The Star Diaries : Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

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 Ijon Tichy travels undercover to a robot world, joining an organization to clean up world history thru time travel. Things go crazy immediately. His spaceship runs into gravitational vortices at relativistic speeds, resulting in massive time anomalies. It may be a blessing in disguise. The reason he couldnt get out of the way was that a meteor had shattered the drive regulator & rudder. He could no longer steer his ship. He had a spare rudder, but couldnt install it. It was a two-man job & he was alone. So when other versions of him start appearing, all he should need do is team up with one of them, fix the rudder & leave the gravitational vortex field. After that gets straightened out, he goes undercover. A ships computer has mutineed & started its own colony, reproducing itself on a previously uninhabited planet. The insurance company paid the shipowners claim, & now believes that the ship, its computer & all its progeny belong to them. Tichy disguises himself as a robot & goes to investigate. On another voyage, he heads to a planet where the government irrigation agency has irrigated beyond all need & refused to give up power. People live in water & are jailed in dry cells if they violate the love of water. After his modern voyages, he comes back from 2166 to recruit himself as a member of THEOHIPPIP, the Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming & Interplanetary Planning. History is in a mess because of all the time travelers. THEOHIPPIP's mission is: For World History to be regulated, cleaned up, straightened out, adjusted & perfected, all in accordance with the principles of humanitarianism, rationalism & general esthetics. You can understand, surely, that with such a shambles & slaughterhouse in ones family tree its awkward to go calling on important cosmic civilizations!...If need be, alterations will be made even before the rise of man, so that he arises better.

one Of The Most Intelligent, Erudite, And Comic Writers Working Today. -anthony Burgess

in A Firsthand Account, Lem's Hapless Cosmonaut Ijon Tichy Tells Warped Tales From The Civilizations He Discovers In A Deep Space Galaxy So Unlike Our Own That Concepts Of Science, The Rational Mind, Human Progress, The Sanctity Of Life, And Motherhood All No Longer Apply. In Their Place, Tichy Finds Sadomasochistic Robots Who Speak A Dialect Much Like Chaucerian English, Killer Potatoes With An Appetite For Spacecraft, And Robot Theologians Who Are Being Relentlessly Persecuted By Creators Who Have Renounced Their Original Faith. Full Of The Intellectual Satire For Which Stanislaw Lem Is Esteemed, The Star Diaries Speaks Volumes About Contemporary Society In Its Depiction Of Highly Bizarre, Faraway, Futuristic Worlds.

a Jorge Luis Borges For The Space Age, Who Plays In Earnest With Every Concept Of Philosophy And Physics...—new York Times

stanislaw Lem Is The Most Widely Translated And Best Known Science Fiction Author Writing Outside Of The English Language. Winner Of The Kafka Prize, He Is A Contributor To Many Magazines, Including The New Yorker, And He Is The Author Of Numerous Works, Including Solaris.

The adventures and encounters of Ijon Tichy, tourist of the universe. Tichy reveals that "out there" is not so different from "down here," since people are people everywhere. When not traveling in space, he is a magnet for eccentric unrecognized inventors of spenetic genius, whose spooky experiments are revealed to him with megalomaniacal pride.