Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

(Ijon Tichy #1)

Stanisław Lem,

Michael Kandel (translator)

4.26 · Rating details · 6,884 ratings · 315 reviews

“Lem muazzam bir hayal gücü zenginliğine ve karakter yaratma hünerine sahip. Çok komik, alaycı, şaşırtıcı ve bilgili bir yazar.”

— Theodore Sturgeon
Zaman atlamalarında sürekli kendine rastlayan bir gezgin, robotların dünyasını gözetlemeye giden bir casus, uzayda birbirinden garip canlılarla ve uygarlıklarla karşılaşan bir kâşif ve bir süpernova ormanında umutsuzca kaybolup ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 286 pages

Published June 26th 1985 by Mariner Books (first published 1971)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Star Diaries, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books

7,091 books — 21,878 voters

Best Polish Books

537 books — 484 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.26 ·

Rating details

· 6,884 ratings · 315 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

May 21, 2007 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Although Solaris is Stanislaw Lem’s most esteemed work, I believe The Star Diaries—the contemporaneous memoirs of star-pilot Ijon Tichy—to be a better representative of his genius, for it is ambitious in scope, inventive, and often profound.

The Star Diaries, a series of interplanetary adventures ranging in size from mere vignette to long novella, was written over a period of twenty years, and therefore--no surprise!—these pieces vary considerably in seriousness and depth, moving from the playful
Although Solaris is Stanislaw Lem’s most esteemed work, I believe The Star Diaries—the contemporaneous memoirs of star-pilot Ijon Tichy—to be a better representative of his genius, for it is ambitious in scope, inventive, and often profound.

The Star Diaries, a series of interplanetary adventures ranging in size from mere vignette to long novella, was written over a period of twenty years, and therefore--no surprise!—these pieces vary considerably in seriousness and depth, moving from the playful to the satiric and eventually the philosophical. Yet even the earliest, like “The Twenty-Second Voyage”—the numbering bears no relation to the date of composition—are often surprising and memorable (part of its plot resurfaced, more than a decade later, in Borges’ “The Gospel According to Mark”).

Although these stories are remarkably original, they also show a clear progression of influences. Ijon Tichy, who begins as the Baron Munchausen of space travel, soon resembles Swift’s Gulliver more closely as he begins to comment on the hypocrisies of society, but eventually Lem’s tone darkens and deepens as Tichy becomes less a star-pilot and more like the disembodied narrative voice of Stapledon’s Starmaker.

The Star Diaries contains excellent examples of each type of story. “The Twenty-Second Voyage,” for example, is a very Munchausen-like tale, organized around Tichy’s search through the planets for his missing pipe. “The Eleventh Voyage,” a satire of the totalitarian state in which people dressed as robots inform on other people dressed as robots, is Lem in his classic Swiftian mode. Even better, though, are the later Swiftian tales where Tichy, still a hero, begins to explore more philosophical topics: “The Seventh Voyage” (a hilarious send-up of time travel tales in general, where Tichy attempts to travel back in time to help himself fix his damaged spacecraft), and “The Eighth Voyage” (in which Tichy, delegate to The United Planets, represents earth, a candidate for admission).

Also worthy of attention are the later tales, of which a quintessential example is “The Twenty-First Voyage,” the last in order of composition and also the longest. I’ll admit I found it rough-going in places, but the startling difference between the two peoples presented here—nonreligious human consumed with a fad for body-engineering contrasted with robot monks who reverence the classic human form—was haunting and thought-provoking. It presented elements of the “pro-choice” and “right to life” philosophical positions in an extremely different context, and gave me much to think about.

If you love science fiction, you must read this book. It is a classic of the genre, crowded with invention and full of ideas. ...more

flag 111 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2018 Glenn Russell added it

Bold adventurer Ijon Tichy zooms across the universe in his midget rocket ship as if zipping around Poland (Stanislaw Lem’s home country) in a midget racing car. Are we talking here about another Flash Gordon or Hans Solo? Hardly. Ijon is more like your prototypical college math instructor with his skinny tie, wrinkled shirt, corduroy pants, scuffed up loafers and nerd eyeglasses held together by tape. But, it must be admitted, Ijon Tichy keeps a level head as he deals with a string of challenge ...more

flag 66 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2017 7jane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I need to reread this to review the book properly, but I know I liked it a lot, and even made a (view spoiler) out of one story, just for fun. Since I read it first in Finnish, the English reading experience will no doubt feel different :) ...more

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2015 Susan Budd rated it really liked it

Shelves: polish-literature

Stanislaw Lem is an author I should have discovered decades ago. You’d think that somewhere between Wells and Stapledon, Asimov and Clarke, Bradbury and Vonnegut, I’d have come across Lem. But I didn’t. I might have seen some excerpts in The Mind’s I, but that was long after I stopped reading sci-fi and started my studies in philosophy. Then last year I discovered Lem and he single-handedly renewed my interest in sci-fi.

