The Truth and Other Stories,9780262046084

The Truth and Other Stories

by ; ;
ISBN13: 9780262046084
ISBN10: 0262046083
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2021-09-14
Publisher(s): The MIT Press
List Price: $39.95

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Summary

Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English.

Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought-provoking and scathingly funny.
Written from 1956 to 1996, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until at the end, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer than can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

Author Biography

Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a writer called "worthy of the Nobel Prize" by the New York Times, was an internationally renowned author of novels, short stories, literary criticism, and philosophical essays. His books have been translated into forty-four languages and have sold more than thirty million copies.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Hunt (Late 1950s)
Rat in the Labyrinth (1956)
Invasion from Aldebaran (1959)
The Friend (1959)
The Invasion (1959)
Darkness and Mildew (1959)
The Hammer (1959)
Lymphater's Formula (1961)
The Journal (1962)
The Truth (1964)
One Hundred and Thirty-Seven Seconds (1976)
An Enigma (1993)

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