COGITO ERGO LEM
A Hard Nut to Crack—Pas de Deux—The Blink of the Cosmic Eye
PART I: BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1. LIFE AND TIMES
A Master of Thrills and Chills—The Reading of This Book Is Good for
You—Renaissance Polymath—Lemberg—Highcastle—Well Over 180—Operation
Barbarossa—Jan Donabidowicz—Lvov to Cracow—Social Parasite—The
Genre In Which I Write—Borges for the Space Age—A Writing
Consortium—Wissenschaftskolleg—Away From the Typewriter—On the
Sidelines—Encyclopedic Oracle
CHAPTER 2. IN THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF BOOKS
Ariadne’s Thread—The New World of Adventure—The Other Inner
Planet—Different Face—Allegorical Pen—SimCity—Hylas and
Philonous—The Tricky Relation—The Golden Phase—A Happy
Ending—Ammer-Ka—Out Yonder In Space—Dicty—The Seat of His Pants—Of
Extraterrestrial Origin—A Critical Point—Cat’s Cradle— Hypertrophic
Trends—Hoary Fallacy—Homo Rationis Capax—Der Völkermord—The
Thanatos Syndrome—After the Last Goosebump Has Vanished—The Entire
Human Race—Trompe l’Oeil—LEM!—My Farewell—Moratorium—The World
According to Lem—Man and Machine
PART II: ESSAYS
CHAPTER 3. GAME, SET, LEM
Ariadne’s Thread—Cold War Hysteria—The Third Pentagon—Nuclear-age
Quixote—The Lottery in
Babylon—I-Guess-What-You-Guess-What-I-Guess—Barnaby the
Scrivener—Whoops! Apocalypse!—The Mission—Minimax/Maximin—The
Mission Game—Subjective Rationality—The Collusion Game—Dead Men
Don’t Tell Lies—An Allegorical Everyman—The Decipherment of Linear
B
CHAPTER 4. BETRIZATION IS THE WORST SOLUTION… EXCEPT FOR ALL
OTHERS
Time Machine—Word Become Flesh—Defanging the Human Beast—La bête
humaine—The Hobbesian Premise—It Can’t Happen Here—50-50—Bennett,
Trimaldi and Zakharov—The Technological Grail—Less Than
Human—Chihuahuas in Eden—Nietzschean Superman—Droids, Borgs, and
Bots—One for the Old Generation, One for the
New—D-i-s-a-s-t-e-r
CHAPTER 5. ERRARE HUMANUM EST
The Invincible Has Landed—Models of Inquiry—From Literature to
Biterature—The Alien as Alien—Knowledge and Metaknowledge—Regis
III—Part of the Landscape—Nature Plays Fair—Ch. I., Ch. Ph., Ch.
T., Ch. B.—Omnia Vincit Armor—Dictyostelium discoideum—Overzealous
Carpenters—The Infallible
CHAPTER 6. A BEACHBOOK FOR INTELLECTUALS
A Novel of Ideas—Gun for Hire—Whodunit with Probability as the
Butler—The Devil’s Parody of the Movies—The Locked Room—Terrorism
Is Not a Hardware Issue—Good Cop, Bad Cop—The Garden of Earthly
Delights—You, Me, Pulsars, and the Page You’re
Reading—Ladykillers—Hero or Not?—Runny Nose—A Writer for All
Reasons
PART III: CODA
CHAPTER 7. FIASCO
You’ll See the Quintans—The War of the Worlds—Intelligent and
Electronic—Let’s Do It Our Way—Mark Tempe—The Digla—Crystal Ball—To
Make a Long Story Short
CHAPTER 8. HAPPY END OF THE WORLD!
The Blink of an Eye—Glow-In-the-Dark Monkeys—Cerebroproteinal
Neuroprocessor—Encyclopedia of Ignorance
APPENDIX. STANISLAW LEM: BOOKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Peter Swirski is Professor of American Literature and American Studies at the University of Bahrain and Honorary Professor in China.
Reviews 'An indispensable contribution to Lem studies. No critic is
ever likely to do a better job of summarizing Lem’s entire oeuvre
and meting out cognitive justice to this philosopher of the future
than Swirski.'
Nicholas Ruddick
'A worthy addition to Lem criticism. Divided in three parts, a
biographical section, essays on Lem’s work and a coda, and
featuring eleven photographs, the work offers a panoramic view of
Lem’s oeuvre and ideas.'
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Foundation: The International Review of
Science Fiction
'Peter Swirski’s book is impressive: it demonstrates a grasp of a
very large body of knowledge… Swirski conveys Lem thoroughly yet in
the most entertaining way. This marriage of the heavy and the
light, the profound and the playful, is a great achievement and
mirrors the Polish master.'
Michael Kandel, translator of major works of Stanislaw Lem
including Fiasco, His Master's Voice, and The Cyberiad
'An indispensable contribution to Lem studies. No critic is ever
likely to do a better job of summarizing Lem’s entire oeuvre and
meting out cognitive justice to this philosopher of the future than
Swirski.'
Nicholas Ruddick, author of Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction
from Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel
'Swirski does an amazing job… must-read not only for the admirers
of Lem but for all who see literature and philosophy as relevant
for what they tell us about ourselves.'
Philosophy in Review
'A great road map into the technological new world… Swirski added
another layer to the portrait of the artist… conclusively seals his
status as a world-wide leading expert on Lem.'
The Montreal Review
'Swirski does an admirable job bringing a wide range of disciplines
to bear on the work of a thinker whose importance to fields as
diverse as literature, science, and philosophy cannot be
overestimated.'
Science Fiction Studies
‘Swirski approaches Lem’s fiction with accuracy, originality, and
nuance, providing an inquisitive blueprint for further explorations
into Lem’s work and into wider Science Fiction from a finely tuned,
more practically minded, perspective.’
Joe Howsin, Fantastika Journal
‘It should also appeal to readers who have admired his work for a
long time. In this sense, the monograph is both an introduction to
and a thorough exploration of Lem’s oeuvre and intellectual legacy:
a wonderful place for any scholar new to Lem to start.’
Michael Godhe, Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and
Fantasy Research
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