Search results for ""author stanislaw lem""

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 and unremarkable, Pirx the pilot bumbles and daydreams his way through the solar system. These endearing tales follow his progress from cadet to captain. But, whether he is wrestling with a misbehaving spacesuit, feeling uncomfortable on a luxury space cruise ship or encountering a mysterious malfunctioning robot on a mission to Mars, the hapless Pirx just can't stop things from going terribly wrong.Translated by Louis Iribarne

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A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age - The New York TimesStanislaw Lem's set of short stories, written over a period of twenty years, all feature the adventures of space traveller Ijon Tichy and recount him spinning in time-warps, spying on robots, encountering bizarre civilizations and creatures in space and being hopelessly lost in a forest of supernovae. This is a philosophical satire on technology, theology, intelligence and human nature from one of the greatest of science fiction writers

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En las aventuras protagonizadas por el piloto Pirx, un héroe oscuro dedicado a la navegación estelar, Lem aborda de forma inimitable, arropándose en las convenciones de la ciencia ficción, el mudable trasfondo de la condición y el comportamiento humanos. La prueba gira en torno a la inversión de papeles en un momento decisivo. En El accidente asistimos al insospechado comportamiento de un robot enfrentado a un súbito reto. Terminus revela la reacción ante la supervivencia inerte y aterradora de una tragedia del pasado.

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Provocación es una pieza fundamental de la obra magna de Stanislaw Lem, la Biblioteca del Siglo XXI, una hazaña intelectual sin precedentes en la literatura contemporánea, que Impedimenta recupera por primera vez en traducción directa y completa. El holocausto como triunfo de la estadística, la cosificación del hombre y la naturaleza, su reducción a números, la imposibilidad de la vida en el Universo y la evolución al revés. Todas las ideas que han hecho grande a Stanislaw Lem están en este texto heterodoxo y afilado que enfrenta la literatura con la realidad y a los vivos con los muertos, cuestionando de un tajo todas las convicciones sobre el Holocausto y el ser humano contemporáneo. Un libro profundo y exigente pero altamente gratificante de uno de los grandes maestros del siglo XX.Una de las obras más míticas del polaco Stanislaw Lem. Un visionario alegato antibélico, teñido de un humor finísimo, que pone el broche a la Biblioteca del Siglo XXI.

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'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction' GuardianOne of the world's most beloved science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem was famed for his wryly comic, outlandish imaginings of the relationship between humans and technology. In this playful cosmic fantasia, two 'constructors' compete to dream up ever-more ingenious inventions in a universe beyond reality.'A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays with every concept of philosophy and physics' The New York Times

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Magnitud imaginaria , piedra de toque de la famosa Biblioteca del Siglo XXI y heredera de la aclamada Vacío perfecto , es otro ejemplo delirante del genio de Stanisaw Lem. Artistas que realizan pornografía mediante el uso de rayos X, científicos que cultivan bacterias que se comunican en código Morse y son capaces de predecir el futuro, vendedores de enciclopedias de cuarenta y cuatro magnetomos en las cuales está escrita la historia que aún no ha acontecido, inteligencias artificiales que crean obras de autores tan intocables como Dostoievski y que ni ellos mismos se habrían atrevido a concebir. Deliciosas sátiras en las que, una vez más, Lem pone en tela de juicio las respuestas a las grandes preguntas de la Humanidad.Con Magnitud imaginaria , Impedimenta recupera un nuevo título de la Biblioteca del Siglo XXI , que abrió con Vacío perfecto y que se completará próximamente con Golem XIV .

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Traducida a más de treinta lenguas, la obra de Stanislaw Lem contribuyó poderosamente a situar el género de la ciencia ficción en nuevas y originales coordenadas. Los relatos incluidos en ?Ciberíada? ?protagonizados por dos expertos constructores dotados de un profundo conocimiento del cosmos? actualizan el cuento filosófico cultivado por Jonathan Swift y por Voltaire mediante su traslación al mundo de la robótica. Esta serie de fábulas alegóricas, en las que la sátira aparece atemperada por el humor y la ironía, superpone las más imaginativas posibilidades tecnológicas a los esquemas tradicionales del cuento fantástico o la leyenda medieval.www.lem.pl

