History Literature / TheStarDiaries

* ConflictBall: Conflict in the 7º voyage could have been resolved in minutes if Tichy hadn't been one week beating up himself.

* GoneHorriblyRight: In the 22º Voyage a missionary teaches a benevolent alien race about martyrdom. Aliens interpret the missionary wants to become a martyr and torture him to death to fulfill his desires.

The Star Diaries were loosly adapted during the late Noughties into a German live action TV show called ''Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot''. The show is a CultClassic in Germany since they invoked a TheyJustDidntCare look with bizarre costumes and intentionally trashy special effects, and gave Ijon Tichy a [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent thick fake slavic accent]]. The general consensus for this show is that it was CrazyAwesome.

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: In the Eighth Voyage, Tichy represents Earth to petition for its admission to the United Planets. The members, who are highly advanced creatures are utterly disgusted and outraged by humans. In the end, it turns out that life on Earth was actually created by two crew members of an alien spaceship as some kind of sick joke.

* ReligiousRobot: The robot monks of Dykhtonia. They are aware that if they connected to a robot with all the facts on religion they would become atheists, so they choose not to connect to other robots out of religious principle.

* CasualInterstellarTravel: Exaggerated: Ijon Tichy once turned his rocket around and headed back several parsec because he had left his pocket knife in a spaceport cafeteria.[[hottip:*:Turns out it was in his pocket all along.]]

* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: In the Twentieth Voyage, Tichy becames the head of an organization from the 27h that century that attempts to correct history and create a better world using time travel. However, every plan fails spectacularly due to a combination of mishap, incompetence, and malice resulting in a thoroughly fouled-up world -- ie. the one we currently live in.

** Another missionary succeeds so much in convincing another alien race that SexIsEvil that they are in the danger of becaming extinguished.

* RiddleForTheAges: In the Fourteenth Voyage, Tichy visits the planet Enteropia where there's an activity called "scruption". Tichy can't find out what it is, because the lexicon entries about it all just link to each other. On the planet, all of his attempts to learn more end in scandal. (Scruption is appearently something sexual, since you can't do it without a wife.)

* RoboticReveal: In one story, the aggressive competitition of two producers of washing machines leads to multitudes of intelligent, human-looking washing machines posing as people.

''The Star Diaries'' (1976[[hottip:*:The first English edition. The first Polish edition was in 1957, but the book was expanded with two subsequent editions up to 1971.]]) consists of [[ShortStory short stories]], all narrated by its personable [[TheMunchausen Space Munchausen]]. In the process, the book [[{{Satire}} satirizes]] or [[{{Parody}} parodies]] countless [[SpeculativeFictionTropes science fiction tropes]], yet it also explores - [[PlayedForLaughs in a comical guise]], but otherwise quite straightforward - many classical themes of science fiction; such as meeting and interacting with [[CultureClash alien civilizations]], TimeTravel, ArtificialIntelligence, and the consequences of technological and scientific progress for humanity.

The Ijon Tichy character went on to star in three more satirical novels: ''The Futurological Congress'' (1974), ''Observation on the Spot'' (1982, no translation), and ''Peace on Earth'' (1987).

* AGodAmI: Although Tichy had created the universe [[BeyondTheImpossible twice]] he is not an example of this trope. However, his incompetent assistant A. Donai is directly responsible for almost all the events attributed to the God of the Old Testament, all done in a "controlled experiment".

** Another missionary succeeds so much in convincing another alien race that SexIsEvil that they soon became extinguished.

* ConflictBall: Conflict in the 7º voyage could have been resolved in minutes if Tichy hadnn't been one week beating up himself.

* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: In the Twentieth Voyage, Tichy becames the head of an organization from the 27h that century that attempts to correct history and create a better world using time travel. However, every plan fails spectacularly due to a combination of mishap, incompetence, and malice resulting in a thoroughly fouled-up world -- ie. the one we currently live in.
* FunWithAcronyms: Used quite often, especially in the Twentieth and the Twenty-First Voyage.

* TheUnreveal: What the heck is ''sepulkas''?

The {{sequel}}, '''''Memoirs of a Space Traveller''''' (1982), also consists of short stories, but differs notably from ''Star Diaries'' in that most of the stories are set on Earth and are also quite serious, [[DarkerAndEdgier even dark]] (though not all of them). Mostly they feature Tichy, now a [[FamedInStory respected celebrity]], meeting eccentric scientists and inventors (making the title somewhat [[NonIndicativeTitle non-indicative]] — mainly because it was titled simlpy '''''(Excerpts) From The Ijon Tichy's Memoirs''''' in the original), and only a few deal with Ijon Tichy’s adventures with alien civilizations.

The {{sequel}}, '''''Memoirs of a Space Traveller''''' (1982), also consists of short stories, but differs notably from ''Star Diaries'' in that most of the stories are set on Earth and are also quite serious, [[DarkerAndEdgier even dark]] (though not all of them). Mostly they feature Tichy, now a [[FamedInStory respected celebrity]], meeting eccentric scientists and inventors (making the title somewhat [[NonIndicativeTitle non-indicative]]), and only a few deal with Ijon Tichy’s adventures with alien civilizations.