The Star Diaries is the fifth book I’ve read so far. The others are (in orde ...more

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2016 Jeannette Nikolova rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Also available on the WondrousBooks blog.

What a fantastic book! One of the best ones that I have read this year!!! If you have not read it, and I assume that is the situation, I highly recommend it!

"I sat at my desk today, to write, and the chair said to me: 'What a strange world this is!"

I will put this bluntly: I am highly aware that the English speaking world generally neglects the literature of the rest of the world, which is the idea behind the Reading the World challenge to begin with. I am also aware that among the world literature that does gain some fame, the Eastern block is not in focus. HOWEVER, I think that by not reading certain novels, The Star Diaries among them, people are committing literary crime. Because this book is brilliant in its writing, ideas and sense of humor, achieved through satire.

I read it in Michael Kandel's translation, my Polish not being great as of yet(though I consider myself a good student), and I thought the writing was beautiful. I can only begin to imagine how lovely Lem's original expressions are, because translations, no matter how good, always take away something from the original.

The language, overall, was very rich, changing between styles, even using a made up version of old and new language, in the Polish version, I assume, Polish, but also, and much credit to Kandel, of course, in the English version, a sensational mix of old and new English that I had some trouble with, but that only attests to it's greatness, because it used expressions long out of use.

I am generally not a fan of satire, but this book was fantastic in that sense. The humor, so gentle and subtle and yet obviously there, was amazing. I usually put some berth between myself and humorous books, but I do not regret a second of reading The Star Diaries. Which brings me to the moment I will acquaint you with the book itself: The Star Diaries tells the story of Ijon Tichy, who travels from one planet to another and gets in all kinds of strange and comic situations. The stories are told in separate journeys, instead of chapters, and the journeys themselves were written out of order for 20 years. Some of them lean more on the philosophy, some more on the humor, but all of them are ultimately rewarding.

Ijon Tichy is a great narrator. What he succeeds at the best is the fact that he takes all of the events that happen to him, no matter how strange or borderline disturbing they are, in a light-hearted and calm manner. He escapes narrowly from crashing his ship on numerous occasions, he is left stranded in space, he gets mixed up in all kinds of weird events, and he does it in an almost graceful manner. Even more so when he ponders whether he really existed, to begin with, when he creates the world, or gets arrested by robot fanatics.

Some of the voyages were better than others, some were longer and some, much shorter. I had trouble with the language, as I mentioned above, of the Eleventh Voyage, but the idea was brilliant and reminded me a lot of The Man Who Was Thursday. I will not let out any spoilers but it was great! If you ever wondered how the world was created, you would enjoy the Eight Voyage, in which Ijon goes to represent Earth in a gathering of the United Planets and understands how we came to be(a silly accident of oil spillage). He creates the history of the planet through a series of work mishaps during a project that he is in charge of in the Twentieth Voyage. The Twenty-first Voyage was admittedly challenging in a philosophical way, but also extremely interesting as it tells the story of how Ijon Tichy crashes on a planet of creatures that used to be human-like, until they started making genetic changes to their bodies and ended up completely robot and unable to return to the way they used to be, because they are torn by conflicts both of philosophical and religious character. (click for original Lem illustration)

I will leave you enjoy the rest of this mad and fantastic book on your own, but if you ever trusted my judgement, you will read it, because it is great! It incorporates all of the flaws of humanity, told in a humorous way, and also, as it seemed to me, though ironic, nevertheless full of the affection that Lem had for the human kind.

tumblr_lr1evmhkj81qh0hkko1_r1_500

...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2020 L.S. Popovich rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020, 3-star, science-fiction, audiobook-greats, polish

I totally got this mixed up with memoirs Found in a Bathtub when I first posted my review. Only happened because I listened to the audiobook. Which form I recommend for this.

Lem's comedic sensibility is occasionally reminiscent of the Strugatsky's. In this well-framed, light-hearted set of tales, the wordplay and quirky charm are ever-present, though some gags and concepts overstay their welcome. I preferred the couple other mind-altering books I've thus far read by the Polish s-f master thus fa ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2021 Jamie rated it liked it

Some of these stories I found wonderfully amusing and inventive, many being absurdist satire of government, religion and human ineptitude in general. Yet, while all have amusing and ridiculous premises, the longer stories in particular felt like a fire hose of wit and absurdity coupled with ceaseless speculation on philosophy, science, etc and endless diversions that became fatiguing and difficult to keep straight. These are probably best digested in small bites, rather than consumed all at once ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Feb 01, 2015 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it really liked it

Shelves: mid-century-sf

The morning I started reading this edition of Lem’s Star Diaries, I got about a hundred pages into it. When I put it down, I felt like I had over-indulged at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Each of Ijon Tichy’s intergalactic adventures in the 23rd century comes so packed with jokes, adventure, word play, hairsbreadth escapes, satire, and sophisticated scientific and philosophical speculation, they are best absorbed one at a time. They are going to all run together in the end, leaving the reader as di The morning I started reading this edition of Lem’s Star Diaries, I got about a hundred pages into it. When I put it down, I felt like I had over-indulged at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Each of Ijon Tichy’s intergalactic adventures in the 23rd century comes so packed with jokes, adventure, word play, hairsbreadth escapes, satire, and sophisticated scientific and philosophical speculation, they are best absorbed one at a time. They are going to all run together in the end, leaving the reader as dizzy as Lem’s hero when caught in a time loop, but it’s best to work your way slowly into that condition.

Tichy is a freelance space explorer who takes his rundown spaceship out of storage whenever the mood for adventure hits him. Usually he is intrigued by reports of some far distant galaxy, but along the way he is frequently blown off course and finds himself in comically dire straits with aliens who may celebrate his arrival or toss him jail or both. The one time he serves as Earth’s official representative to a conference on intergalactic relations, he gets off to a poor start by mistaking his host for a vending machine. Gulliver’s Travels may provide Lem’s literary template, but his humor is more Monty Python than Johnathan Swift. Perhaps that comparison is compromised by the fact that Lem’s stories were written in the two decades before Monty Python, but given the slippery nature of time in Lem’s work, who knows who influenced whom?

Time travel, both intentional and accidental, fuels many of Tichy’s adventures. Lem takes the sf chestnut of time travelers’ attempts to change history – this usually involves killing Hitler – and spins it into one of his longest stories. TIchy is dragged into the 27th century to work on cleaning up history. This is a vast, bureaucratic enterprise where the punishment for screwing things up is to be stranded in the past. It’s these worst bumblers that become the leading forces in Western history from Homer to Einstein. This fits well with what seems to be Lem’s basic premise: (A) Things always go wrong. (B) Most things work out.

At times I wondered how Lem’s satire made it past Polish censors in the 1960’s. On one planet, Tichy encounters a civilization facing a serious problem of rising ocean levels. The government solution is that people learn to breath underwater. A scientist explains to Tichy

The upshot was…that what was to be controlled, controlled us. No one, however, would admit this, and of course the next logical step was the declaration that things were exactly the way they ought to be.

The published diaries are the recovered fragments of a larger work. In this book there are twelve voyages with numbers ranging from seven to twenty-eight. The numerical order does not reflect the order in which Lem wrote them. When looked at chronologically, you see Lem moving from knockabout space comedy, to more pointed satire, to philosophical speculation. The last-written and longest story, Voyage Twenty-One, is almost entirely a philosophical discussion between Tichy and a priest on a planet where things have gone horribly wrong. I confess I never made it through this one, but skipping to the end I found that Lem finished his tales on a serious down note. The priest says, “Nothing remains then for us but to sit here among the fossils of rats, in this maze of dried-up sewers.”

