| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oddly Fascinating Space Adventures,
By "professortrottelreiner" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Paperback)
This collection of stories by Lem is based around a chubby cadet by the name of Pirx. The character is plucky and gets into all sorts of fixes. I found the first short story the most surprising and fun to read. It's most vivid antagonist are two insects, and it's wildly creative. Another very good story is this one about a robot re-living over and over the last few hours before the death of an entire ship (this was before Pirx's time). A very haunting tale. Overall, a great collection!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The standard by which 'hard' sf should be judged,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Paperback)
By intelligently (and often humorously) deflating many conventions and cliches of sf, the author reminds us that it is, first and foremost, a literature of ideas and not an escapist genre. In this collection of short stories, we follow protagonist Pirx through his training as a cadet and go along with him on a few routine space flights, most of them plagued by red tape. Lem seems to almost take glee in de-glamorizing space travel, but the fact remains that something about it fascinates and terrifies us, as it does his character Pirx. The truth of the matter, as the author so deftly illustrates in these tales, is that space is a void. The only thing that makes it come alive as a place of adventure or peril is the human imagination, which puts our hero Pirx in more jeopardy than any naturally occuring dangers. _Tales of Pirx the Pilot_ ranks as a top-notch book because, like all good sf, it does not allow a reader to run away from reality but makes one confront it thoughtfully
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Real Deal,
This review is from: Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Paperback)
Lem's Pirx is compelling and cool. The science is barely fictional and always thought provoking. The plots, however, are a little more predictable than the sequel. If you're going to read one of these, I'd recommend "More".
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
See all 14 books this book cites
See all 17 books citing this book
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
|
