In his own words: "I tried to imitate various styles – that of a book review, a lecture, a presentation, a speech (of a Nobel Prize laureate) and so on". Lem attempted to create different fictional reviewers and authors for each of the books.
Reviewing nonexistent books, a modern form of pseudepigraphy, is not a theme unique to Lem (consider Jorge Luis Borges' Pierre Menard, Author of the "Quixote" or An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain), but the idea of an entire anthology of such pieces is rather novel. Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexisting books may be found in his following works: in three collections of faux reviews of fictitious books: A Perfect Vacuum ( Doskonała próżnia, 1971), Provocation ( Prowokacja, 1984), and Library of 21st Century ( Biblioteka XXI wieku, 1986) translated as One Human Minute, and in Imaginary Magnitude ( Wielkość Urojona, 1973), a collection of introductions to nonexistent books.
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