Stanisław Lem

writer, artist
Short Story

Ijon Tichy

Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego, pt. 4

  • From remembrances of Ijon Tichy, pt. 4
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Księga robotów (Iskry, 1961) [No title for this story other than the Roman numeral IV, which is the fourth of five numbered parts out of nine total parts.]
Ijon is unphased when Physicist Molteris lugs his time machine into Ijon’s sitting room, promising Ijon will be repaid for the colossal amount of electricity that will be consumed by the first trip. —Michael Main
Zamierzałem, ale . . . widzi pan . . . ja . . . mój gospodarz wyłączył mi elektrycznoćś . . . w niedzielę.
translate I planned to, but, you see, I—my landlord turned off the electricity on Sunday.
Pencil drawing of a middle-aged man riding on the back of a large robot.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Czarna komnata profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga's black room
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) the year before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]
Professor Tarantoga saves human civilization! After using his chronopad to investigate the leading scientists and artists in history, Tarantoga concludes that without exception they are lazy drunkards. So naturally, he sends smart young people into various eras to invent differential calculus, to paint the Mona Lisa, etc.—all while a pair of police inspectors have their eye on him. —based on Wikipedia
A pencil sketch of an odd bird standing on the head of a dog-like robot with a full moon in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Dziwny gość profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga’s strange guest
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) eight years before the 1971 Polish TV broadcast.]
I’d bet my last złotych that Lem is carefully satirizing the rule of the Polish United Workers’s Party in this story of a fourth-millennium man who hails from Mars and has room in his brain for two or three different personalities (Kazimierz Nowak, Hipperkorn, and possibly a dreaded Nanów), the first of which leapt from a touring chronobus in the 20th century where he hoped to find the inventor of time travel, Professor Tarantoga. —Michael Main
W kilku słowach: w naszym społeczeñstwie decyduje o losie człowieka ranga intelektualna. Ludzie wartoœciowi, o zdolnoœciach wybitnych, mają prawo do całego, własnego ciała. Ja właœnie byłem takim, byłem samodzielnym, suwerennym meżczyznę!
translate Briefly, in our society the fate of a person depends on his intellectual level. Valuable people with outstanding abilities have the right to their entire body. I was just that, I was an independent, sovereign man!
A pencil sketch of an odd bird standing on the head of a dog-like robot with a full moon in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Wyprawa profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga’s voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) 19 years before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]
Oh, tensor! Oh, turbulent perturbation! Some time before Professor Tarantoga invented a time machine and met a schizophrenic man from the fourth millennium, he apparently invented a transporter that took him and his new assistant Chybek to a series of progressively more advanced civilizations, the last of which included a barefaced cook who had an embarrasing accident in the cosmic kitchen, resulting in mankind (and indirectly resulting in time travel for the professor and Chybek). —Michael Main
I znów mi się przypaliło—jedno spiralne ramie, od spodu, na trzysta parseków—i znowu wybiegła mi słonecznica, i ścięło się, i będzie zgęstek, i powstanie białko, przeklęte białko! I znowu będzie ewolucja, i ludzkość, i cywilizacja, i będę się musiał tłumaczyć, usprawiedliwiać, składać we dwoje, przepraszać, że to niechcący, że przez przypadek . . . Ale to wy, nie ja!
translate And I got burned again—one spiral arm, underneath, three hundred parsecs—and again a sunflower came out of me and it was choked and there will be a bundle of white, cursed protein! And there will be evolution again, and humanity and civilization, and I will have to justify, justify, put together, apologize that it’s accidentally, that by accident . . .
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Voyages of Ijon Tichy 11

Podróż siódma

  • Journey seven
  • The Seventh Voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Niezwyciężony i inne opowiadania by Stanisław Lem (Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1964)
What do you do when your one-man spaceship loses an argument with a meteor, and the only way to repair the rudder demands two people? “The Seventh Voyage” is the eleventh tale of Stanisław Lem’s space traveler Ijon Ticvhy, but I believe it’s the first where the hero also wrangles with time. —Michael Main
— Zaraz — odparł wolno, nawet nie ruszając palcem. — Dzisiaj jest wtorek. Jeżeli ty jesteś środowy i do tej chwili we środę jeszcze nie są naprawione stery, to z tego wynika, że coś przeszkodzi nam w ich naprawieniu, ponieważ w przeciwnym razie, ty, we środę, nie nakłaniałbyś już mnie do tego, abym ja, we wtorek, wspólnie je z tobą naprawiał. Więc może lepiej nie ryzykować wyjścia na zewnątrz?
translate “Just a minute,” I replied, remaining on the floor. ”Today is Tuesday. Now if you are the Wednesday me, and if by that time on Wednesday the rudder still hasn’t been fixed, then it follows that something will prevent us from fixing it, since otherwise you, on Wednesday, would not now, on Tuesday, be asking me to help you fix it. Wouldn’t it be best, then, for us to not risk going outside?”
An abstract drawing, possibly of a person in a spacesuit with a blue nebula of some sort poofing out of a projectile.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Powrót z gwiazd

No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Undetermined Time Travel
Novelette

The Voyages of Ijon Tichy 20

Podróż dwudziesta

  • Journey twenty
  • The Twentieth Voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Dzienniki gwiazdowe, expanded third edition, by Stanisław Lem, (Czytelnik, 1971)
After the time mish-mash of Ijon Tichy’s seventh voyage, it wasn’t clear whether Ijon would ever ply the channels of time again, but here he is, traveling back in time to persuade himself to go forward in time and take up the helm of THEOHIPPIP—a.k.a. Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyoerputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. It takes a few attempts for older Ijon to convince younger Ijon to head to the future on a one-man chronocykl, but when he does, the younger Ijon begins the unexpectedly hard task of righting history’s wrongs. As a sophisticated time traveler yourself, you’ll spot what’s happening early on, while you also get a tour of history from the formamtion of the Solar System to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. You’ll also recognize the fun Lem has at the expense of the bureaucracies of mid-20th-century Poland. —Michael Main
Zresztą Bosch nie powstrzymał się od niedyskrecji. W „Ogrodzie uciech ziemskich,” w „piekle muzycznym” (prawe skrzydło tryptyku) stoi w samym środku dwunastoosobowy chronobus. I co miałem z tym robić?
translate Even so, Bosch couldn’t refrain from certain indiscretions. In the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” in the very center of the “Musical Hell” (the right wing of the triptych), stands a twelve-seat chronobus. Not a thing I could do about it.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a broomstick time machine with a bicycle saddle and handle bars, a.k.a. the chronocycle.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Die seltsamen Begegnungen des Prof. Tarantoga

  • The strange encounters of Professor Tarantoga
  • [writer unknown], directed by Charles Kerremans
  • (ZDF, West Germany, 4 December 1978)
We have no details on the German remake of Wyprawa profesora Tarantogi except that Lem adaptation was humorless. —Michael Main
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Professor Tarantoga und sein seltsamer Gast

According to Fernsehen der DDR, the German adaptation of Lem’s script finds the science-obsessed Professor Tarantoga with a strange guest who calls himself Novak (or maybe Hipperkorn) and claims to hail from fourth-millennium Mars where he quulles. part from the bit about quuelling, this certainly sounds like the 1963 Polish script that we read, but we don't know whether it was expanded or revised. —based on Ffernsehen der DDR
Volkmar Kleinert (as Novak-Kleinert) and Eberhard Esche (as Professor Tarantoga) are in deep conversation behind a lab bench loaded with glassware and other equipment.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel