Highcastle: A Remembrance

By Stanisław Lem

Book Overview

A playful, witty, reflective memoir of childhood by the science fiction master Stanislaw Lem.

With Highcastle, Stanislaw Lem offers a memoir of his childhood and youth in prewar Lvov. Reflective, artful, witty, playful--"I was a monster," he observes ruefully--this lively and charming book describes a youth spent reading voraciously (he was especially interested in medical texts and French novels), smashing toys, eating pastries, and being terrorized by insects. Often lonely, the young Lem believed that he could communicate with household objects--perhaps anticipating the sentient machines in the adult Lem's novels. Lem reveals his younger self to be a dreamer, driven by an unbridled imagination and boundless curiosity.

In the course of his reminiscing, Lem also ponders the nature of memory, innocence, and the imagination. Highcastle (the title refers to a nearby ruin) offers the portrait of a writer in his formative years.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262538466
• ISBN13: 9780262538466
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A favorite for the bedside

Stanislaw Lem's writing is beautiful in this brief work. Fans of his science fiction will surely want to read this to get behind the artifice and learn about the writer. But those who are not familiar with his work will also enjoy this as a meditation on memory, growing up in Poland, and this writer's power to evoke meaning. I read it mostly before falling asleep and it gave me wonderful dreams.