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 “[. . .] This is an experiment in mental monism, you know, along the time-space continuum that forms material totality.”
