Memoirs of a Space Traveler

Lem had several characters that he retuned to through several novels and many short stories. Ijon Tichy, the narrator and space traveler in this collection of stories, also appears in The Star Diaries, The Futurological Congress, and Peace on Earth. He is an explorer and scientific authority, sometimes the protragonist of the story and sometimes merely the narrator of events. The Ijon Tichy stories usually take a scientific theory or process and spin out a ridiculous series of events. In 'The EighteenthVoyage' Tichy works to seed the Big Bang in such as way as to 'improve' the universe and human nature (this goes badly). 'Let Us Save the Universe' takes the problem of space pollution and biohacking to absurd extremes. In 'Doctor Diagoras' a scientist explores self-organizing mechanisms and polymers, until he discovers that his 'kybernoids' are using him as a communication device. All of the stories in this current edition were published in the 1971 Polish edition of The Star Diaries" but were not included in the English-language editions published in 1976. 'Memoirs of a Space Traveler' appeared in English in 1982. This current edition includes a story, 'Professor A. Donda' that was in the original Polish edition, appearing in English for the first time in the 2017 Pro Auctore edition. Four of the stories originally appeared in English in The New Yorker: 'The Eighteenth Voyage,' 'The Twenty-fourth Voyage,' 'The Washing Machine Tragedy,' and 'Let Us Save the Universe.'"--