A Perfect Vacuum

A satirical and philosophical set of space adventure stories from one of the best-loved science fiction writers of the twentieth century. The Star Diaries, Stanislaw Lem's set of short stories written over a period of twenty years, all feature the adventures of space traveller Ijon Tichy. These tales recount him spinning in time-warps, spying on robots, encountering bizarre civilisations and...

'A stunningly inventive fantasy about cosmic travel' - The New York Times 'There were two kinds of landscape characteristic of the inner planets of the Sun- the purposeful and the desolate.' The planet Quinta is pocked with ugly mounds and covered by a spiderweb-like network draped from spindly poles. It is a kingdom of phantoms and of a beauty afflicted...

The adventures of one of Lem's most endearing characters, Pirx—a 'space truck driver' and everyman in Outer Space. Mission: Vertical launch at half booster power. Ascent to ellipsis B68. Correction to stable oriental path, with orbital period of four hours and twenty-six minutes. Proceed to rendezvous with shuttlecraft vehicles of the JO-2 type. There await further instructions. Tales of Pirx...

A charming, mind-bending, and anarchic book of imagined civilizations. 'Most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to...' Trurl and Klapaucius are 'constructors'—they travel around the universe creating machines of astonishing inventiveness and power, visiting a bewildering variety of violent, peculiar, and morose civilizations. The Cyberiad is oddly reminiscent of Gulliver's...

A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age — The New York Times "On one side of the ducats was stamped the radiant profile of Archithorius, on the other - an image of his six hundred arms." Mortal Engines is a selection of the best of Stanislaw Lem's extraordinary miniature space epics, chosen by his heroic translator Michael Kandel, who...

A much-loved classic from a giant of European science fiction. Stanislaw Lem is perhaps the most original and influential European science fiction writer of the twentieth century. His ornate, phantasmagorical writing probes the furthest reaches of the universe while remaining deeply and particularly human. The Cyberiad, one of Lem's most beloved works, follows the exploits of Trurl and Klapaucius—two ingenious...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. The Three Electroknights poses the question, "What use to a being that lives beneath a sun are jewels of gas and silver stars of ice?" From a giant of twentieth-century science fiction, these four miniature space...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Journey into space with Polish sci-fi master Stanislaw Lem. The whimsical time-loops of Ijon Tichy's cosmic adventure The Seventh Voyage are reminiscent of Douglas Adams. Meanwhile, the spectral whispers haunting Pirx the Pilot as he navigates his spaceship to Mars in Terminus, echo the author's masterpiece Solaris. Then The Mask introduces...

Ijon Tichy is caught in a TIME LOOP. An NPR Best Book of the Year "... J Muth's hilarious and gentle masterpiece." -- Neil Gaiman Alone in his broken spaceship—with no one there to help him—he could remain trapped in space indefinitely! But soon something strange begins to happen: Tichy's past and future selves appear. And rather than helping one...

The Polish writer Stanisław Lem is best known to English-speaking readers as the author of the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris, adapted into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and remade in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh. In Summa Technologiae—his major work of nonfiction, first published in 1964 and now available in English for the first time—Lem produced an...

In Solaris, the renowned science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem, the story unfolds as psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at a space station orbiting the mysterious planet of Solaris. The planet is entirely enveloped by a vast, sentient ocean that defies conventional scientific understanding. As Kelvin begins his investigation, he discovers that the small team of scientists aboard the station are...

The Truth and Other Stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem offers a collection of twelve intriguing stories, nine of which have never been published in English before. This set of twelve short stories includes only three that have appeared previously in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories exhibit...