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...