of the most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.

The Invincible

The Invincible PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
A space cruiser, in search of its sister ship, encounters beings descended from self-replicating machines. In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanisław Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from autonomous, self-replicating machines—perhaps the survivors of a “robot war.” Rohan and his men are forced to confront the classic quandary: what course of action can humanity take once it has reached the limits of its knowledge? In The Invincible, Lem has his characters confront the inexplicable and the bizarre: the problem that lies just beyond analytical reach.

Dialogues

Dialogues PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542935
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
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."

Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines PDF Author: Stanisław Lem
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156621618
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.