Thinking Outside the Perceptual Box: Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot, by Rachel Cordasco

Book Reviews Photo by Aideal Hwa / Unsplash If reading Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot (Penguin Classics, 2021), translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz, makes you think about Stanislaw Lem’s work, you’re not alone. Indeed, both Robot and Lem’s His Master’s Voice (published in Polish just a few years apart) take up the fascinating but insoluble problem of whether or not we’re alone in the universe. One might even call Robot surrealist science fiction and liken it to Kafka’s work, or even Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, since the main character spends most of his time wandering around the halls of an underground shelter, unsure of his own identity and his place in the community that has formed following an apocalyptic event on the surface. His identity confusion derives from his “birth” on an assembly line under a kind of bell jar. Given instructions by a mysterious Mechanism to study the people living in the shelter, the protagonist proceeds as if he is a living machine given a modicum of free will (as explained by the Mechanism). Much of the novel focuses on the protagonist figuring out why those around him are living underground and why many of them believe that he is a physicist named Poreyra. Encountering strange “statues” that weigh several tons in one of the shelter’s rooms, he eventually moves through a mirror there into a replica of the stricken city, where time moves at a fraction of the speed experienced in the shelter.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2021-11-10 20:14:00 UTC ]
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Other news stories related to: "Thinking Outside the Perceptual Box: Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot, by Rachel Cordasco"


Thinking Outside the Perceptual Box: Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot, by Rachel Cordasco

Book Reviews Photo by Aideal Hwa / Unsplash If reading Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot (Penguin Classics, 2021), translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz, makes you think about Stanislaw Lem’s work, you’re not alone. Indeed, both Robot and Lem’s His Master’s... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2021-11-10 20:14:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #science fiction #food chain


How did Amazon grow so fast? By thinking outside the shipping box.

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[ The Washington Post | 2021-05-07 12:00:00 UTC ]
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McClatchy, Tribune, Buffett, and the need to think outside the box

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Didn’t think Facebook could get any worse? Think again.

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Think More Comic Book Geeks are Guys? Think Again

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City backtracks on big Bronx industrial deal after ‘unauthorized’ video by Adams ally

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Overtly handmade and so very moving: Adam Elliot’s Memoir of A Snail is a stop motion triumph

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[ AdWeek | 2024-10-07 12:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The New York Times | 2024-10-07 09:00:20 UTC ]
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‘My disability is the least interesting thing about me’: Actor Adam Pearson on fame, film and his sibling rivalry

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[ The Guardian | 2024-10-06 10:00:02 UTC ]
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Top Adams deputy Sheena Wright to step down: reports

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[ Crains New York | 2024-10-04 17:56:58 UTC ]
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[ Crains New York | 2024-10-03 13:14:57 UTC ]
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Adams projects confidence standing alone in City Hall

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[ Crains New York | 2024-10-01 19:47:39 UTC ]
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Embattled Adams aide Tim Pearson resigns after testing mayor’s loyalty

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The surprising second life of those boxes that used to hold free newspapers

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