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Narrada como un largo y proceloso informe, la novela nos presenta el libro de memorias de Peter Hogarth, un cínico matemático que trabaja en el desierto de Nevada en un proyecto del Pentágono (nombre en código: La Voz del Amo) consagrado a descifrar un misterioso mensaje procedente del espacio exterior. Cuando el proyecto llega a un punto muerto, Hogarth descubre, para su horror, que lo desvelado por el supuesto mensaje extraterrestre podría llevar a la construcción de una bomba de fisión. Hogarth decide entonces que no se debe permitir que tal conocimiento caiga en manos de los militares. La voz del amo es una auténtica novela de culto, una obra inconmensurable en la que Lem diserta sobre cosmología, filosofía, biología evolutiva, y también sobre las posibles formas que puede adoptar la inteligencia extraterrestre.Junto con Solaris y Ciberíada, La voz del amo está considerada una de las mejores, más influyentes e imaginativas novelas del maestro Stanisaw Lem. Una densa fábula filos

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Astronautas, jamás editada antes en castellano, es la primera novela que el maestro de la ciencia ficción, Stanislaw Lem, publicó en forma de libro. Tras haber pasado por múltiples contiendas y luchas sangrientas, en el siglo XXI la humanidad ha dejado atrás toda forma de capitalismo y ha logrado un equilibrio sostenible en el planeta. Colosales trabajos de ingeniería, como la irrigación del Sáhara o el control del clima con soles artificiales, dan cuenta del progreso de la especie. Durante uno de estos proyectos, en la siberiana Tunguska se halla un objeto que es identificado como un archivo extraterrestre. Tras lograr descifrar alguno de los datos que recoge, se descubren ciertos detalles alarmantes del viaje de una nave que debió de estrellarse en la zona. El Gobierno de la Tierra decide enviar la recién construida nave Cosmocrátor al planeta Venus, donde sus tripulantes localizarán los restos de una civilización infinitamente más avanzada que la nuestra.Lem reflexiona sobre la

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'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 by madness. The Earth spaceship Hermes arrives on Quinta with the best of intentions towards the humans' 'brothers in intelligence'. But something on the planet has gone terribly wrong...

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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 and visiting a bewildering variety of violent, peculiar and morose civilizations. The Cyberiad is oddly reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland. Charming, mind-bending and anarchic, it is perhaps Lem's greatest work. This edition includes all of Daniel Mroz's hallucinatory original illustrations.

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'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction' Guardian'This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management'Hapless cosmonaut Ijon Tichy has been sent back to earth to attend the Eighth Futurological Congress in smog-bound, overpopulated Costa Rica, holed up with an assortment of scientists in a luxury hotel (fully equipped with tear gas sprinklers in case things get out of hand). But when an unfortunate incident occurs involving a revolution and hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply, Tichy finds himself shot, frozen and thawed out in a future beyond anything he could ever have imagined.

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'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 epics feature crazy inventors, surreal worlds, robot kings and madcap machines.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

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When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others suffer from the same affliction and speculation rises among scientists that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates incarnate memories, but its purpose in doing so remains a mystery . . .Solaris raises a question that has been at the heart of human experience and literature for centuries: can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?

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'A virtuoso storyteller ... a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age' The New York Times'He was a robot-hypochondriac. On his squeaking cart he carried a complete set of spare parts.'A freighter pilot leads a manhunt across the Moon for a robot gone berserk; a shapeshifting assassin falls in love with the man she's programmed to kill; a paranoid King converts his kingdom into his artificial mind, but his dreams rebel. These stories range from surreal fables that satirically turn the fairy tale on its head, to longer works including the man vs. robot thriller, 'The Hunt', and possibly fiction's strangest love story, 'The Mask'. InMortal Engines Stanislaw Lem lays bare humanity's clash with machines, masterfully exploring science fiction's furthest frontiers.

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The Polish writer Stanislaw 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. Throughout his writings, comprising dozens of science fiction novels and short stories, Lem offered deeply philosophical and bitingly satirical reflections on the limitations of both science and humanity. In Summa Technologiae—his major work of nonfiction, first published in 1964 and now available in English for the first time—Lem produced an engaging and caustically logical philosophical treatise about human and nonhuman life in its past, present, and future forms. After five decades Summa Technologiae has lost none of its intellectual or critical significance. Indeed, many of Lem’s conjectures about future technologies have now come true: from artificial intelligence, bionics, and nanotechnology to the dangers of information overload, the concept underlying Internet search engines, and the idea of virtual reality. More important for its continued relevance, however, is Lem’s rigorous investigation into the parallel development of biological and technical evolution and his conclusion that technology will outlive humanity. Preceding Richard Dawkins’s understanding of evolution as a blind watchmaker by more than two decades, Lem posits evolution as opportunistic, shortsighted, extravagant, and illogical. Strikingly original and still timely, Summa Technologiae resonates with a wide range of contemporary debates about information and new media, the life sciences, and the emerging relationship between technology and humanity.

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