Die phantastischen Erzählungen

by Stanisław Lem, Werner Berthel (Herausgeber, Nachwort), Franz Rottensteiner (Interview, Anmerkungen)

Inhalt:
- Die Kunst, Vorworte zu schreiben (1973)
- Pirx erzählt (1965)
- Ananke (1971)
- Der Freund (1959)
- Professor A. Donda (1974)
- Die Waschmaschinentragödie (1963)
- Die Wahrheit (1964)
- Das schwarze Kabinett Professor Tarantogas (1963)
- Experimenta Felicitologica (1971)
- Die Rettung der Welt (1964)
- Chronde (1979)
- Das Märchen vom König Murdas (1964)
- Zifferotikon (1965)
- Die siebente Reise oder Wie Trurls Vollkommenheit zum Bösen führte (1965)
- Die Auferstehungsmaschine (1957)
- Emelen (1966)
- Vestrands Extelopädie in 44 Magnetbänden, nebst Probebogen (1973)
- Alistar Waynewright: Being Inc (1971)
- Futurologischer Kongress 1. Tag (1970)
Materialien
- Bildteil
- Franz Rottensteiner: Anmerkungen zur Rezeption Stanislaw Lems (1980)
- Franz Rottensteiner: Interview mit Stanislaw Lem (1980)
- Werner Berthel: Der Versuch, Erfahrungen zu vermitteln. Anmerkungen zum Werk von Stanislaw Lem

Die einzelnen Teile sind verschiedenen polnischen und deutschen Erstausgaben entnommen.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, German Literature

477 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Stanisław Lem (staˈɲiswaf lɛm) was a Polish science fiction, philosophical and satirical writer of Jewish descent. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of Solaris, which has twice been made into a feature film. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon claimed that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world.

His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult and multiple translated versions of his works exist.

Lem became truly productive after 1956, when the de-Stalinization period led to the "Polish October", when Poland experienced an increase in freedom of speech. Between 1956 and 1968, Lem authored 17 books. His works were widely translated abroad (although mostly in the Eastern Bloc countries). In 1957 he published his first non-fiction, philosophical book, Dialogi (Dialogues), one of his two most famous philosophical texts along with Summa Technologiae (1964). The Summa is notable for being a unique analysis of prospective social, cybernetic, and biological advances. In this work, Lem discusses philosophical implications of technologies that were completely in the realm of science fiction then, but are gaining importance today—like, for instance, virtual reality and nanotechnology. Over the next few decades, he published many books, both science fiction and philosophical/futurological, although from the 1980s onwards he tended to concentrate on philosophical texts and essays.

He gained international fame for The Cyberiad, a series of humorous short stories from a mechanical universe ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974. His best-known novels include Solaris (1961), His Master's Voice (Głos pana, 1968), and the late Fiasco (Fiasko, 1987), expressing most strongly his major theme of the futility of mankind's attempts to comprehend the truly alien. Solaris was made into a film in 1972 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972; in 2002, Steven Soderbergh directed a Hollywood remake starring George Clooney.

He was the cousin of poet Marian Hemar.