The Star Diaries
Authors: Stanislaw Lem
Continuum Books by Stanistaw Lem
THE INVINCIBLE
THE INVESTIGATION
MEMOIRS FOUND IN A BATHTUB
THE CYBERIAD
THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS
THE STAR DIARIES
THE SEABURY PRESS
815 SECOND AVENUE
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017
ENGLISH TRANSLATION COPYRIGHT © 1976 BY THE SEABURY PRESS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED, IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE SEABURY PRESS, INC.
ORIGINAL EDITION;
DZIENNIKI GWIAZDOWE,
PUBLISHED BY CZYTELNIK, WARSAW, 1971.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lem, Stanislaw. The star diaries.
(A Continuum book)
Translation of Dzienniki gwiazdowe.
I. Title.
PZ3.LL5395St4 PG7158.L39 891.8'5'37 75-44428
ISBN 0-8164-9283-2
Introduction to the Expanded Edition
T
his edition of the works of Ijon Tichy, being neither complete nor definitive, does represent a step forward in comparison with its predecessors. Included here are the texts of two hitherto unknown Voyages, the Eighth and the Twenty-eighth.
1
The latter provides us with new information concerning the biography of Tichy and his family, information which will interest not only the historian, but the physicist as well, for it points to a phenomenon long since suspected by me, namely, the dependence of the degree of kinship upon velocity.
2
As for the Eighth Voyage, a team of Tichologists-psycho-analysts has verified—minutes before this edition went to press—all the events which took place in the dream of I. Tichy.
3
The Interested Reader will find, in Dr. Hopfstosser’s work, a comparative bibliography on the subject, showing the influence of the dreams of other famous people, like Sir Isaac Newton and the Borgias, on the dreams of Tichy, and vice versa.
On the other hand the present volume does not include the Twenty-sixth Voyage, shown conclusively to be apocryphal. The proof of this has been supplied by a team of workers at our Institute, who used electronic-textual analysis.
4
I might add here that personally I have always considered the so-called “Twenty-sixth Voyage” to be spurious, on account of the many inaccuracies that appear in that text, regarding—among others—the Oofs (not the “Oops,” as the text gives), also the Guzzards, Meopticans and the species of the Lowths (Phlegmus Invariabilis Hopfstosseri).
Of late certain voices have been heard, which would cast doubt upon the authorship of Tichy’s writings. The press tells us that Tichy used a ghost-writer, or that he never even existed, his works having been penned—they say—by a device given the name of “Lem.” According to some extreme versions this “Lem” is even supposed to be a man. Now, anyone who has a rudimentary acquaintance with the history of space travel knows that LEM is an abbreviation for
L
UNAR
E
XCURSION
M
ODULE
, an exploratory vessel built in the U.S.A. as part of the “Apollo Project” (the first landing on the Moon). Ijon Tichy requires no defense, neither as an author nor as a traveler. Nevertheless I would like to take this opportunity to quash those ridiculous rumors once and for all. Specifically then: the LEM was indeed equipped with a small brain (electronic); that device however performed only the most narrow navigational tasks and would have been incapable of writing a single coherent sentence. About any other LEM nothing is known. We find no mention of such in the catalogs of large-scale electronic machines (viz. Nortronics, New York, 1976-9), nor in the Great Encyclopedia Cosmica (London, 1989). High time then, that this gossip, so out of keeping with the seriousness of the work at hand, ceases to distract our Tichologists, from whom much labor yet—and many years—will be needed to compile the O
PERA
O
MNIA
of I. Tichy.
—P
ROFESSOR
A. S. T
ARANTOGA
Department of Comparative Astrozoology, Fomalhaut University
on behalf of the Editorial Committee for the Publication
of the Complete Works of Ijon Tichy
and the Scientific Council of the Tichological Institute
in conjunction with the Editorial Board of the Quarterly “Tichiana”
Expanded Edition
I
t is with joy and deep emotion that we offer the Reader this new edition of the writings of Ijon Tichy, for it includes not only the texts of three hitherto unknown Voyages (the Eighteenth, the Twentieth and the Twenty-first), not only invaluable illustrations by the author’s own hand, but also an explanation of certain mysteries that have, till now, given even specialists in Tichology many a sleepless night.
As for the drawings, for a long time the Author was unwilling to part with these, claiming that he sketched stellar-planetary specimens
in flagranti
or from his private collection purely for his own amusement, that they possess neither artistic nor documentary value, since he always dashed them off in a great hurry. Yet even if they
are
scribblings—with which opinion, by the way, not all the experts agree—their use as visual aids in the reading of these texts, so often difficult and obscure, is undeniable. This is the first source of our staffs satisfaction.
