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None of Lem's series took so long to write; there were thirty years between the first and last tale of „The Star Diaries” (“The Advantages of the Dragon”). Author's inventiveness in creating fantastic worlds and extraordinary plots seems endless. The famous interstellar traveler Ijon Tichy on the one hand resembles baron Münchausen, on the other – Gulliver. The tales of his incredible adventures bring as many hilarious and improbable events as serious reflections on the paradoxical nature of the world, of man and of his culture - based on contradictions.
"The Invincible" is a tailor-made screenplay for a great battle film telling the story of the clash of Earthly Astronauts with a spontaneously created population of microautomata destroying all intelligence. But it is mechanical devices – also those created by man – that are programmed for a reflexive fight until self destruction. Only beings that reason can understand the strangeness and free themselves from the fatalism of destruction.
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.
"The Futurological Congress" is one of the most daringly told stories about Ijon Tichy. Tichy is invited to a futorological convention in a Latin America republic shaken by revolution. Eventually Tichy is transferred to a world where in a grotesque convolution both the utopian and anti-utopian visions of the future have been realized. Mockery of futorology – as always with Lem – is accompanied by serious reflection about human disposition for discord with reality.
"The Cyberiad" and "Robot's tales" (in the US a collection entitled “The Cosmic Carnival of Stanislaw Lem was also published) is a witty blend of traditional tales and science-fiction - there are “constructors” instead of wizards and magic; apparent miracles turn out to be the outcome of exceptional engineering capabilities. However, greedy kings, cruel and hungry for power, stem from our very own world. Just as among us, there live naive healers of the world, who believe it takes only one good idea to save humanity. In robots' states nothing good results from that. The case with us – suggests Lem – would be very similar, since neither evil nor (fortunately) good cannot be eradicated. And we will never give up telling tales.
At first glance "The Chain of Chance" is a detective story – a series of mysterious deaths of people visiting Naples' baths is examined. The protagonist, an American Astronaut, prematurely retired because of allergies, tries to solve this riddle. He experiences a number of extraordinary adventures but eventually the greatest of them all is the adventure of the mind having to find its way in the chaos of the contemporary world.
"Tales of Pirx the Pilot" one of the most favored books by Lem, is a series of adventures of a lovable Pilot-Astronaut. Pirx grows with problems he faces – the Pilot has to prove the worth of an imperfect man confronted with the world of machines and machine thinking.
"Solaris" is the most famous of Lem's novels. It had been reviewed many times in various countries and in various languages. It belongs – probably as no other Polish literary work – to the core of its genre, to the canon: a novel about contact with aliens cannot be omitted in discussions of world science fiction. Why has "Solaris" achieved this status? Probably because the book not only present the most original vision of the alien world known to science fiction, but in the most interesting and emotional way present the drama of cognition and its entanglement in literature, in telling stories that is so inseparable for human culture.
"Return from the Stars" tells the story of an Astronaut returning to Earth after a long flight. Because of Einstein's time paradox one and a half centuries have passed on Earth. The Astronaut tries to understand and accept the unfamiliar Earthly civilization that gave up risk for the sake of safety and prosperity. We are presented with a fascinating vision of "Earth as an alien planet" - in order to live there, the protagonist has to experience anew the problems of the meaning of existence, good and evil, freedom and captivity, aggression and love.
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