Stanislaw Lem is one of my favorite writers and this book is a lot of fun to read, but it isn't the best Lem book (not all of his books can be 5 star masterpieces). Read Cyberiad first (if you like short, interesting and funny tales) since this book seems a little like left-overs in comparison.

This is surely one of the greatest collections of 'linked short-stories' ever written -- it matches Calvino's COSMICOMICS and Borges' LABYRINTHS. Lem is a total genius. A writer of playful little fables that are also philosophically profound (and logically consistent). This book is a brilliant companion to Lem's THE CYBERIAD, with which it shares many themes and ideas. Lem has a beautiful style: he can make engineering terms sound poetic. His rigorously modern metaphors are as original as those of J.G. Ballard, but more varied and lyrical. For Lem, the Periodic Table is an unwritten poem. This book is the final and true ode, and each line is a fantastic, fabulous, incredible story. I give this book 200,000,000 stars. And that's only because I'm not feeling so generous today. It probably deserves A GOOGOLPLEX (1 to the power of 100 raised to the power of 1 to the power of 100) of stars. At least.

The Fairy Tale aspect of these tales may seem tiresome at first, but as you chew into these stories you discover that the annoyance is intentional and satirical. We are flawed, and often silly, machines; flailing about in a universe devoid of meaning and purpose. If anything, get this book for the stories "The Mask" and "The Hunt"; they are Lem's Finest.

For the love of all that is decent, I don't know why "Further Reminiscences" hasn't been combined with "The Star Diaries" to make one handy volume. First of all, thdestinction is essentially artificial - "Further Reminiscences" contains two journeys which were dropped, for one reason or another, from the American edition of the Diaries, a selection of Earthside "reminiscences", a short called "Doctor Diagoras", and the fantastic "Let Us Save the Universe", all of which were present in the original Polish edition. Even the books' sizes favor an omnibus re-issue (250 and 150 pages, respectively).

The two "new" journies found in this book are the eighteenth and the twenty-eighth. The 18th is essentially a shorter, more readable version of the 20th (found in the parent volume), and the classic, oft-reprinted 28th deals with personal freedoms (the Phools and the Master Machine that was created to mediate their conflicts - and thus decides to refabricate them in stone to stop their chaotic quarrels).

The five "further reminiscences" are essentially humorless essays, each dealing with a specific philosophical idea. In each, Tichy comes into contact with some sort of scientific visionary (be it Corcoran, Decantor, Zazul, or Molteris), and, after ascertaining that they aren't insane, listens to their wild stories: Corcoran constructs mechanical brains whose lives and fate are mere recordings in a large steel drum; Decantor wants to immortalize the soul by encasing it in crystal; Zazul tells the gruesome story of his attempt to clone himself; Molteris produces a functional time machine, and, without examining the possible consequences, tests it on himself. It is apparent that these were written at the same time as the journeys, since the 20th has a direct reference to Molteris. "Doctor Diagoras" is not a certified "reminiscence", although it is essentially identical in spirit, the topic of debate being artificial intelligence (the fifth reminiscence is very similar to the 11th journey, only in reverse and with more legal issues).

The volume closes with "Let Us Save the Universe", which is a detailed petition to conserve intergalactic flora and fauna, with several quite hilarious examples of how we foul up the planets, and how some species manage to retaliate.

In a nutshell? A worthwhile read - far from a worthwhile purchase.

"Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy," by Stanislaw Lem, has been translated into English by Joel Stern and Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek. The main text is preceded by a publisher's note, which declares that contents of this book (my review refers to the Harvest edition published by Harcourt, Brace & Co.) appeared in the 1971 Polish edition of the book entitled "The Star Diaries," but not in the British and American editions with the same title. Thus this book could be seen as the second volume of Lem's original Polish "Star Diaries." Despite all this, I believe that this book works fine as a stand-alone literary work, so go ahead and ignore the publisher's note if you like.

The book is divided up into several sections, each of which could stand alone as a short story. Each piece is told in the first person by space traveler Ijon Tichy. He discusses his voyages beyond the Solar System and his encounters with an assortment of eccentric scientists on Earth.

"Memoirs" is a delightful, pungent blend of science fiction, philosophy, satire, and horror. Witty and haunting, funny and frightening, it's spiced by clever wordplay.

