โ Scribed by Stanislaw Lem
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Five more tales featuring Pirx - a bumbling rookie in the original Tales (1979), now a seasoned and level-headed (but coolly cerebral) space jockey. The first three pieces are short, ironic, and somewhat thin on ideas: Pirx fails to intercept a drifting alien hulk thanks to a shipboard comedy of errors; he searches for a robot that has inexplicably cut loose to go mountain climbing; and he survives a close encounter with a berserk mining robot. The two long yarns, unfortunately, are not so much fiction as rather pedantic reflections on the nature of artificial intelligence: a choppy and overinvolved Turing test, in which Pirx must identify (and foil the murderous plans of) the robot among his crew as they fly through the rings of Saturn; and a talky, motionless analysis of why an intelligent computer aboard an experimental ship went neurotically haywire and crashed on Mars. A ruminative, often discursive bunch, wanting in urgency and drama - without the mature idea-wrestling of last year's Memoirs of a Space Traveler. (Kirkus Reviews )
Text: English, Polish (translation)
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
Commander Pirx, who drives space vehicles for a living in the galaxy of the future, here faces a new series of intriguing adventures in which robots demonstrate some alarmingly human characteristics. Translated by Louis Iribarne, assisted by Magdalena Majcherczyk and Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt
### Review Five more tales featuring Pirx - a bumbling rookie in the original Tales (1979), now a seasoned and level-headed (but coolly cerebral) space jockey. The first three pieces are short, ironic, and somewhat thin on ideas: Pirx fails to intercept a drifting alien hulk thanks to a shipboard c
**From 'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction'_(Guardian_), the adventures of Pirx, a hapless everyman in outer space** __ __ _'By now he fancied himself something of a rocket jockey, a space ace, whose real home was among the planets'_ In a future where space travel has become routine a
In Pilot Pirx, 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 follow Pirx through five adventures in a time when space travel has become routine. Yet things go wrong, myst
In Pilot Pirx, Lem has created an irresistibly likable character: an astronaut who gives the impression of still navigating by the seat of his pants-a bumbler but an inspired one. By investing Pirx with a range of human foibles, Lem offers a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and
In Pilot Pirx, Lem has created an irresistibly likable character: an astronaut who gives the impression of still navigating by the seat of his pants-a bumbler but an inspired one. By investing Pirx with a range of human foibles, Lem offers a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and