The Star Diaries by Stanisław Lem
"The Star Diaries" by Stanisław Lem is a collection of imaginative tales that blend elements of science fiction and travel literature, exploring themes of cultural discovery and human nature. Written over approximately two decades, the work showcases Lem's diverse storytelling abilities, drawing comparisons to the adventurous narratives of Marco Polo, the fantastical voyages of Sinbad, and the satirical critiques of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels." Central to the collection is the character Ijon Tichy, whose adventures address complex themes such as the shortcomings of humanity and the often ironic twists of fate.
In stories like "The Seventh Voyage," Tichy encounters various versions of himself while attempting to solve a technological problem, highlighting the discord between human rationality and emotion. Another tale, "The Eighth Voyage," humorously critiques human history and attempts at cosmic understanding, using a dream-like frame to deliver a satirical message on human violence and absurdity. The narratives are rich with Lem's unique blend of humor and philosophical inquiry, ultimately questioning the efficacy of human intentions and the nature of creation itself, as seen in "The Twentieth Voyage." This collection invites readers to reflect on humanity's place in the universe, the consequences of its actions, and the often comedic failures of progress.
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The Star Diaries by Stanisław Lem
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Dzienniki gwiazdowe, 1957 (English translation, 1976 and 1982)
Type of work: Short stories
The Work
Written over a period of approximately two decades, The Star Diaries constitutes a diverse collection of comic tales playing on the full range of world travel literature and of science fiction’s reworking of that literature, while adding much that is Lem’s own to an already rich tradition. Suggestive at one moment of Marco Polo’s accounts of cultural discovery, at another of the pure fantasy of Sinbad’s voyages, and at still another of the acerbic satire of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, these tales exhibit a variety of styles and purposes reflective of Lem’s multifaceted genius.
One story, “The Seventh Voyage,” exemplifies the book’s exuberant diversity. The story relates Tichy’s attempts to repair the rudder of his spacecraft after an accident in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Although traveling alone, Tichy discovers that the repair job requires the cooperative efforts of two people, an indication of technological human’s lack of foresight. He finds himself with multiple opportunities to solve his problem, however, when he falls through one after another of the 147 gravitational vortices in the local space-time continuum and encounters diverse other versions of himself. At each new encounter, Tichy exhibits a different way in which humanity’s mixed rational and emotional nature prevents productive cooperation, and it is only when two child Tichys ignore the alternating violence and committee-directed stagnation of the adult Tichys that the repair work is completed. A brilliant parody of tales of paradoxical time travel, like Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies,” “The Seventh Voyage” is also a sly commentary on human social deficiency.
In “The Eighth Voyage,” Tichy represents the earth at the General Assembly of the United Planets as humanity is being considered for membership. After nearly setting off an interplanetary confrontation by mistaking a diplomat from Rhohch for a soda machine, he ineptly attempts to help prepare humankind’s case for galactic recognition by discussing the destruction of Hiroshima, explaining that most governmental funds are spent on the military, and running through an inventory of ingenious bombs. During the debate over Earth’s admission, a knowledgeable alien gives an account of humanity’s place within galactic taxonomy. Roughly translated, the nomenclature he uses labels humanity as “deviate screwheaded corpseloving abominable howlmouthed stinking meemies,” and much of what follows is an account of human bloodshed. The horrors of the human past turn out not to be humanity’s fault, however, as a second alien reveals that two intoxicated creatures named Gorrd and Lod purposely set off the monstrous evolutionary process that produced humanity by dumping spoiled food on Earth, giving its molecules a twist to the left (etymologically, the “sinister” direction of evil), and then sneezing on the abominable mixture. Tichy suddenly awakens to discover that this voyage was literally a nightmare, but the dream vision framing device, common to much past theological literature, hardly lessens the satiric message of human brutality and pretensions to divine origin.
“The Twentieth Voyage” also takes up the theme of origins and suggests that, if there have, indeed, been good intentions behind the shaping of the cosmos and the directing of human destiny, those intentions have gone sadly astray. In this tale, a reluctant Ijon Tichy is recruited to head a project called THEOHIPPIP (Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning), in essence, a bureaucratic effort to undo the mistakes of history. Tichy and his colleagues put prodigious energy into their attempts to create perfection, but like the flawed God described in the final pages of Lem’s novel Solaris, they botch the job. As they work to remake time and space, they set off ice ages, kill off the dinosaurs, destroy a planet and thereby create the asteroids, thrust the intelligent dolphin into its anomalous home in the sea, invent the biological ugliness of human sexuality, turn humans into hairless and superstitious carnivores, trigger the Diaspora and the beginnings of anti-Semitism, initiate the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, inspire the careers of Napoleon I and Adolf Hitler, cause the 1929 stock market crash, invent the atomic bomb, and in various ways become responsible for all the disasters of creation. So much for divine providence and the power of benevolent love to right every wrong.
Bibliography
Caldwell, Patrice. “Earth Mothers or Male Memories: Wilhelm, Lem, and Future Women.” In Women Worldwalkers: New Dimensions of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Jane B. Weedman. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1985.
Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. “Modeling the Chaosphere: Stanislaw Lem’s Alien Communications.” In Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science, edited by N. Katherine Hayles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Guffey, George R. “Noise, Information, and Statistics in Stanislaw Lem’s The Investigation.” In Hard Science Fiction, edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986.
Guffey, George R. “The Unconscious, Fantasy, and Science Fiction: Transformations in Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and Lem’s Solaris.” In Bridges to Fantasy, edited by George E. Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin, and Robert Scholes. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982.
Jarzebski, Jerzy. “The World as Code and Labyrinth: Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.” Translated by Franz Rottensteiner. In Science Fiction Roots and Branches: Contemporary Critical Approaches, edited by Rhys Garnett and R. J. Ellis. New York: St. Martin Press, 1990.
Lyau, Bradford. “Knowing the Unknown: Heinlein, Lem, and the Future.” In Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future, edited by George E. Slusser, Colin Greenland, and Eric S. Rabkin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Malekin, Peter. “The Self, the Referent, and the Real in Science Fiction and the Fantastic: Lem, Pynchon, Kubin, and Delany.” In Contours of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, edited by Michele K. Langford. New York: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Meesdom, Tony. “The Gods Must Be Crazy: On the Utility of Playful Chaos in the Universe of Stanislaw Lem.” In Just the Other Day: Essays on the Future of the Future, edited by Luk de Vos. Antwerp, Belgium: EXA, 1985.
Philmus, Robert M. “The Cybernetic Paradigms of Stanislaw Lem.” In Hard Science Fiction, edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986.
Potts, Stephen W. “Dialogues Concerning Human Understanding: Empirical Views of God from Locke to Lem.” In Bridges to Science Fiction, edited by George E. Slusser, George R. Guffey, and Mark Rose. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.
Slusser, George E. “Structures of Apprehension: Lem, Heinlein, and the Strugatskys.” In Science-Fiction Studies 16 (March, 1989): 1-37.
Swirski, Peter, ed. The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.
Swirski, Peter. A Stanislaw Lem Reader. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997.
Ziegfeld, Richard E. Stanislaw Lem. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985.