Pilot Pirx

Pilot Pirx is a collection of ten stories by Stanisław Lem from 1959 to 1971, the protagonist of which is the spaceship pilot Pirx . The stories were collected in 1968 in Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie ("Stories from the Pilots Pirx"), although only the extended edition from 1973 contains all the stories. The German editions of the stories first appeared in Test (1968) and Die Jagd (1972) and summarized in 1978 under the title Pilot Pirx .

Protagonist and frame

Pirx is a spaceship pilot who works in space or on extraterrestrial stations. He appears more like an antihero , in whom there is little heroic of the “classic” space heroes . He solves the recurring problems in extreme situations with common sense and a little luck . The counterpart to Pirx is often a robot or other machine (e.g. his spaceship).

In the world of narratives, journeys within the solar system are commonplace. It doesn't seem to be a distant future, as there is still a UN and a Security Council as decision-making bodies, for example . Towards the end of the cycle, " Titanic's passengers a century earlier" are mentioned. The terminology is - also in the German translation - Soviet coined, ie instead of space port it speaks of cosmodrome and space suits are called scaphander . Intelligent, autonomously acting robots, so-called “ non-linear automatons ”, are widespread and are used routinely. Pirx appears again in the first part of the novel Fiasko, written much later .

content

The order of the stories corresponds to the order of the German first publication.

test

Original title: Test
first printing: Inwazja z Aldebarana ("Invasion vom Aldebaran", 1959)
Translation: Caesar Rymarowicz

During his first solo flight as part of his pilot training, during which he is supposed to guide two spaceships into orbit around the moon , Cadet Pirx is in serious danger after a series of short circuits caused by a seemingly concatenation of coincidences, a fly buzzing around in the cockpit of the spaceship . He just manages to avoid the crashing on the moon, while Boerst, the best of his year, who he admires, fails the task at hand, which in the end turns out to be a simulation .

The conditioned reflex

Original title: Odruch warunkowy
First printing: Noc księżycowa ("Mondnacht", 1963)
Translation: Caesar Rymarowicz

After Kadett Pirx came out on top in a test in which the would-be pilots were exposed to sensory deprivation in an isolation tank , he was offered a special internship on a space station on the back of the moon . An accident had previously occurred in this space station in which the two-person crew was killed. No explanation could be found for the circumstances of the accident except that both astronauts suddenly went mad . When events seem to repeat themselves, a trifle prevents Pirx from jumping to conclusions and manages to avoid repeating the tragic sequence and to solve the riddle .

Albatross

Original title: Albatros
first printing: Inwazja z Aldebarana ("Invasion vom Aldebaran", 1959)
Translation: Caesar Rymarowicz

Pirx is on his way to his next assignment with the Titan , a luxury passenger spaceship on the Transgalactic Line, and is killing time on the promenade deck when he notices the ship is changing course. In the control room he finds the crew huddled around the radios, where they are watching the course of a serious accident developing in the nearby Albatros spacecraft . A reactor explosion on board the Albatros also endangers the ships hurrying to aid, which necessitates an evasive maneuver with high acceleration for the Titan . Finally the Titan has passed the danger zone and Pirx leaves the control room. At the exit door it says “ONLY FOR STERNENPERSONAL” (also an alternative German title for the story).

Terminus

Original title: Terminus
first printing: Księga robotów ("Book of Robots", 1961)
Translation: Caesar Rymarowicz

Pirx takes command of the ancient Koriolan space freighter . In the reactor room of the ship, he finds an outdated robot that goes by the name of Terminus. At night it emits strange knocking signals, which Pirx finally recognizes as Morse code . From this he learns the hidden history of his spaceship: Many years ago it suffered a serious accident in space, in which the entire human crew was killed. Only the robot survived as it needed neither food nor oxygen . The ship could be repaired and was put back into service under a new name. At night, the robot apparently unconsciously reproduces those Morse code sequences with which the crew members, who were cut off from each other at the time, communicated in the wrecked ship and which seem to reproduce their last days and hours until their death. All attempts to directly question the dysfunctional robot about these events fail, but when Pirx tunes in to Terminus' nightly Morse Code, he gets eerily "answers" from the dead. The story ends with Pirx, after long deliberations about the truth, type and meaning of the Morse code, orders the robot to be scrapped because of the “decay of functions” .

