Summa Technologiae
The slogan of this work was “to catch up and outrun Nature”. I even considered a subtitle “plagiarisms and creations”… Summa technologiae written in 1963 was not a novel, but a collection of diverse texts- not necessarily prophecies. The landscapes of the future enclosed in Summa can be compared to a guide for mountain climbing in the Alps. The author of the guide does not claim that every climber must reach all peaks - just as a person in a restaurant is not required to order all dishes. I did not write about what would happen but about what could happen, since I obviously had no influence on future development of technology. –Stanislaw Lem
nik