I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't read more Lem, but a friend who has read a great deal of his work related to me that Artificial Intelligence does appear in his works.
Which of Lem's books involve Artificial Intelligence?
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1I'm not sure if this should be closed. After all, how long can a list of books by one author be?– GallifreyanCommented Apr 5, 2017 at 17:47
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@Gallifreyan - Long. Consider, for example, only the list of SF books with the name "Asimov" in the byline. "Heinlein" is another ... prolific ... name.– Jeff ZeitlinCommented Apr 5, 2017 at 18:13
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4I think this question is on-topic because it's not an open-ended list, but a finite list you can complete. If you only count the fiction works, then Stanisław Lem hasn't even written that many books, all his stories easily fit on a short bookshelf. A complete list isn't easy to compile, but within the realm of possibilities for Sci Fi SE.– b_jonasCommented Jul 11, 2017 at 10:34
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4Book recommendation questions have been off-topic here since 2011. List questions are off-topic only if open-ended; finite, well-scoped list questions are OK. So I suggest you edit this question to make it sound less like a recommendation question ("appreciate any pointers") and more like a finite-list question (e.g. "which of Lem's books involve AI"). Then it's more likely to be reopened.– Rand al'Thor ♦Commented Jul 11, 2017 at 10:58
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1The visitors in Solaris might be artificial intelligences. It's not clear, but that's the point.– BuzzCommented Aug 24, 2017 at 1:29
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3 Answers
Six of the ten Pilot Pirx short stories (in the collections Tales of Pirx the Pilot and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot) use artificial intelligence as a central theme. Pirx meets robots and ship control computers that behave in an apparently strange way. He then has to quickly investigate what's happened, stop an impending crisis, or just wonder for the rest of his life whether he's done the right thing.
Although most of the Ijon Tichy stories don't have this theme, at least the story of Doctor Diagoras (in the collection Memoirs of a space traveler: further reminiscences of Ijon Tichy) is about artificial intelligences. The titular Doctor Diagoras is creating intelligent artificial beings, but not ones intended for some particular purpose, but without a plan to see what happens.
I haven't read Golem XIV, but it is definitely about an artificial intelligence too.
The Invincible also counts. Space travellers examine a planet that have strange flying insects that turn out to be miniature robots that have evolved on the planet from some technology left by a previous spaceship.
In Return from the Stars, we also indirectly witness artificial intelligence. Robots are now performing most of the job of firefighters and similar dangerous jobs, which permits for humans no longer having to risk their lives that way. This is important enough for the plot, even though we don't learn much specific about such robots.
A chapter of Imaginary Magnitude also deals with artificial intelligence, specifically with literature created by them.
The second chapter of the three chapters of One Human Minute (Biblioteka XXI. wieku) also describes a very interesting future military history with artificial intelligence taking a central role.
This is probably not an exhaustive list.
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Thanks for this! (Just wish more people read Lem so his books would show up at my local used bookstore, but I guess that's why we have the internet;)– DukeZhouCommented Jul 12, 2017 at 2:49
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I finally got around to ordering the books, and found a couple more! (See my answer:)– DukeZhouCommented Aug 8, 2017 at 22:06
Fiasco features a powerful AI which controls the spaceship Hermes.
The Invincible counts, although of course not with its principal antagonist which is neither artificial nor very intelligent. But the cyclops hovering vehicle was certainly controlled by an autonomous AI.
The protagonist of The Mask is also apparently an AI, although we can’t be certain about her exact nature.
In addition to b_jonas' excellent answer, there seem to be a couple recent additions:
- Mortal Engines
Blurb: "These fourteen science fiction stories reveal Lem’s fascination with artificial intelligence and demonstrate just how surprisingly human sentient machines can be."
- The Cyberiad
Blurb: "Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers."