The Cyberiad cover art

The Cyberiad

Fables for the Cybernetic Age

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About this listen

A brilliantly crafted collection of stories from celebrated science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem.

Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. Over the course of their adventures in The Cyberiad, they travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their unsuspecting employers.

Playfully written, and ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.

©1974 The Continuum Publishing Corporation (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Fiction
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Even more amazing when you think that it's in translation. Narrators performance elevates the writing even higher.

hilarious

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Mr. Aiello’s range of voices perfectly capture the wry humour of the author- bringing the characters to vivid life.
The way he skips effortlessly through Lem’s tongue twisting tall tales needs to be heard to be believed!
Oh, and Lem is pretty good too!

Amazing narrator!

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having watched solaris the film, i had expected its author to be serious and perhaps slightly depressed! after the first tale, i just had to continue. lem is an incredible story teller… i can’t wait to listen to it again. from the stories i can imagine they have inspired christopher nolan (inception’s dream within a dream), jonathan nolan (westworld robots remembering glimpses of their past lives which acts as feedback loop), and battlestar galactica (series 3 creation myths about flip flopping between humans creating robots, and robots creating humans). the narrator is fantastic… his voices have elevated the words to a whole new level.

amazing storytelling

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This wasn't for me!
The writing, the performance, the stories; If you have a very smart baby then this is for you, but as an adult the stories drags on and on and they're all basically the same: The protagonists are commissioned to build a massive machine that turns into a time traveling dragon that can only be defeated by philosophical conundrum inside a Schrödinger's cat box which makes the Deus ex Machina implode.
Each story seem to be a "shower thought" written down on a post-it.

The narrator is British so you get all the P's in the world. They pop. It's not so noticeable in the beginning but certain chapters are just pure caffeine and P's that pop!

Some of the stories in the beginning were interesting but after a while you realize they're all the same but with a slight twist.

I've enjoyed some of Lem's other books but in this one you can tell that he's into hard sci-fi because he forgets all about the story and start listing his advanced math knowledge, which is a problem with many authors that fall in love with their research material. They seem to think it's too good to not include all of it and the editor is too afraid to appear stupid by suggesting to remove it.

I gave the story 3 stars because some of them where thought provoking, the sad thing is I'll never go back and listen to them again because I don't feel like navigating all bad ones just to find the good ones.

Like a childrens book specifically for Einstein

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