The Star Diaries

‘What I had taken for a soft drink vending machine turned out to be the deputy chairman of the Rhohch delegation in full regalia’

The cosmic voyages of space traveller Ijon Tichy take him on strange adventures in a vast stellar wilderness – encountering clones, crazed mutinous robots and tiny beings, meeting his future self in a time loop, avoiding interplanetary diplomatic incidents and dealing with an orbiting piece of beef sirloin. Playful, absurd, irreverent and philosophical, The Star Diaries hold a satirical mirror up to humanity to examine freedom, technology and existence itself.

Translated by Michael Kandel

‘A giant of twentieth-century science fiction.’ Guardian