The patrol

Original title: Patrol
first printing: Inwazja z Aldebarana ("Invasion vom Aldebaran", 1959)
Translation: Roswitha Buschmann

Pirx has been a pilot for almost three years and is now assigned to patrol duty. This is usually a very boring service, until several pilots disappear without a trace, without any explanation. When Pirx is doing his duty in a particularly empty space, he notices a point of light on the screen of his spaceship that seems to keep a distance from him. The point of light appears to accelerate when Pirx accelerates and to brake when Pirx does too. Eventually, Pirx had massive hallucinations that almost led to his demise. At the last moment he realizes that the light spot is not real, but rather a screen artifact . Oscillations in the artifact induced the hallucinations.

The hunt

Original title: Polowanie
First printing: Polowanie ("The Hunt", 1965)
Translation: Roswitha Buschmann

During a stay on the moon, Pirx learns that an autonomously working mining robot, a so-called Setaurus, was damaged by a meteorite impact and as a result, it seems to wander around aimlessly on the lunar surface and with its built-in laser fire at communication equipment and vehicles, which has already resulted in several dead has given. Pirx registers as a participant in a hurry organized hunt for the rampaging Setaurus in the Sea of Tranquility . When Pirx finally discovered the Setaurus, the latter seemed to hesitate: "In this hesitation, this uncertainty, which Pirx could understand very well, there was something so incredibly familiar and human that constricted his throat." When Pirx accidentally came under fire from other hunters is taken, the Setaurus saves him by destroying their vehicle. Pirx then shoots the Setaurus, but in retrospect wonders what might have moved the disturbed robot to save it instead of destroying it.

The accident

Original title: Wypadek
First printing: Polowanie ("Die Jagd", 1965)
Translation: Roswitha Buschmann

Pirx explores an earth-like exoplanet together with two others and an autonomously acting non-linear machine named Aniel . Aniel is sent to take a measurement that is still missing in a mountain range , but does not return until nightfall. The following morning the men set out for the mountains of the alien planet, where they soon find the trace of the missing machine and, at the foot of a towering rock face, Aniel's luggage and measuring instruments . They find that he has stepped into the wall. Pirx, whose alpinistic instincts have already been addressed, and the intellectual Massena decide to follow the automaton. Eventually they find him crashed at the foot of a chimney . What caused the machine to start its fatal climbing tour remains a mystery. A technical defect is suspected. Pirx has his own theory: “Did he, Pirx, have a defect when he really wanted to conquer the wall? Aniel was quite simply more like his designers than they were willing to admit. "

Pirx tells

Original title: Opowiadanie Pirxa
First printing: Polowanie ("The Hunt", 1965)
Translation: Kurt Kelm

This narrative is different from the other Pirx stories. On the one hand, the narrative is in first-person form , on the other hand, it doesn't actually deal with an accident like most others. If it were an accident, it would be one for the entire human species, because it is about the discovery of an alien spaceship through some silly coincidences. In fact, however, the narrative tone and title suggest that Pirx spun a “ space yarn” here .

Since Pirx has nothing else to do, he takes on the task of hauling a train of spaceship wrecks from Mercury to Earth in a spaceship called the "Pearl of the Night", which is almost ready for scrap . He has to struggle with technical and especially with personnel problems: One crew member smuggles alcohol and cannabis and the rest of the team falls ill with mumps , except for the engineer, who is unfortunately a civil engineer and has no idea about space travel. In this situation he encounters another spaceship, albeit 10 miles long, of extraterrestrial origin and perhaps millions of years old, which is drifting past him at hyperbolic speed . When the alien spaceship has disappeared again, he discovers that the orbital elements of the spaceship he calculated had not been recorded because someone had forgotten to insert a new recording strip. Pirx is considering reporting the encounter anyway so that a large-scale search can be started, but refrains from doing so: If a report were made, all the irregular circumstances on board would then come up (drunk radio operator, civil engineer on guard, rest of the team lying down with mumps) so that nobody would believe the message anymore.

The negotiation

Original title: Rozprawa
Translation: Roswitha Buschmann

During a test flight to Saturn, Pirx is to assess the suitability of a special team, some of which consists of prototypes of new, superficially indistinguishable from real people, non-linear machines. In a crisis situation in which one of the machines decides to fly through the Cassini partition , a (planned) catastrophe is avoided by Pirx's hesitation and the machines prove to be technically superior to humans, but in a decisive, namely morally, inferior .

