Book, New cosmogony and other essays[LS]

Speculative par excellence, Lem's (1921-2006) pen never conformed to a single genre of literature, even though the author of Solaris made a name for himself in science fiction. Many of his works, on the other hand, adopt a peculiar essayistic route, which crosses unusual thematic fields cultivated and defended by fictional authors - a resource very much to the taste of Borges, but also of Rabelais and so many others that the reader's erudition can add to the list. In both cases, the Polish author remains persistent in trying to explain our place in a world that often does not seem to have a place or make sense (is the universe a game?). New Cosmogony and Other Essays makes available to the Brazilian reader an anthology of texts, selected and translated directly from Polish by Henryk Siewierski, representative of this search that rethinks technology, science and even history, in order to break the communication barrier - between people, between forms - and questioning the limits of fiction and gravity, in every sense of the terms. Lem is serious when he makes us laugh, and he laughs when we take him too seriously.