SOURCE: “The Pseudo-Utopian Cosmographies of Stanislaw Lem,” in Utopian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring, 1998, pp. 122–48.

In the following essay, Jurich examines the presentation of “pseudo-utopias” in Lem's fiction. Jurich holds that Lem reveals the insidious oppression and self-destruction inherent in false promises of ideal social order and scientifically engineered freedom through his depiction of pseudo-utopias.

“… it turns out that today there are more lunatics in any given minute than all the people who lived on Earth for the last several dozen generations. It is as if all previous humanity consisted, today, of madmen. … The picture of what people do to people, to humiliate them, degrade them, exploit them, whether in sickness, in health, in old age, in childhood, in disability—and this incessantly, every minute—can stun even a confirmed misanthrope. …”

—Lem, One Human Minute, 16.

“One could say that the job of literature is not primarily to entertain, move...