Introductions

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.

"Inspection at the Scene of the Crime" is one of the most original of Lem's novels.  At first glance a political satire, best understood by the witnesses of the cold war, "Inspection..." is  a serious intellectual attempt at creating a model of a future civilization.  How to secure an equilibrium, safety and – for individuals – a meaning of existence?  What technology should replace Nature or God? How to address the emptiness and suffering that even this protective, but "cold" and impersonal technology cannot remove from the life of planet's inhabitants?  Ijon Tichy, getting to know the remote Encja, seeks answer to these questions – and many others.

At a first glance "The Investigation" is an old-fashioned, British novel. The more we get to know the mystery, the more remote its solution seems. At the same time the world within the novel – from a good old set of a conventional "crime" - turns to a modern vision of overcrowded world of chaos, the labyrinths of which need to be searched for new guides - not necessarily trustworthy ones.

"The Hospital of Transfiguration" marks the beginning of Lem's writing.  It is a different novel – contemporary, even a „war novel”. Yet the author managed – within the confinement of a psychiatric hospital, separated from the outside world – to stage a drama of one man strangely torn between his mind and body, desperately seeking meaning of life and trying to save his ethical instinct in the face of the new European nihilism  attacking both from the outside and from the inside – in the form of a disease of the soul. Contrary to what might seem in "Hospital of Transfiguration" lie the roots of the most important of Lem's science fiction works.