The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries
Author(s)	Stanisław Lem
Original title	Polish: Dzienniki gwiazdowe
Country	Poland
Language	Polish, English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publication date	New York, 1976
Media type	Print (Paperback)

Dzienniki gwiazdowe is a 1971 collection of short stories by Polish writer Stanisław Lem around the character of space traveller Ijon Tichy. The collection was published in English in two volumes, The Star Diaries (published New York, 1976) and Memoirs of a Space Traveller (published London, 1982).

Stories

The Star Diaries

• Introduction and Introduction to the Expanded Edition, in which professor Tarantoga presents the latest information on the documentation of Ijon Tichy's exploits.
• "The Seventh Voyage", in which a spaceship defect forces Tichy through a series of time vortices, creating a multitude of temporal copies of Tichy.
• "The Eighth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy represents Earth to petition for its admission to the United Planets.
• "The Eleventh Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy travels in disguise to the planet Circia to attempt to bring an end to hostilities coming from its robot population.
• "The Twelfth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy employs Prof. Tarantoga's new invention of time acceleration on the planet of Microcephalics.
• "The Thirteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy sets out to meet Master Oh. Instead, he founds two planets (Pinta and Panta) ruled according to the Master's principles. On Pinta, people are trying to become fish using a technique called evolution by persuasion. On Panta, all inhabitants are identical clones and exchange their jobs daily.
• "The Fourteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy goes hunting for Squamp - an animal whose area is several hectares.
• "The Eighteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy helps create the cause for our universe from a single electron.
• "The Twentieth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy is forced by his future self to lead a programme to ameliorate Earth's and mankinds's history.
• "The Twenty-first Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits Dykhtonia - a civilisation which achieved total corporeal and mental plasticity after a thousand-year rule by automorphists - local equivalent of transhumanists.
• "The Twenty-second Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy learns of the troubles of evangelising extra-terrestrial civilisations.
• "The Twenty-third Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits a tiny planet, whose inhabitants save living space by frequently storing themselves as 'atom dust'.
• "The Twenty-fourth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits a civilisation, which has assigned all power to a machine to establish planetary harmony. The machine changed them all into shiny discs to be arranged in pleasant patterns across their planet.
• "The Twenty-fifth Voyage"
• "The Twenty-eighth Voyage"

Adaptations

German-language adaptations of several voyages taken by Ijon Tichy exist. In 2001 and 2002, two independent short films were made, running about 15 minutes each, directed by Dennis Jacobsen, Randa Chahoud, and Oliver Jahn (Jahn also played main character Ijon Tichy), Nora Tschirner starring as his female hologram. In 2006, the same team produced a mini series called Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot for German TV, 6 episodes, 15 minutes per episode again, which premiered March 2007 on ZDF. Both short-films are available as legal downloads from the official site of production company Bildwerke Berlin, the series is commercially available on DVD.

External links

• Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot (2007) on imdb
• Both Ijon Tichy short films downloadable from production company Bildwerke Berlin (German)
• Official homepage of the TV series (German)