Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #290944 in Books
• Published on: 1985-06-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 286 pages

Review
The Polish sf writer's Star Diaries is a crazy-quilt collection of pieces written, according to Kandel, "over a period of twenty years" and published in 1971. They present the voyages of Ijon Tichy, an incomparable and apparently indestructible fathead who is to the future what J. Wesley Smith (of the immortal cartoon "Through History With...") was to the past. Tichy bumbles and stumbles around the cosmos running out of gas between stars, sneaking around in cybernetic drag on a planet of mad robots, trying to duplicate himself (in a tail-chasing time loop near a "gravitational vortex") long enough to do a two-man rudder repair job, botching up the course of human events in a history-salvaging operation. Lem veers between joyous slapstick, freewheeling satire, and insanely involuted logical paradoxes - with surprisingly serious excursions into issues of will and faith. Funny, unexpected, tantalizing. (Kirkus Reviews )

Language Notes
Text: English, Polish (translation)

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Ijon Tichy rules!
My understanding is that the three books featuring space traveller Ijon Tichy were originally published in Polish in a single volume (THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS, THE STAR DIARIES, and MEMOIRS OF A SPACE TRAVELLER). If so, I would insist that that has to be one of the ten greatest science fiction books ever published. The highpoint of the Tichy tales is THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS, which is published as a separate book in English, but the stories in THE STAR DIARIES are very nearly as good (the remnants were published in the MEMOIRS). Essential reading. They come across as some demonic blend of Italo Calvino, Escher, and Groucho Marx. Most sci-fi writing is deeply derivative from previous writers, but Stanislaw Lem is possibly the most original sci-fi writer of the past forty years. I am one of those who believe that Lem should have received serious consideration for a Nobel Prize.

The best!
The best book from Ijon Tichy series. The set of stories is the best I read from this series. The stories, written in various years, show how diverse Lem is. Some of the themes he touches here are very serious, e.g.planet with the 'water cult', planet with 'no identity' people, religious monk/robots, etc. Some are masterpieces of sci-fi humor (multiplication of Tichy on the ship is just the best), some are just a simple fun (twentieth voyage with the attempt to fix the past from the future with the outcome that anything significant that happened to the human race is because of mistakes in trying to fix the history). Highly recommended to anyone (not only sci-fi fans). And by the way - it is totally different from 'Solaris'.

Brilliant
If you like Lem, this is one of his best. It's not really science fiction, it's the discharge of neurons in a fireworks display.