Mortal Engines

by Stanislaw Lem

Other authorsMichael Kandel (Translator)

Paperback, 1982-01

Status

Available

Call number

PG7158.L39 M6

Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Bard (New York, 1982). 1st Bard printing. 270 pages. $2.95.

Description

These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Lem' s fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be. " Astonishing is not too strong a word for these tales" (Wall Street Journal). Translated and with an Introduction by Michael Kandel.

User reviews

LibraryThing member trurl

(Review for the Finnish-language edition Konekansan satuja ja tarinoita.)

The stories are mostly the same as in the English language book Mortal Engines (with some stories from The Cyberiad added). Similar to The Cyberiad, but somehow less thought-provoking.

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LibraryThing member delta351

I believe this is an unappreciated gem of Lem short stories. My favorites so far:

Erg the Self Inducting- Fairy tale story of a princess imprisoned by a vengeful villian, and the efforts of some very interesting heroes to rescue her.

Micron & Gigant- Lem story about the creation of the universe.

Typical story line of a contest between two over-achieving robots. A very simple story, but I thought it was really clever.

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LibraryThing member jamesd.b1

this book has a original idea. there is lots of adveture and betrayl. I have given this book a five star because of the idea of the book.

It is a coty eat city world. Tom Natsworthy from London betraid by his hero is pushed out the garbage chute. Taking a giant adventure with pirates, airhaven (a

flating city) and stalkers. in the end London gets blown up when its super wepon blows up.

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LibraryThing member iansales

I somehow got it into my head I needed to read more Lem, but I suspect I like the idea of Lem more than I like the fiction of Lem. Which is not to say this collection of short stories is bad. But I can’t say I agree with the person who collated the collection, Michael Kandel, who loves Lem’s

“robot fables” so much he chose to bring them all together into one book. Because while they’re clever little fairy tales, with one or two clever puns, they do get a bit wearying en masse. Happily, the book is rounded off with an Ijon Tichy story, a Pilot Pirx story, and one which is completely unrelated to the others in the book but is still about robots. This is not the best sf collection in the world, and even Lem’s snide bleakness can’t hide the datedness of some of the stories.

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LibraryThing member fpagan

Probably not the best choice of book for just my second exposure to Lem's often-lauded writing. It contains 12 short stories and 2 novellas. The short stories, some of which are mere vignettes, are techno-fairy tales about robots. The longer story entitled "The Hunt" is about an intelligent mining

robot running amok on Luna. The still longer and more finely written story entitled "The Mask" starts with a fem-android describing her experience of coming to (artificial) consciousness and then takes a radical turn.

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LibraryThing member thomnottom

From what I've read a lot of this is probably better in the original Polish. I did enjoy the mixture of robotic sci-fi and classic fairy tale structures. Some of the stories were very engaging, others came across as needing to be fleshed out more. Frequently the sci-fi elements felt lacking. Not a

must read, but encouraged me to seek out more Lem.

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LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba

This is basically a book of Fairy Tales if Robots Ruled the world - I liked it, however, at times, the stories felt a bit outdated, like why would their be a princess robot- or why do robots even have gender? However, the stories are written in the 70's, in Soviet Era Poland, so that would factor

into these stories as well.

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