If you’re among those who feel an allergic reaction coming on, no blame. Right away, this will convince some readers to look elsewhere for their next book, while others will feel the delightful frisson I experienced when I started reading this novel for the first time, in the late 1970s. In the crosshairs of their field of vision was the disk of a sun that was not much hotter than a regular red dwarf. Only automatons were working on the bridge.
THE INVINCIBLE BOOK FULL
Since the journey was relatively short, rather than full hibernation they had been put into a deepened sleep in which body temperature did not drop below fifty degrees. The eighty-three men of the crew were sleeping in the tunnel-shaped hibernation chamber on the main deck. The Invincible, a class II cruiser, the largest vessel of the fleet stationed at the base in the Lyra constellation, was moving in photon sequence across a quadrant at the very edge of that cluster of stars.
Katherine Hayles until after you’ve finished the novel): Here’s how it starts (and by the way, don’t read the interesting foreword by N. Which of the six books should you take up to see if he’s your cup of tea? I nominate The Invincible, which happens to be one of my five favorites among Lem’s many books. Let us suppose that you haven’t read much Lem. We may hope that MIT and the Lem estate will work out an agreement to reissue more volumes. This latest episode-the reissue of six titles by MIT Press-is much to be celebrated, and not only by completists. “But,” you may be saying with exasperation, especially if you are in the first segment of potential readers of this piece, “why are you telling us this? We are not bibliographers! We are not Lem fanatics!” I’m telling you because it is all part of the story of the “transmission” of Lem’s work, a story loaded with ironic twists and turns. Similarly, the edition of Solaris that is still current in the US is a translation of a French translation! Bill Johnston has done a fresh translation of Solaris as well, but for the time being it is available in the US only via Audible. Published in Poland in 1964, The Invincible first appeared in English in 1973, but that version, by Wendayne Ackerman, was translated from a 1967 German translation and not directly from the Polish original. One of the six books, The Invincible, was newly translated by Bill Johnston for the set as issued under Tomasz Lem’s direction Johnston is among the foremost contemporary translators of Polish literature. Four of the six feature new introductions commissioned by MIT happily, the press retained the excellent cover art by Przemek Debowski. Now they have the imprimatur and the distribution network of a leading university press, moreover a press with a strong emphasis on science and technology. They were reissued a couple of years ago by a Polish publisher, a project directed by Lem’s son, Tomasz, but they did not achieve wide notice. Five of the six are reprints of previously published translations, which had presumably gone out of print. We can be sure that readers in this third group have already acquired the six Lem titles published in paperback earlier this year by MIT Press: four novels, a book of stories, and a memoir, the selection spanning his career. And of course the completists probably have a small shelf of books about Lem as well. They are likely to have multiple editions of selected titles it’s wise to have extra copies to loan, because even good friends don’t always return books they’ve borrowed. They’ve read everything, and they’ve re-read their favorites more than once or twice. The third segment, by far the smallest but not microscopic, consists of Lem completists. The second potential audience-segment consists of people who have read at least a couple of Lem’s books, maybe several more, and who know a little about him (his scathing attacks on SF, for instance, especially American SF, though he owed his fame and his vast international readership largely to devotees of that genre). They may have seen his name mentioned they may even have seen one or both of the film versions of his 1961 novel Solaris, the first by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971, the second by Steven Soderbergh in 2002 but they haven’t read any of his books. First, people who are unacquainted with the work of the Polish science-fiction writer and polymath Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006).
Well then, the potential audience for this piece consists of three groups. They say-the experts, I mean-that “know your audience” is the writer’s first commandment. A Feature Review of The Invincible: A Novel
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