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Lem wrote "Highcastle" at a time of greatest literary triumphs as an author of science fiction, but the book does not belong to this genre. This is a self-portrait of a writer from the times of his childhood, inquisitive, full of humor, a story about the birth and development of a personality, intelligence and imagination. With the pre-war Lvow as background Lem tell the story about adolescence - as attractive and full of surprises as his fictitious tales. Why does one go back to one's childhood? Initially, for sentimental reasons and for the reconstruction of the past world. Later, in order to understand oneself better at a mature age and, at the center of this panorama, to raise a High Castle - of meaning, a memorial of covenant between the past and the present.
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Stanislaw Lem 1921 - 2006
 The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem is both a polymath and a virtuoso storyteller and stylist. Put them together and they add up to a genius... He has been steadily producing fiction that follows the arcs and depths of his learning and a bewildering labyrinth of moods and attitudes. Like his protagonists, loners virtually to a man, his fiction seems at a distance from the daily cares and passions, and conveys the sense of a mind hovering above the boundaries of the human condition: now mordant, now droll, now arcane, now folksy, now skeptical, now haunted and always paradoxical. Yet his imagination is so powerful and pure that no matter what world he creates it is immediately convincing because of its concreteness and plentitude, the intimacy and authority with which it is occupied... read Lem for yourself. He is a major writer, and one of the deep spirits of our age.
"The New York Times Review of Books"
from The Cyberiad
 One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, naiads, and natrium. 'This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation.
"Never heard of it," said the machine.
"What? But it's only sodium. You know, the metal, the element..."
"Sodium starts with an s, and I work only in n."
"But in Latin it's natrium."
 "Look, old boy," said the machine, "if I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I'd be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It's not that easy. I can't go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium."
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The 1960s and 1970s were the era of one writer. Lem set the boundaries of the genre; Lem defined the genre; all young writers reflected Lem and competed with Lem. How could one author so completely dominate an entire literary category? It’s simple: he was quite simply a genius, with a mind that could fully display its powers precisely within the domain of science fiction.
T. Kolodziejczak "Words Without Borders"
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