Lem deals with such topics as artificial intelligence, time travel, environmental exploitation, the nature of the human soul, and the origins of the universe. He describes many whimsical extraterrestrial species, such as the foul-tailed fetido and bottombiter chair ants. Overall, this wacky, surreal book shows Lem to be a soul brother to Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Seuss, and Kurt Vonnegut.

If you have never read a Lem story before, then I highly recommend this novel as a starting point. In this book of short stories, Lem is at at his artful best. Startlingly simple and surprisingly shrewd, the stories expound upon many of the ageless questions which humanity as a whole have attempted to deal with since the beginning of consciousness i.e. genesis of man, existence of spirit/soul, man's primal instinct to destruct etc. In short, this collection of stories serve as a delicious sample of the smorgasboard of creative delights that Lem is known for. His acerbic wit, intellectual prowess, and devastatingly entertaining drollness are all apparent within this collection. A great read written in true Lem "virtuoso" form. Indeed, if one were so inclined, this is the place to start looking for answers to the 'meaning of life'. And even if you do not find the 'ultimate' answer within the pages of this novella/collection of works, at least you can be sure of being entertained!

This is one of his earliest, and it kinda let me down. A guy working in an insane asylum. Kinda haunting at times, not terribly interesting though. It sounds as if Sekulowski is supposed to be saying some really neat stuff, but it all sounds like a bunch of fluff to me. Not the greatest, but it's Lem.

I loved this book. Lem's partially auto-biographical Transfiguration is set in a WWII era insane asylum in Poland. He tells a compelling story of a time and place when you had to look hard to tell the difference between the doctors and the patients.

Though some of it is a little fluffy, over all i found this book to be intresting and spellbinding.

I found this book totally by accident, while browsing the sf&f shelves of one of the big bookstores without much hope, and I'm glad I did, because Lem's essay, "Science-fiction : a hopeless case - with exceptions", really crystallised a lot of the things that concerned me about science fiction, and showed that at least one other person thought that sf should at least try to be literature. (Although written in 1970, and from the isolated position of Communist Poland, this essay is still depressingly accurate - although things have improved since his time.)

The guy is a heavy thinker, and come from a European tradition of taking science fiction seriously as a literature of ideas (Lem wrote the classic Solaris, which was made into a Russian movie). He is quite readable, however, and is obviously passionate about his subject. This book is essential for any academic study of science fiction, and for any reader who takes the genre's potential seriously.

One of the essays in this book got the author's honorary membership of the American SF Association revoked. Or rather, some of it did, in a way. "Science Fiction - A Hopeless Case with Exceptions" was published in the US in a mutilated "translation" under the tactful title "A Scientist's Choice of the World's Worst Writing", and Lem was unceremoniously booted out of the organisation. The essay in question is in fact a harsh, but in its essentials accurate, dissection of the deplorable state of science fiction and science fiction criticism as compared with the rest of literature, and deserves serious attention. (The exception discussed, by the way, is the work of Philip K Dick, and a detailed review of Dick's Ubik, justifying its claim to be taken as serious fiction, also appears in Microworlds.) There is also a fine review of the Strugatsky brothers' extraordinary novella Roadside Picnic, which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky's equally extraordinary though somewhat different film Stalker; an interesting essay on Jorge Luis Borges, noting the unique qualities and the limitations apparent in his stories; and, perhaps most valuably, a couple of long essays on what science fiction could be if it could only kick its maleficient Star Wars-style good-guy/bad-guy simplemindedness. Lem is precise, logical, detailed, cantankerous and fascinating. The world's greatest writer of grown-up science fiction and fantasy is once again pointing the way for the rest of us.

A mystery story involving, of course, dead bodies.

The spirit of the novel is best contained in the statistician's remarks on gravity. The word "Gravity" doesn't really explain anything, rather it gives a name to the tendency of objects to fall toward the center of the earth. If something like that happens every day, we give it a name of some sort and accept it as normal. If something like that seldom happens, then it's exceptional and warrants investigation.

Although I was dissatisfied with the ending, the reasoning employed along the way there is pretty engrossing. The story is also strange enough in places to be bleakly humorous. Maybe an extra half-star, for being different.

