"At the same time they completely lost the placid passivity typical of Earth's potatoes, which have been domesticated through constant care and cultivation. Growing more and more wild, they became, at last, potatoes of prey." Ijon Tichy in the Twenty-Fifth Voyage. This quote pretty much captures the tone and heart of Stanislaw Lem's The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences. Lem's book is a delight of bizarre and hilarious cosmic situations that will literally make you laugh out loud.

Ijon Tichy is a future astronaut who has written down his adventures most likely out of boredom, or perhaps to prove that he isn't crazy. The poor earthling has to travel the universe alone, and immerse himself in a myriad of intergalactic cultures for the sake of science. He also experiences several strange phenomena in the deep reaches of outer space.

The worlds Tichy encounters mirror our own idiosyncrasies and faults. There's the robot planet that punishes all non-robotic creatures and forces them into hiding. Then there's a astronaut who longs for the romance of piracy, and plunders spaceships only to return all the loot later. And then there's the planet plagued by rising oceans, in which all the inhabitants are forced to breathe underwater.

While I loved this book, I couldn't give it full stars as there was one voyage that comprised 50 pages of fictional philosophy. It would have been better served with section or page breaks, or as a standalone novella. Everything else was exceptional.