Niewidzialna obecność Obcych w „Głosie Pana” Stanisława Lema i „Córce łupieżcy” Jacka Dukaja
The Invisible Presence of Aliens in Stanisław Lem's "Głos Pana" and Jacek Dukaj's "Córka ppieżcy"

Summary/Abstract: The paper compares two short novels: His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem (1921–2006) and The Plunderer’s Daughter by Jacek Dukaj (born in 1974) and analyses their methods of presentation of the motif of Aliens in situation without direct contact. Both writers belong to different generations and differences between their cultural experiences can be seen in conceptualizations of this motif. In His Master’s Voice scientists only debate about Aliens as a hypothesis. The system of discourse (order of verbalism) dominates over the story in this novel. In contrast in The Plunderer’s Daughter the story and its visualism are more important in the literary construction. The Aliens are represented by very sensually described flying City, which moves freely within space, between galaxies. The younger writer refers not so much to literature (to Laputa, flying kingdom in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift) as to film Laputa: Castle in the Sky, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Lem warns against the nuclear energy. Dukaj shows dangers of posthuman transformations in the future. In both novels the motif of Aliens is still the way to talk about human world.

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