Stanislaw Lem - More Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Maybe Pirx had been wrong. Ironically, he was bothered by the theatricality of what he had done, a gesture inspired by Poe. He had trapped Cornelius by using his favorite author, whose manner he himself had always found contrived, irritating, whose fake corpses returning from the grave to point a blood-stained finger at the murderer failed to persuade him of life’s horror, which, as Pirx knew from experience, was more mocking than precious. This same discrepancy held for Mars, as viewed by two succeeding generations, during which it went from an unreachable red spot in the night sky, displaying semi-intelligible signs of an alien intelligence, to a quotidian terrain of grinding labor, political machination, and intrigue; a world of enervating windstorms, clutter, shipwrecks; a place from which to behold Earth’s poetic blue sparkle, but also one that could inflict a killing. The immaculate—because imperfectly perceived—Mars of early astrography had faded, leaving only those Greek and Latin names having the ring of an alchemist’s incantations; the actual terrain by now bore the imprints of heavy boots. The epoch of high-minded theoretical debate had set below the horizon and, in perishing, had revealed its true face: a dream nourished by its own futility of fulfillment. All that remained was the Mars of tedious travail, of budgeting, and of such grimy, dun-gray dawns as the one in which Pirx now went, proof in hand, to the final session.

The Chain of Chance

The Cyberiad

The Futurological Congress

The Investigation

The Invincible

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Memoirs of a Space Traveler

Mortal Engines

A Perfect Vacuum

Return from the Stars

Solaris

The Star Diaries

Tales of Pirx the Pilot

English translation copyright © 1982 by Stanislaw Lem

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 757 third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

The translation of “The Hunt” originally appeared in Mortal Engines by Stanislaw Lem. English translation copyright © 1976 by The Seabury Press. Reprinted by permission of The Continuum Publishing Corporation, New York.

library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Lem, Stanisław.

More tales of Pirx the pilot.

Translation of: Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie.

“A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”

Contents: Pirx's tale—The accident—The hunt—[etc.]

I. Title.

PG7158.L390613 1982 891.8'537 80-8753

ISBN 0-15-162138-1 AACR2

Printed in the United States of America

First edition

B C D E