* {{Dedication}}: Parodied. The book contains a foreword by Ijon Tichy's friend Professor Tarantoga. He ends it with saying that one helped him in his work, and listing those who set him back would take too much space.

* TimePolice: In the Twentieth Voyage, there is a "Chronice Squad" with the task is to hunt down corrupt and criminal time travellers.

* DoorstopBaby: The Twenty-Eighth Voyage reveals that Ijon was found by his father, Auror Tichy, as a Doorstop Baby in front of his spaceship cabin (complete with a note saying "It's yours"). He never found out who the mother was ...

* BatmanGambit: In ''The Star Diaries'' it's paired with a literal [[ParanoiaGambit Paranoia Gambit]]. On an alien planet, [[AIIsACrapshoot an uber-computer creatively interprets its directives and turns most of the population into black disks]]. The survivors forbid him to kill any more people, thus he proposes that he will only do so with people who he is told to carry off. Guess what, in the next morning there a lot more disks...

* FunWithAcronyms: Used quite often, especially in the Twentieth Voyage.

** The Dykhtonians (Twenty-First Voyage) were initially this, before they started to redesign their own bodies.

* TheMunchausen: Ijon Tichy to his readers.

* SexIsEvil: One of Tichy's ancestors, whose fate is recalled in the Twenty-Eighth Voyage, created a substance that made sex painful, so humanity wouldn't be controlled by carnal desires anymore. When he put it into the water supply of his city, he was lynched.

* MoodWhiplash: Purely satirical stories are followed by completely serious ones, about hard themes like the creation of a truly independent mechanical intelligence, or the horror of having an immortal soul without a body.

'''''The Star Diaries''''' (''Dzienniki gwiazdowe'') by StanislawLem, often published together with their sequel ''Memoirs of a Space Traveller'', are supposedly the journals and travelogues of Ijon Tichy, a famous space traveller, recording his remarkable adventures exploring the cosmos.

''The Star Diaries'' (1976[[hottip:*:The first English edition. The first Polish edition was in 1957, but the book was expanded with two subsequent editions up to 1971.]]) consists of [[ShortStory short stories]], all narrated by its personable [[TheMunchausen Space Munchausen]]. In the process, the book [[{{Satire}} satirizes]] or [[{{Parody}} parodies]] countless [[SpeculativeFictionTropes science fiction tropes]], yet it also explores - [[PlayedForLaughs in a comical guise]], but otherwise quite straightforward - many classical themes of science fiction; such as meeting and interacting with [[CultureClash alien civilizations]], TimeTravel, ArtificialIntelligence, and the consequences of technological and scientific progress for humanity.

The {{sequel}}, '''''Memoirs of a Space Traveller''''' (1982), also consists of short stories, but differs notably from ''Star Diaries'' in that most of the stories are set on Earth and are also quite serious, [[DarkerAndEdgier even dark]] (though not all of them). Mostly they feature Tichy, now a [[FamedInStory respected celebrity]], meeting eccentric scientists and inventors (making the title somewhat [[NonIndicativeTitle non-indicative]]), and only a few deal with Ijon Tichy’s adventures with alien civilizations.

* AndIMustScream: Particularly in the Twenty-Fourth Voyage, where [[spoiler:an alien civilization's super computer, who they designed to be perfect and to organize their everyday lives perfectly, starts turning the aliens into shiny disks and arranging them in perfect geometrical patterns and sculptures. It's hinted they don't die in the process]].
* AssimilationPlot: The Thirteenth Voyage has Tichy visit a series of societies by "The Great Architect", whom Tichy is supposed to meet. The last society is one where everyone is engineered to look exactly the same, and there's a lottery where everyone takes a different role in life (banker, janitor, wife, child, etc.) every week. This is the Architect's "masterpiece", because it eliminates identity, and thus eliminates death. Tichy then decides the Architect is completely off his nut, and runs away as fast as possible.

* HumanAliens:

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: In the Eighth Voyage, Tichy represents Earth to petition for its admission to the United Planets. The members, who are highly advanced creatures are utterly disgusted and outraged by humans. In the end, it turns out that life on Earth was actually created by two crew members of an alien spaceship as some kind of sick joke.
* IndividualityIsIllegal: On the planet of Panta, which Ijon Tichy visits on Voyage no. 13, identity has been abolished in favor of state-assigned social roles that rotate at midnight.

* MoodWhiplash: Purely satirical stories are followed by completely serious ones, about hard themes like the creation of a truly independent mechanical intelligence, or the horror of having an immortal soul without a body.

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: In one story, Tichy meets Decantor, an inventor who constructed an immortal soul. For that purpose, he had destroyed the body of his wife and kept her consciousness in a box, without any external stimuli. Tichy realizes that this is a fate worse than death and finally convinces Decantor that people don't want immortality; they just want to live.

* HumanAliens: Parodied in the Twenty-Fifth Voyage, where a group of StarfishAliens living on an extremely hot planet discuss the possibility of an intelligent species living in a lower temperature; the oldest one concludes that the existence of such creatures is impossible, and any other sapient species must be exactly like them.