Perhaps this is Lem’s final position, but I prefer the story where Ijon Tichy reveals that he may be a figment of his father’s imagination.
...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Apr 05, 2018 Denis rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hardcover, library

This was good fun. I read "Solaris", saw the two versions of the movie, one Russian and the other, American starring Mr. Clooney. My impression based on that was that he was serious, very philosophical and very trippy as well. This book was initially unexpected as it was very humorous, but yet, it had all the elements mentioned about Solaris. It is a different type satirical humour than that of Vonnagut Jr. but on par. This book was equally smart, clever, very funny and introspective all at once ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Mar 31, 2020 Sean Blake rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, favourites, science-fiction

Equally satirical and philosophical, hilarious and serious, playful and threatening, Stanisław Lem's The Star Diaries is a brilliantly imaginative short story collection about astronaut Ijon Tichy and his bizarre adventures across the cosmos. Lem's stories come across as a mix of the juvenile, satirical humour of Jaroslav Hašek and the menacing absurdism of Franz Kafka. Centring on themes such as communication, the limitations of knowledge, the place of advanced technology in society and humanit ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2017 Cărăşălu rated it liked it

I didn't enjoy it as much as expected. Maybe I read it too late. Maybe what was original, witty, creative and imaginative at the time of the book's writing is now part of your ordinary modern sci-fi menu. Most of all, The Star Diaries reminded me of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the difference being that Lem's Diaries are not a proper novel, but a collection of short stories. Most of them are meant to be comical and satirize prevalent sci-fi tropes like time travel. Despi ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 18, 2012 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

The Star Diaries really defy comparison with anything I have read before. Although the dry humor I expect from Eastern European fiction is there, the story lines and philosophical wanderings are idiosyncratic in the extreme.

Lem's diarist Ijon Tichy is a starship pilot, galactic explorer and self-styled diplomat whose adventures around the universe lead him into frequent philosophical and religious discussions and even more frequent menace to his strange-by-comparison-to-aliens earthling body, me ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 26, 2008 Jeanne rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Jeanne by: Roger Peet

I had seen "Solaris" waaay back in college I think. Beautiful, but slowly paced, and this was a time that I slept through bits of a lot of movies. So I was thinking that this series of "journeys" of Ijon Tichy written by the author of Solaris (which I haven't read) would be serious and dry.

I was right and wrong. The subject matter of spaceship navigator Tichy's voyages are plenty serious and related with the driest of humor. Many of the convolutions of time and space involve Tichy, full well kno ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 08, 2012 Chris Fellows rated it it was amazing

Before Arthur Dent, there was Ijon Tichy.

Before our civilisation disappeared into its own navel, there were the Dichoticans. And before we started to prattle about 'Singularities' the robot monks of Dichotica had already looked unflinchingly into that abyss.

Before we ceased to create science fiction, there was this book showing us the sort of thing we could be creating instead.

...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 25, 2016 Cheryl marked it as xx-dnf-skim-reference · review of another edition

Struggled through about 2/3 before giving up. I think I'll finally get around to reading Gulliver's Travels instead. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 01, 2016 Kristel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, science-fiction, humor, polish-literature

The Star Diaries by Stanislav Lem is a group of short stories that the author wrote over a time period from 1950s and expanded and reissued in 1971. The stories are travel logs of space traveler, Ijon Tichy and translated by Michael Kandel from the polish in 1976. The Introduction and Introduction to the Expanded Edition are really a part of the book as well and not truly Introductions as can be gatthered from "The press tells us that Tichy used a ghost-writer, or that he never even existed, his The Star Diaries by Stanislav Lem is a group of short stories that the author wrote over a time period from 1950s and expanded and reissued in 1971. The stories are travel logs of space traveler, Ijon Tichy and translated by Michael Kandel from the polish in 1976. The Introduction and Introduction to the Expanded Edition are really a part of the book as well and not truly Introductions as can be gatthered from "The press tells us that Tichy used a ghost-writer, or that he never even existed, his works having been penned--they say--by a device given the name of "Lem". According to some extreme versions this "Lem" s supposed to be a man. Now, anyone who has a rudimentary acquaintance with the history of space travel knows that LEM is an abbreviation for Lunar Excursion Module, an exploratory vessel built in the U.S.A." There are a total of 12 voyages in the edition ranging from 7 to the 28th voyage but not necessarily in the order that the voyages occur but this is how the author wanted them ordered.
some of the voyages that I took special note of:
The Seventh Voyage: (actually in written order is the 8th) is the story of a time loop where the author keeps meeting himself from a different part of the time loop while on voyage.
The Eleventh Voyage: (number 4). is full of long made of words that became overwhelming to work through and could stand with a reread.
The twentieth voyage: (11th work) makes a parody of history (QUITE GOOD)
The Twenty First: (12th work) philosophical look at death, God, Souls, clones a quote from this voyage, "No decent person ought associate with murderers, by the same token any collaboration with that greatest of criminals--Nature--is inexcusable. Yet what is burial but collaboration through a game of "hide and seek?" page 176, The Twenty first voyage.

