> Skip to content
  • Published: 14 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241269077
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

Mortal Engines




'A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age' The New York Times

'On one side of the ducats was stamped the radiant profile of Archithorius, on the other - an image of his six hundred arms'

Mortal Engines is a selection of the best of Stanislaw Lem's extraordinary miniature space epics, chosen by his heroic translator Michael Kandel, who has somehow battled through Lem's jokes, parodies, fabricated technological terms and unreliable robots and brilliantly converted them from Polish into English. Encompassing his Fables for Robots and stories from his protagonists Ijon Tichy (from The Star Diaries) and Pirx the Pilot, this is a highly entertaining but also deeply alarming view of the glories and absurdities of Outer Space.

  • Published: 14 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780241269077
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem was a Polish author best known for his 1961 science fiction novel Solaris. He also wrote several other SF works including Eden (1959) and His Master's Voice (1968). Lem's books have been translated into over 40 languages and sold over 45 million copies. He was awarded numerous honours for his writing, including the City of Kraków's Prize in Literature, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. Lem died in 2006, aged 84.

Also by Stanislaw Lem

See all

Praise for Mortal Engines

A giant of 20th-century science fiction

The Guardian

Stanislaw Lem was for 50 years Poland's premier intellectual of the imagination

John Clute, The Independent