I’d bet my last złotych that Lem is carefully satirizing the rule of the Polish United
Workers’s Party in this story of a fourth-millennium man who hails from Mars and has room
in his brain for two or three different personalities (Kazimierz Nowak, Hipperkorn, and
possibly a dreaded Nanów), the first of which leapt from a touring chronobus in the 20th
century where he hoped to find the inventor of time travel, Professor Tarantoga.
— Michael Main
W kilku słowach: w naszym społeczeñstwie decyduje o losie człowieka ranga
intelektualna. Ludzie wartoœciowi, o zdolnoœciach wybitnych, mają prawo do całego,
własnego ciała. Ja właœnie byłem takim, byłem samodzielnym, suwerennym meżczyznę!
Briefly, in our society the fate of a person depends on his intellectual level. Valuable
people with outstanding abilities have the right to their entire body. I was just that, I was
an independent, sovereign man!