More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot (Harvest Book) [Paperback]

Stanislaw Lem (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: September 26, 1983

Commander Pirx, who drives space vehicles for a living in the galaxy of the future, here faces a new series of intriguing adventures in which robots demonstrate some alarmingly human characteristics. Translated by Louis Iribarne, assisted by Magdalena Majcherczyk and Michael Kandel. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Editorial Reviews

Review

Five more tales featuring Pirx - a bumbling rookie in the original Tales (1979), now a seasoned and level-headed (but coolly cerebral) space jockey. The first three pieces are short, ironic, and somewhat thin on ideas: Pirx fails to intercept a drifting alien hulk thanks to a shipboard comedy of errors; he searches for a robot that has inexplicably cut loose to go mountain climbing; and he survives a close encounter with a berserk mining robot. The two long yarns, unfortunately, are not so much fiction as rather pedantic reflections on the nature of artificial intelligence: a choppy and overinvolved Turing test, in which Pirx must identify (and foil the murderous plans of) the robot among his crew as they fly through the rings of Saturn; and a talky, motionless analysis of why an intelligent computer aboard an experimental ship went neurotically haywire and crashed on Mars. A ruminative, often discursive bunch, wanting in urgency and drama - without the mature idea-wrestling of last year's Memoirs of a Space Traveler. (Kirkus Reviews )

Language Notes

Text: English, Polish (translation)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (September 26, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156621436
• ISBN-13: 978-0156621434
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,121,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many magazines, including the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works, including Solaris.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down to earth, so to speak, April 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Lem, as always, comes through. In some of his other work he takes on philosophy, science, religion, usually with a humorous strain; in this book, and its predecessor, Tales of Pirx the Pilot, he chooses to write straight hard SF. However, the image usually conjured up by 'hard' SF is Asimov, Heinlen, and so on, meaning writing anchored on scientific devices and with generally far less time spent on character development. Pirx is a welcome antidote. He is an engineer and pilot, grounded in a reality made up not of quantum-physical theories but of nuts and bolts. He's a professional and strictly blue-collar. REading this book might give you an idea of what the future REALLY will be like.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cannot keep it on my bookshelf, August 13, 2007

By 

Elizabeth Melvin (Killeen, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

As a teacher of reluctant readers, I cannot keep copies of this book on my shelves. I used to introduce Stanislaw Lem to the students first, but this intimidated them. After I changed to letting the stories hook them first, I have found all of his books disappearing. They are fascinated by irreverence and humour in quality writing. I cannot complain about the books disappearing; they are reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the future our jobs will be cool, and we'll still hate them, April 17, 2009

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Lem's vision of the future is probably closer than what we'd see from most other writers. When other authors envision grand spires rising into the stars and sleek spaceships careening through the void, captained by dashing pilots and heroic crews, Lem seems to realize that when we get there, the future will be populated by people. People like us, who will be mechanics and engineers and scientists, whose job will be to make sure all these complicated pieces of equipment that send us shakily climbing into the stars won't fall apart or go haywire. It will be scary and boring and exhilarating and mundane. Just like your job now.

In this second volume of Pirx stories, our hero is the same and not the same. Where in the first volume we met him as a bumbling pilot learning the ropes and discovering solutions by bucking conventions and not accepting what he was told, here he's a seasoned and established pilot, much calmer than before, with none of the awkwardness of his earlier self. It feels like a whole different character at times and the stories have changed slightly, to more cerebral mysteries that don't have easy answers, like if Isaac Asimov had started to get really cryptic. All of these tend to revolve around robots or technology. In two of them, Pirx and company go hunting for a robot, and while the stories themselves are slight, there's a haunting atmosphere to it, as Pirx discovers that just because you program something doesn't mean you understand it.

The other two are puzzles, with one showing Pirx under review for a run gone poorly . . . in that he's faced with the fact that one of his crew is a robot and may be trying to sabotage things. The other has him investigating a crash (and the slow motion destruction of the ship while the ground crew watches helplessly is both more dramatic and eerie than any Star Wars special effect) . . . these tales mostly revolve around talk as he debates ideas with different characters before either the solution presents itself or we discover what Pirx knew all along.

This is not exciting, action packed SF, but it is thought provoking and worth it just for the feel alone, of a future feel of grit and errors and dust and failure and people who are just cashing a paycheck so they can get to the weekend. Perhaps a bit flatter than the first volume (nothing really comes close to the robot banging out the Morse code last words of a crew) but still worth a read if you're a Lem fan or want to discover how realistic science-fiction isn't necessarily an oxymoron.