"Pirx The Pilot" by Stanislaw Lem and Louis Iribarne: An Exciting Tale of Adventure!

John K Calkins: The stories of Pirx the Pilot pose questions just as relevant as when it was written, and is an engaging read!

United States on Aug 26, 2023

Kindle Customer: One of my favourite books from Lem.

Germany on Aug 05, 2023

Julen: Stanislav Lem is one of the best ever sci-fi writers. This particular book is increíble funny with awesome characters and absorbing plots. Fully recommend if you like sci- fi reading.

United Kingdom on Apr 14, 2023

TinyWanda: These are all very nice science fiction stories, but they certainly don't seem to be written by Stanislaw ( ! )
I just finished Cyberiad, and that was a collection of very crazy stories concerning two robots that created a lot of zany machines, accompanied by morality tales !?!?
But Pirx is a perfectly ordinary rocket pilot/navigator in The Earth System, without aliens or anything particularly crazy going on. Pirx solves a series of mysteries with absolutely ordinary physics and deductive ingenuity.
The final story concerns a insane robot and the moment that I met Terminus; the reactor repairing robot, I so much wanted to see him rebuilt and repaired to his pristine functioning self, but that was not to be his fate !!!
It has a very sad ending. ( ! )
This collection more closely resembles a Sherlock Holmes collection of short stories set in space, as seen by a perfectly conventional science fiction writer, from the 1950s or 60s and envisioning what they believed to be the 21st century ???
Complete with Dials and Switches and chain smoking astronauts !?

United States on Mar 05, 2023

Brian: San interesting read about a guy who goes from a careless cadet to an experienced navigator.

Lots of different scenarios, lots of different characters (though they're all American/European and all men). And a robot. No aliens, though.

Canada on Oct 16, 2022

colski: I'm fairly new to Lem's writings (although very familiar with the movie versions of Solaris). I recently read Eden, which I found addictive in it's descriptions of an alien planet and it's almost cold, methodical way of storytelling. Pirx is different, in that there is humour (often bleak and black), and a kind of steampunk, industrially pessimistic outlook on what the future will look like. It put me in mind of Ridley Scott's vision of space travel from Alien, oily, noisy ships constantly needing repaired, clanking chains, leaking reactors, grime everywhere, and I think this atmosphere is part of the whole vibe that appealed to me. This book is a quick, easy read, but also thoughtful in a world-weary way.

United Kingdom on Nov 10, 2020

xxx: Thirty years ago, I read with enthusiasm all works by Stanislaw Lem, in a german translation. Now I bought this english edition for my children, but I am a bit disappointed. First, this is only a selection; the english edition seems divided into two volumes, and the other "More Tales of Pirx the Pilot" appears not in this reprint (but is still available on amazon).
This book contains "Test", "The Conditioned Reflex", "On Patrol", "The Albatross", and "Terminus"; it does not contain "The Hunt", "The Accident", "Pirx's Tale", "The Investigation", "Ananke" (ad-hoc translation of the german titles). The printing of the book is optically a bit unpleasant to read, like a cheap paperback of the 1970s and 80s: we can do better now, but apparently not in this book. And I found the translation to be sometimes irritating. Wikipedia comments that Lem is difficult to translate, and this book confirms that. Sometimes the word choice makes no sense,
when I compare it to the german translation. I do not know what the polish original says, but I assume it follows some logic in the scientific-technical aspects of the story. And sometimes the word choice seems odd, like calling the cribsheet...

United States on Jan 22, 2020

ohwhatever: I love this book. I had read Lem's _Fiasco_ in college. Sort of. It was required reading, which is maybe why I really had trouble reading it. I don't like being told what kind of fiction to read. But, these tales of Pirx the pilot are just cute little short stories. There's not any sex in here, as in any Piers Anthony book. No, it's just fun science fiction, told with an almost gritty down-to-earth quality (in this translation by Louis Iribarne, assisted by Magdalena Majcherczyk and Michael Kandel).

Somewhere, I read that certain translations of Lem lack some of the puns that would be found in the original Polish version. I don't know Polish, so I don't know what I'm missing. However this translation was very funny to me. I loved how the translation gives it an almost William Gibson/Vonnegut candor to the first-person narrative. 'Dunno how well it translated from the original.

There is a theme running throughout all the stories in this collection; it has to do with artificial intelligence and human's fear of them. Very thought provoking.

United States on Nov 30, 2011

Archie: As the title implies, this is the sequel to "Tales of Pirx the Pilot" and I would recommend reading that book first, because the stories go in chronological order. There are five stories in "More Tales of Pirx the Pilot", and they describe Pirx's adventures and activities, mainly in the Solar System, although "The Accident" is set on a rocky planet orbiting a distant star. One of the themes is the failure of technology, including robots, computers and spaceships, and how humans try to cope with it. Of course, some of the problems are due to humans themselves, being imperfect, having eccentricities and making mistakes. The stories are ingeniously plotted, and their mysteries have surprising resolutions. I would recommend this to anyone who likes Lem's other books, or science fiction in general.

United Kingdom on Nov 17, 2009

Thadeus McMoneybags: Makes for a great read. Each story is strong on its own, and most are short enough to read in one sitting. In these tales we see Pirx has matured from a bemused rookie into a somewhat world-weary expert pilot.

Pirx's adventures take him from the vastness of space to the colonies on mars and on the moon, as well as to an uninhabited earth-like planet who's rocky spires beg to be conquered.

The focus of most of the stories is artificial intelligence gone awry and man's over-reliance on technology. All are written with Lem's trademark humor, technological realism, and eye for human character traits. A must-have for Lem fans, and a great buy for sci-fi lovers in general.

United States on Sep 30, 2008