The Invincible
1964 novel by Stanisław Lem / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Invincible (Polish: Niezwyciężony) is a hard science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem, serialized in Gazeta Bialostocka in 1963 and published as a book in 1964.[1]
![]() First edition (Polish) | |
Author | Stanisław Lem |
---|---|
Cover artist | Piotr Borowy |
Language | Polish |
Genre | Hard Science Fiction |
Publisher | Wydawnictwo MON (original) Seabury Press (English-language original edition) MIT Press (English-language revised edition) |
Publication date | 1963 |
Publication place | Poland |
Published in English | 1973 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
Pages | 316 pp (first edition, paperback) |
OCLC | 488362 (English-language edition) |
The Invincible originally appeared as the title story in Lem's collection Niezwyciężony i inne opowiadania ("The Invincible and Other Stories"). A translation into German was published in 1967; an English translation by Wendayne Ackerman, based on the German one, was published in 1973. A direct translation into English from Polish, by Bill Johnston, was published in 2006.
It was one of the first[nb 1] novels to explore the ideas of microrobots, smartdust, artificial swarm intelligence, and "necroevolution" (a term suggested by Lem in the novel for the evolution of non-living matter[1]).