Over all his early works are playful moving into satire and the later works are philosophical. The authors development as a writer can be seen when the voyages are looked at in the order that they were written. There is a tremendous about of word play. This is a fun book that makes fun of man's supremacy in the universe, parodying history and time travel.
...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 28, 2017 Ram rated it really liked it

Shelves: humor, sci-fi

A collection of the unexpected adventures of the famous spaceman Ijon Tichy.

Tichy encounters a variety of strange problems in his travels and solves them in ways that are certainly unconventional. The book excels in absurd writing, full of original ideas and various inventions.

The book, is composed of short stories, all related to his solo voyages in space.
Most of the stories are excellent, some a bit tedious.

My favorites were

"The Eighth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy represents Earth to petiti ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 07, 2014 Barak rated it really liked it

4.5 stars.

A brilliant and hilarious (I find) parody, emblematic of the "Speculative Fiction" Genre, but where the word "Speculative" actually denotes what it's meant to. This is one of the best philosophical Sci-Fi works I have ever read (or rather re-read), and certainly the most original.

When I was reading it decades ago I completely missed all the allusions and references to philosophy and history, which were so clear to me - thus hugely entertaining - now.

Ijon Tichy, the protagonist, is noth ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2017 Calzean rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, short-stories, author-poland

This is a unique book for a sci-fi. Each chapter describes one of the voyages of Ijon Tichy's intergalactic adventures in the 23rd century. The stories are a mixture of futuristic crystal-balling, deadpan humour, discussions on religion, satirical insights into the results of man's constant search for perfection, the dangers of technology and more satire on government bureaucracy and their use of fear to control the population. It is a book of genius.
I really like the Eighth Voyage, which Tichy ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 17, 2015 Nihal Vrana rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, world-literature, short-story-collection

After Olaf Stapledon, Stanislaw Lem is my favourite Science-fiction writer. This collection of short stories is considerably weaker than his other works. Lem was a genius for sure, but he was not a comedy genius (drawing neither), the Douglas Adams-like nature of these stories does not really suit well with the gist of his ideas.

One other thing is the character of Ijon Tichy. He might be the most non-existent character in the history of literature. I have read hundreds of pages about him and I h ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2013 Useresu rated it it was amazing

I can only be ashamed of myself passing by this genial stories in high school by one of the best writer of my country, bah - the world! However the timing may be perfect as often you'll find things coming from the past to save your future. I recently started to loose hope for sci-fi genre and looking for older books to rediscover the roots. Lem is universal and beyond time...and funny!
Btw - the story with electronic brains in chests? - now I know who did Wachowsky's ripped off to make Matrix ;) ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2010 Myk rated it it was ok

Shelves: couldn-t-finish

I have decided that I can't finish this book, I got about half-way through. Though it is slightly funny, the science is just wrong and it bugs me to much. It is broken up into twelve voyages that have nothing to do with each other and I don't care what happens. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 14, 2009 Erik Graff rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Lem fans

Recommended to Erik by: James Koehnline

Shelves: sf

The stories in this collection are variable. All are humorous, but some struck me as simply silly.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 26, 2020 Erica Clou rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 0-own, own-fiction, own-read, 1970s, book-club-dad, read-male, dad-fiction, o-fic-l

I read this because it was my dad's book. It's a Kandal translation. There's so many ideas in this collection that I assume it's inspired a lot of the science fiction we know. Surely the 8th voyage inspired the first episode of Star Trek the next generation? The very character of Ijon Tichy might have inspired Doctor Who. This was wildly creative, often philosophical, and sometimes funny. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 03, 2017 Bbrown rated it liked it