As every detective and scientist should know, objectively there are facts and relationships between facts. Sometimes there are causal relationships between facts, and the facts are correlated; sometimes there are no causal connections between facts, and the facts may or may not show some statistical correlation. The situation where the facts display at least chance correlations but may not be linked causally provides the leitmotiv for Stanislaw Lem's "The Investigation" (and his "Chain of Chance" for that matter).

Correlated facts are suggestive, but when the number of facts does not amount to a meaningful statistical sample the correlation may be an artifact, and then sound inductive reasoning often gives way to wild speculation. In "The Investigation", lieutenant Gregory of Scotland Yard desperately tries to puzzle out a consistent explanation for a bizarre series of disappearing corpses while receiving input from a scientist, a doctor, and fellow detectives --- each with his own ideas. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough solid evidence to decide whether the facts of the case have causal structure or whether they simply form "fortuitous patterns". Hmmm.

The category of "science fiction" is usually reserved for whimsical flights of fancy, but here we have a book that breathes fictional life into part of the intellectual apparatus that is at the very heart of science --- the empirical, or scientific, method. No pedantic statement is made about the empirical method, it's darker corners simply serve as a compelling thematic backdrop for a detective story. "The Investigation" is not a detective novel in the traditional sense though, and the ending will throw Agatha Christie enthusiasts for a disconcerting loop...but, an enjoyable one.

The narrative style is pleasingly "cinematic" in that, with few exceptions, only things that can be seen and heard are described --- it reads something like a well-written screenplay. This narrative approach is nothing new, though, and its lack of originality kept me from getting too excited; but, my fetish for stylistic originality is probably not shared by most readers. The book is also intellectually provocative without being didactic in that the story conjures up a small whirlwind of intriguing questions, not a parade of dubious and facile answers. Most importantly, it's a fun and engaging story. I really liked this one.

For years I'd heard a lot about Stanislaw Lem as a great Polish science fiction writer, maybe one of the world's greats in that field, but I hadn't ever read him. Therefore, when I saw a book of his at a yard sale, I bought it. The price was certainly right. But, I must report that I still haven't read any of his science-fiction because THE INVESTIGATION turns out to be one of his few works in other genres. But what genre is this ? You might say it's a detective novel, but "metaphysical detective fiction" would describe it better. How many other books fit into the same field ? Good question. Here we find bodies removed from graveyards and mortuaries; sometimes they turn up elsewhere, sometimes not. Gregory, a suspicious policeman, is assigned to catch the perpetrator. But is there a perpetrator ? Discussions of statistics and probability, as well as mysterious speculations, pepper this novel, which takes place in cold, foggy, rainy or snowy conditions in England, a country that does not emerge very realistically from the background. I was constantly reminded of Ismail Kadare's novel "Doruntine" by the similar philosophical nature of the writing which marks both books, by the rain and cold, and even by the names of characters-Stres in the Albanian book, and Sciss (the statistician) in Lem's. I can't say that this is a characteristic Lem novel because it's the first I ever read. But a detective novel that asks "what if everything that exists is fragmentary, incomplete, aborted, events with ends but no beginnings, events that only have middles, things that have fronts or rears, but not both, with us constantly making categories..... ?" cannot be considered average. Lem's novel may not be to everyone's taste---especially if you are looking for sex, violence, or lots of action---but it is unusual and well-written.

If you have never read a book by Lem, you shouldn't start here. The best thing about Stanislaw Lem's stories is that he will bring up some of the most absurd angles of how our lives can be altered by technology. His best writing contains science fiction, philosophy, interesting asides and ethics wrapped up in a fun story. This book doesn't have any of that. Pick up His Master's Voice or Fiasco instead.

Though this lacks the jaunty tone of many of Lem's short stories or fictional essays, it still shares his disturbing habit of assualting your cerebrum in new and rather inventive ways. This book is sometimes as bizarre at is mundane, and this paradox is ultimately essential to the plot. But this book is enjoyed by a Lem fan, and I'm not sure that a reader unfamiliar with him will wait out the denoument...

This is one of the best books I've read. It's a superb science fiction mystery that pulls you along and you never know where it's going.