Audio: Claudia Kopf reads Egon Tecchi’s seventh voyage from “Diaries of the Stars.”
Rarely has any other author in literature dealt with complex temporal phenomena as extensively as Stanislav Lem (1921-2006). He is a futurist and utopian who thought of the most complex technologies decades before they were actually developed. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote on topics such as nanotechnology, neural networks, and virtual reality. Of course, as always in science fiction, the question arises whether Lem was a visionary, or whether these technologies were developed primarily by Lem fans based on his visions.
Lim himself was reluctant to call himself a science fiction writer. He wanted to note the complexity of his work, which directly or indirectly also addresses the ethical aspects of technical developments, such as genetic engineering, human robotics or artificial intelligence.
Descriptions of the absurd experiments in dealing with loneliness, the alternate trials of time and the pitfalls of technical innovation appear, especially in Lem’s “Sterntagebuch,” published in 1966, and especially in the seventh flight of astronaut Egon Tecci.
Lim’s texts have not only inspired, but entertained and accompanied more than a generation of enthusiastic readers. The individual short stories are numbered chronologically but not completely.
Seventh Flight: When Ijon Tichy is alone on his way to Betelgeuse, a small meteor destroys the controls of his rocket. Repair will be possible without any problems, because Tichy has spare parts and tools with him. He alone lacks a second person to hold the other end of the screw. Without the ability to steer, Tichy falls into many gravitational vortices that create different time overlaps. And this, in the end, is the solution to his problem. But listen for yourself.
The reading series “Unexpected Encounters” is carried out by the Literary Department of the Linz Public Library, whose members selected the texts and read them themselves. Originally, advent readings were planned at the library, but they have fallen victim to an epidemic.