The Star Diaries is yet another work demonstrating Lem’s impressive range as an author. In this collection’s tales, many of which can be described as “slapstick,” Lem tackles history, philosophy, religion, and of course science, with tongue planted firmly in cheek throughout. We experience these many farces through the protagonist Ijon Tichy, who is a bit genre savvy but not at all actually savvy (try keeping track of how many times he’s imprisoned). The voice that Lem gives Tichy unifies these ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 27, 2014 Jennifer Abdo rated it really liked it

I wouldn't consider myself a sci fi fan, but this author, like Capek's War With the Newts, has very good points in religion, philosophy, politics, human nature to illustrate. There are dizzying time travel loops, odd creatures and machines, fascinating customs like squamp hunting, like in many sci fi novels no doubt. This one didn't really endear itself to me until the 21st voyage, I have to say, where there is a discussion about God and Satan as dizzying as the recursive time travel loops are t ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 24, 2011 Zoli rated it liked it

It took me well over two years finishing this book. Some of Lem's Tichy stories are hilarious while others kept going on and on and took me days, weeks even to read those 20 something pages. The good thing is that you can read Tichy's memoirs with breaks in between and continue with yet another one whenever you feel like, and that's what I did and what took me so long.
Stanislaw Lem is one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, and Ijion Tichy 20th century's legitimate heir to Baro ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2012 Irena rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-audio-books

I would describe Stanislaw Lem as the depth of Leo Tolstoy, humor of Woody Allen and absurdity and originality of Douglas Adams -- all under the same roof. This is a brilliant book and the English translation by Michael Kandel is very good. I read lots of Lem in my teen years but now I am going to reread all he wrote. I used to just find his writings funny and interesting but there is so much more on all levels. Too bad Stanislaw Lem is not well known outside Eastern Europe, he deserves a world ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 11, 2008 Steve rated it it was amazing

I love this collection of short-stories about the adventures of astronaut-adventurer Ijon Tichy. The stories are often Swiftian and usually very funny. My favorite involves Tichy in a time-loop in which he argues with a series of past and future selves to try to repair his space-ship. It is an early exploration of themes that are played out more fully in The Time Traveler's Wife. Great summer reading: it's funny and playful but still thought-provoking. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 18, 2014 Gui rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook

I didn't expect to like this book so much but this has everything I want in a sci-fi book. This is a collection of stories following Ijon Tichy's adventures across the galaxy. I loved the one about the mutant potatoes: "Thus far observations show that man has mashed potatoes millions of times, but it is not inconceivable that one time in a billion the situation could reverse itself, that a potato could mash a man." People in Poland must really like this one, too. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Sci-Fi about space-time loops and man talks to multiple versions of himself. He's traveling alone in a spaceship that needs maintenance. Possibly near a black hole. [s]	8	41	Sep 08, 2020 03:50PM
Sci-Fi Group Book...: The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy	16	14	Oct 12, 2019 08:48PM
Is anyone familiar with a particular story?	1	11	Jan 20, 2016 12:21AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Science Fiction

325 users

Fiction

138 users

Short Stories

76 users

Humor

60 users

European Literature > Polish Literature

44 users

Fantasy

22 users

Classics

14 users

Cultural > Poland

12 users

Science Fiction Fantasy

11 users

Speculative Fiction

10 users

See top shelves…

About Stanisław Lem

Stanisław Lem

2,865 followers

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 w 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. ...more

Other books in the series

Ijon Tichy (5 books)

Books by Stanisław Lem

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

More…

Finding the 1,000 Books to Read in a Lifetime

We all have our reading bucket lists. James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is bound to seriously expand that list...

Trivia About The Star Diaries:...

2 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Star Diaries

“A world compelled to good alone is as much a shrine to compulsion as a world compelled to evil only.

The Twenty-first Voyage” — 7 likes

“The semanticists maintained that everything depends on how you interpret the words “potato,” “is” and “moving.” Since the key here is the operational copula “is,” one must examine “is” rigorously. Whereupon they set to work on an Encyclopedia of Cosmic Semasiology, devoting the first four volumes to a discussion of the operational referents of “is.” The neopositivists maintained that it is not clusters of potatoes one directly perceives, but clusters of sensory impressions. Then, employing symbolic logic, they created terms for “cluster of impressions” and “cluster of potatoes,” devised a special calculus of propositions all in algebraic signs and after using up several seas of ink reached the mathematically precise and absolutely undeniable conclusion that 0=0.” — 6 likes

More quotes…