In the highly unlikely event that a science-fiction writer is deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize in the near future, the most likely candidate would be … Stanislaw Lem…. [Mr. Lem] writes in the European tradition, which treats science fiction not as a subliterary commercial genre but as a valid narrative strategy….

By any standard, Mr. Lem is a major writer; he is also a writer with many voices. A restless intellect who puts different pieces of himself into different books, he has created no single work that can be said to encapsulate his vision. "Tales of Pirx the Pilot" (first collected in Polish in 1968) shows Mr. Lem at his most accessible. With a minimum of philosophical speculation, social satire and absurdist humor, he offers a series of what appear to be technological detective stories, set in a common future that is at least as plausible as the world depicted nightly on the 7 o'clock news….

Mr. Lem evokes [his] world with meticulously detailed descriptions that come across quite well in translation…. (p. 7)

At times, Mr. Lem lays on the technological details so heavily that one is tempted to call the result not science fiction but "engineering fiction." Yet the dense texture he builds up is essential to the game he is playing. In each story, something major goes wrong; usually, it is up to Pirx to solve the problem before he and other people are killed. The details are presented in such a way that the reader feels he is being dared to solve the mystery before Pirx does. Pirx does indeed solve each mystery—but the key is always a scientific fact or some "glitch" in the hardware that the reader could not reasonably be expected to know about. If the reader feels cheated, that is precisely the reaction Mr. Lem is aiming for. The problems facing Pirx are not amenable to purely rational analysis, even when Pirx believes they are. In short, man's creations are not to be trusted. (pp. 7, 33)

Linked together in the struggle against an implacable universe, flesh and metal, man and tool have somehow merged [in the book's final story]. The result is more terrifying than reassuring. If this is where the struggle inevitably leads, should we pull back now? Pirx clearly thinks not. For Mr. Lem's further thoughts on the subject, the interested reader will want to consult his larger oeuvre. (p. 33)