4.0
One Human Minute
ByPublisher Description
Essays by the author of Solaris: “Lem’s delightful sense of humor accentuates his essential seriousness about humanity’s possible fate” (Publishers Weekly).
In One Human Minute, Stanislaw Lem takes a hard look at our world and technology—what it means now and what dire implications it could have for the future—in satirical, wise, and biting prose.
With this collection of three essays, Lem targets some of the most pressing issues humanity faces, from our unsettling origins to the cybernetic future of our weaponry. “The Upside-Down Evolution” chronicles the Earth’s military evolution from nuclear stockpiles to deadly, robotic microweapons. “The World as Cataclysm” examines how humankind’s dominance on Earth is the result of the extermination of another species just as qualified to rule the world. And the title essay presents a disturbing and fascinating snapshot of every single thing happening on the planet in a sixty-second span.
Effortlessly blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction, scientific essay and fantastical short story, cynical reproach and wry humor, Lem’s One Human Minute combines the best elements of the renowned science fiction author and Kafka Prize winner’s writing into one irreverent and intellectually stimulating package.
In One Human Minute, Stanislaw Lem takes a hard look at our world and technology—what it means now and what dire implications it could have for the future—in satirical, wise, and biting prose.
With this collection of three essays, Lem targets some of the most pressing issues humanity faces, from our unsettling origins to the cybernetic future of our weaponry. “The Upside-Down Evolution” chronicles the Earth’s military evolution from nuclear stockpiles to deadly, robotic microweapons. “The World as Cataclysm” examines how humankind’s dominance on Earth is the result of the extermination of another species just as qualified to rule the world. And the title essay presents a disturbing and fascinating snapshot of every single thing happening on the planet in a sixty-second span.
Effortlessly blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction, scientific essay and fantastical short story, cynical reproach and wry humor, Lem’s One Human Minute combines the best elements of the renowned science fiction author and Kafka Prize winner’s writing into one irreverent and intellectually stimulating package.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities2 Reviews
4.0

divsanka
Created over 3 years agoShare
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“4.5/5. It is a set of three brilliant essays. The first essay is “one human minute” in which, the author reviews a book that has been published in the future. This book supposedly contains what every single human being is doing in a minute of their life. It is a postmodern essay that had lots of thought provoking little snippets that delighted me and frustrated me in equal measure. The second essay is “upside down evolution”. This was also very good and it talks about the military strategies that can appear in the next century. The third essay is the one I found most interesting and it talks about the origin of the existence of human beings and earth itself and deals with the possibility of intelligent life forms existing elsewhere in the universe. It talks about the requirement of destruction for creation to exist and has a lot of thought provoking philosophy thrown in as a bonus. The writing is top notch. Every other sentence blows you away! I would recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction and postmodernism and any kind of unconventional writing! I loved it.”

Richard Gombert
Created over 11 years agoShare
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About Stanislaw Lem
Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best-known science fiction author outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many magazines, including the New Yorker, and the author of numerous books, including Solaris.
Other books by Stanislaw Lem
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