Authors: Stanislaw Lem
S
tanislaw Lem wrote
The Star Diaries (Dzienniki gwiazdowe)
over a period of twenty years, adding installments to each new edition. But the numbering of the Voyages conceals their true chronology; the Seventh appeared in 1964, the Fourteenth in 1957, the Eighteenth in 1971, the Twenty-second in 1954, and so on. Lem does not intend these adventures of Ijon Tichy to be read in the order in which they were written. That order however—22, 23, 25, 11, 12, 13, 14, 7, 8, 28, 20, 21—does reflect his development as a writer. For though there is much consistency of theme throughout the
Diaries
(the making fun of man’s supremacy in the Universe, the parodying of history, of time travel), the reader, looking
chronologically,
will find a definite shift from playful anecdote to pointed satire to outright philosophy.
The philosophical essay, when Lem began his career in the early ’50s, stood apart from his other genres, the “straight” science fiction, the comic tales and fables. But gradually the boundary between fiction and nonfiction blurred, so that by the ’70s Lem was—and still is—producing works which cannot easily be classified as either. For example,
Imaginary Magnitude (Wielkość urojona)
is a collection of ponderous introductions to nonexistent books. Much to the discomfort of his critics, and to the disappointment of many of his fans, who have pleaded, “Write us more things like
Solaris,”
Lem is not content to repeat his previous successes; he continues to follow his own difficult drummer.
The Star Diaries
offers only one example of this stubborn and ever restless individuality.
My translation was done from the 1971 Polish fourth edition. It does not include the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy (to which group
The Futurological Congress,
The Seabury Press, 1974, belongs), where the action takes place on Earth, nor the Eighteenth Voyage (in which Tichy is responsible—or rather, to blame—for creating the world), nor the Twenty-fourth. The latter can be found in Darko Suvin’s
Other Worlds, Other Seas,
Random House, 1970. There was a Twenty-sixth Voyage too, a cold war satire, which the author later discarded, more for esthetic than political reasons. Also, the last few pages of the Twenty-second Voyage have been omitted.
The name “Tichy,” pronounced
Tee-
khee, suggests in Polish the word “quiet”
(cichy,
pronounced
Chee-
khee), which some may find in keeping with the narrator’s character.