Ijon Tichy (Polish pronunciation: ) is a fictional character who appears in several works of the Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem: initially in The Star Diaries, later in The Futurological Congress, Peace on Earth, Observation on the Spot, and Memoirs of a Space Traveller (more stories from The Star Diaries, issued in English translation as a separate volume). Tichy is also the narrator in a 1973 novel Professor A. Dońda, being the professor's sidekick. Character Tichy is a space explorer whose interplanetary experiences are chronicled in The Star Diaries. He also moves in scientific circles on Earth; he is invited to the Futurological Congress in Costa Rica, and his endorsement and approval are sought by a number of researchers and inventors on the edge of their field, such as doctor Diagoras, who has developed an artificial intelligence that is independent of mankind, and Decantor, who has invented an immortal soul. Tichy himself is the narrator in all the stories in which he appears. Sometimes he is the protagonist; sometimes he merely serves to introduce some other character who has a story to tell. He is unmarried, usually well-meaning, accident-prone, and commendably honest about his failures, which include (thanks to another unfortunate experience with time) the entire Universe as we know it. Professor Tarantoga, in his fictional preface for The Star Diaries lists Tichy's four literary predecessors: Baron Münchausen, Pavlushka Masloboinikov (one of the fictitious narrators from Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's satirical novel The History of a Town), Lemuel Gulliver, and Maître Alcofribas Nasier (fictitious author of François Rabelais' series of satirical novels Gargantua and Pantagruel). Literary critics (real ones) offer other parallels to the character. Stories The Tichy stories are mostly comic or satirical, often exploring traditional science fiction themes, in a form that can be described as "science fiction tall tales". They are sometimes taken to deliberately ridiculous lengths, as in the episode of The Star Diaries where the unfortunate Tichy, caught in a time loop, is repeatedly banged on the head with a saucepan wielded by future versions of himself. In other stories Tichy meets alien civilisations whose detached perspective enables Lem to poke fun at humanity; on one of his voyages Tichy meets a priest whose colleague has been horrifically martyred by a thoroughly unselfish and well-intentioned race of aliens because he had told them that a martyr's death was one of the greatest things to which a