A review by brokensandals
Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanisław Lem

4.0

...whenever he would ponder, with cheeks aglow, the great galactic silence, the lonely valor of men, he always had trouble picturing a hero of eternal night, a loner, having such a -- dimplepuss.

The first story in this is pretty funny, and the next two are interesting mysteries. I was a bit bored with the remaining two, although I appreciated the final one's spooky notion of

Spoiler

echoes of dead personalities inadvertently living on in the brain of a robot

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I enjoy the anachronisms of old sci-fi (this was published in 1966); there's something cozy about an imagined future where rocketships need to carry shelves full of physical books, and pilots still need Morse code. Sometimes, though, you run into an offhand remark that really drives home how much the world has changed:

...like a bout of the measles: sooner or later everyone was bound to get them.