Penguin Modern Classics: The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age

‘Most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to . . . ‘

In the strange, surreal world of The Cyberiad, outlandish events abound: two ingenious ‘constructors’ travel through a medieval universe offering their technical expertise; a machine capable of creating anything that starts with the letter ‘N’ meets an untimely end; kings oppress their people with parlour games; and PhD pirates demand ransom in knowledge rather than gold. It is a world where UFOs land silently on lawns at dawn, and where even the stars can be re-arranged for advertising purposes. In these fantastical short stories, Stanislaw Lem rewrites the laws of reality, space and language itself to take us on an anarchic and darkly comic journey through a newly imagined universe.

With an introduction by Christopher Priest