Ananke

Original title: Ananke
First printing: Bezsenność ("Insomnia", 1971)
Translation: Barbara Sparing

While Pirx is on Mars , he is an eyewitness to a catastrophe when the spacecraft Ariel , a new, super-heavy spaceship type, crashes in the final phase of the landing. It quickly turns out that the AIBM 09, the Ariel's on-board computer , failed and caused the crash, but the cause remains a mystery. The following night, Pirx did not sleep (as the original title alludes to) and leafed through the writings collected by a member of the station crew from the early days of Areology (Martian studies) from Kepler to Schiaparelli with his Canali . Similar to Lem's novel Solaris , where the protagonist Kelvin deals in one night with the history of science of "solaristics", the history of the exploration of the planet Solaris, Pirx's sleepless night is a moment of pause in which he talks about perception and Deception reflects, here using the example of the supposedly seen “ Martian channels ”, before the narrative turns to the solution of the riddle.

While the members of the commission investigating the causes of the disaster get lost in technical details without finding a solution, and at the same time political forces try to safeguard their interests connected with the Mars project, Pirx, who was also appointed to the commission, arrives through one tangled chain of associations to the conclusion that the head of the acceptance tests of the Ariel computer was responsible for the disaster. He had left the room service after he was diagnosed with anankastic syndrome - an obsessive compulsive disorder in which those affected repeatedly check whether the stove is switched off when they leave the apartment, for example. When he was appointed to check the on-board computers, his obsessive overaccuracy had carried over to the on-board computer, which requested more and more data on landing until he “suffocated” on it.

In the lunar landing of Apollo 11 in 1969, it was the multiple crash in the final approach phase on-board computer of the lander came, who has been overloaded by the data of accidentally still switched rendezvous radar information data was creating a hazardous situation.

Film adaptations

• In 1973 the Hungarian television series Pirx kalandjai ("Pirx's Adventure"; directed by István Kazán and András Rajnai) came out on a total of 5 episodes:
  • Diplomavizsga ("Diploma Exam")
  • A Galilei-állomás rejtélye ("The Secret of the Galileo Station")
  • Víkend a Marson ("Weekend on Mars")
  • Terminusz a koronatanu ("witness terminus")
  • Akció 127 óra 25-kor

• In 1978 the story The Negotiation provided the basis for the Polish-Soviet joint production Test pilota Pirxa ( Test flight to Saturn , also The test flight of the pilot Pirx ), directed by Marek Piestrak . The film was dubbed by the DEFA studio for feature films under the title Der Test des Piloten Pirx ; the soundtrack comes from Arvo Pärt .

expenditure

First edition:

• Opowieści o pilocie pirxie . Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krakau 1968. Extended new edition: Czytelnik, Warsaw 1973

German editions:

• Test . Translation by Caesar Rymarowicz . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1968. Federal Republic of Germany edition: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-436-01320-X (contains test , the conditional reflex , albatross and terminus )
• The hunt. New stories from the pilot Pirx . Translation by Roswitha Buschmann, Kurt Kelm and Barbara Sparing. Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1972. Federal Republic of Germany edition: Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1973, ISBN 3-458-05859-1 (contains the remaining six short stories)
• Pilot Pirx . Translation by Roswitha Buschmann, Caesar Rymarowicz, Kurt Kelm and Barbara Sparing. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-458-05882-6 . New edition Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-45535-4 (contains all stories)

Audio book:

• Test. A Pilot Pirx story. Director: Joseph Manoth. Speaker: Michael Schwarzmaier . Bayerischer Rundfunk 2008. CD: Terzio, Munich 2005

Web links

• Pilot Pirx

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See e.g. B. The Hunt , 1972, p. 46
2. ↑ Die Jagd , 1972, p. 62
3. ↑ Die Jagd , 1972, p. 98
4. ↑ This is where the connection to the German title appears: Ananke is both the goddess of fate and the Greek term for “compulsion” and “obsession”.
5. ↑ Pirx kalandjai in the Internet Movie Database (English)
6. ↑ Test pilota Pirxa in the Internet Movie Database (English)