Secondly, the texts of the new Voyages afford no little comfort to the mind that yearns for definitive answers to those oldest of questions which Man has put to himself and the world: namely, who exactly it was that constructed the Universe, and why thus and not otherwise it was done, also who was responsible for natural evolution and general history, the origin of intelligence, life, and other, no less important matters. And is it not a pleasant surprise indeed to discover that our illustrious Author himself played, in that creative endeavor, a major if not deciding role? We can well understand the modesty with which he defended the drawer containing those manuscripts, but equally well the delight of those who finally broke down Tichy’s resistance. It is here, too, that the reason for the gaps in the numbering of the Star Voyages comes to light. After studying this edition, the Reader will see not only why there never was a First Journey of I. Tichy, but also why there never could be, and with a little concentration he will realize that Voyage number twenty-one is at the same time the nineteenth. True, this is not immediately apparent, since the Author crossed out the last few dozen lines of the manuscript in question. For what reason? Once again, his tremendous modesty. I cannot break the oath of secrecy placed upon my lips; I have been permitted however to pull aside the curtain just a little. I. Tichy, seeing where attempts to improve prehistory and history were leading, in his capacity as Director of the Temporal Institute did something, as a result of which something the Theory of Time Vehicles and Transport never was discovered. Since at his order this discovery was undiscovered, by that very act the Telechronic Program to correct history vanished, so did the Temporal Institute and so—alas—did I. Tichy himself, being its Director. The pain caused by that loss is assuaged in part by the knowledge that we will now not have to fear any unpleasant surprises from the past (at least), and in part by the startling fact that he who tragically is no more still lives, without at all having risen from the dead. Admittedly, this circumstance is perplexing; for its full explanation we direct the Reader to the appropriate places, namely, the Twentieth and Twenty-first Voyages.
In conclusion I should like to announce the establishment in our Association of a special futurological section, which, in keeping with the spirit of the times, will make available—using the method of so-called self-realizing prognoses—those star journeys of I. Tichy which as yet he has not undertaken, nor indeed intends to.
—P
ROF
. A. S. T
ARANTOGA
on behalf of the Associated Institutes of Tichology, Tichography
and Tichonomics Descriptive, Comparative and Prognostic
SEVENTH
VOYAGE
I
t was on a Monday, April second—I was cruising in the vicinity of Betelgeuse—when a meteor no larger than a lima bean pierced the hull, shattered the drive regulator and part of the rudder, as a result of which the rocket lost all maneuverability. I put on my spacesuit, went outside and tried to fix the mechanism, but found I couldn’t possibly attach the spare rudder—which I’d had the foresight to bring along—without the help of another man. The constructors had foolishly designed the rocket in such a way, that it took one person to hold the head of the bolt in place with a wrench, and another to tighten the nut. I didn’t realize this at first and spent several hours trying to grip the wrench with my feet while using both hands to screw on the nut at the other end. But I was getting nowhere, and had already missed lunch. Then finally, just as I almost succeeded, the wrench popped out from under my feet and went flying off into space. So not only had I accomplished nothing, but lost a valuable tool besides; I watched helplessly as it sailed away, growing smaller and smaller against the starry sky.
After a while the wrench returned in an elongated ellipse, but though it had now become a satellite of the rocket, it never got close enough for me to retrieve it. I went back inside and, sitting down to a modest supper, considered how best to extricate myself from this stupid situation. Meanwhile the ship flew on, straight ahead, its velocity steadily increasing, since my drive regulator too had been knocked out by that blasted meteor. It’s true there were no heavenly bodies on course, but this headlong flight could hardly continue indefinitely. For a while I contained my anger, but then discovered, when starting to wash the dinner dishes, that the now-overheated atomic pile had ruined my very best cut of sirloin (I’d been keeping it in the freezer for Sunday). I momentarily lost my usually level head, burst into a volley of the vilest oaths and smashed a few plates. This did give me a certain satisfaction, but was hardly practical. In addition, the sirloin which I threw overboard, instead of drifting off into the void, didn’t seem to want to leave the rocket and revolved about it, a second artificial satellite, which produced a brief eclipse of the sun every eleven minutes and four seconds. To calm my nerves I calculated till evening the components of its trajectory, as well as the orbital perturbation caused by the presence of the lost wrench. I figured out that for the next six million years the sirloin, rotating about the ship in a circular path, would lead the wrench, then catch up with it from behind and pass it again. Finally, exhausted by these computations, I went to bed. In the middle of the night I had the feeling someone was shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a man standing over the bed; his face was strangely familiar, though I hadn’t the faintest idea who this could be.