Tales ofPirxthe Pilot is a science fiction stories collection by Polish authorStanisław Lem, about a spaceshippilot named Pirx. The first collection of stories about Pirx was published in 1965 in the Soviet Union in Russian under the title Охота на Сэтавра. It was translated in Latvian as Petaura medības in 1966. In Poland a more complete collection was published in 1968, and translated to English in two parts in 1979 and 1982. Pirx stories include both philosophical and comic elements. They have been added to the required curriculum for Polish junior-high school students in the 1990s.
Pirx universe
From various details it may be concluded that the stories are set in the 21st or 22nd centuries, in a futuristicWestern world, however without the "Iron Curtain". "The romantic times of astronautics have long gone" and mankind is busy colonizing the Solar System, has some settlements on the Moon and Mars, and is even beginning the exploration of the other star systems. Pirx is a cadet, a pilot, and finally a captain of a merchant spaceship, and the stories relate his life and various things that happen to him during his travels between the Earth, Moon, and Mars.
Pirx
In a way, Pirx is as an ordinary "working man" who unlike traditional heroic space pilots has little if anything heroic about him. He sometimes finds himself in extreme situations, which he overcomes mostly through ordinary common sense and average luck. In particular, in the story The Inquest, Lem puts forth the idea that what is perceived a human weakness is in fact an advantage over a perfect machine. In this tale Pirx defeats the robot, because a human can hesitate, make wrong decisions, have doubts, but a robot cannot.
Stories
Tales of Pirx the Pilot was translated by Louis Iribarne. More Tales of Pirx the Pilot was also translated by Iribarne, with the assistance of Magdalena Majcherczyk. An exception is "The Hunt", translated by Michael Kandel. Tales of Pirx the Pilot
reviewed More Tales of Pirx the Pilot for White Dwarf #42, and stated that "The perfect thinking machine is never perfect because it's been built by fallible us. 'A robot that can match man mentally and not be capable of lying or cheating is a fantasy.' So much for Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics!"
