Now they have the imprimatur and the distribution network of a leading university press, moreover a press with a strong emphasis on science and technology. They were reissued a couple of years ago by a Polish publisher, a project directed by Lem’s son, Tomasz, but they did not achieve wide notice. Five of the six are reprints of previously published translations, which had presumably gone out of print.

We can be sure that readers in this third group have already acquired the six Lem titles published in paperback earlier this year by MIT Press: four novels, a book of stories, and a memoir, the selection spanning his career. And of course the completists probably have a small shelf of books about Lem as well. They are likely to have multiple editions of selected titles it’s wise to have extra copies to loan, because even good friends don’t always return books they’ve borrowed. They’ve read everything, and they’ve re-read their favorites more than once or twice. The third segment, by far the smallest but not microscopic, consists of Lem completists. The second potential audience-segment consists of people who have read at least a couple of Lem’s books, maybe several more, and who know a little about him (his scathing attacks on SF, for instance, especially American SF, though he owed his fame and his vast international readership largely to devotees of that genre). They may have seen his name mentioned they may even have seen one or both of the film versions of his 1961 novel Solaris, the first by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971, the second by Steven Soderbergh in 2002 but they haven’t read any of his books. First, people who are unacquainted with the work of the Polish science-fiction writer and polymath Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). Well then, the potential audience for this piece consists of three groups.

They say-the experts, I mean-that “know your audience” is the writer’s first commandment. A Feature Review of The Invincible: A Novel

The invincible by stanislaw lem