Introduction to ... Mortal Engines

Kandel, Michael. "Introduction" to Stanislaw Lem, Mortal Engines. Coll. and trans. Kandel. New York: Seabury, 1977. New York: Avon (Bard), 1982.

Includes an elegant survey of the historical and ideological sources (mostly Romantic) of our fear of "artificial man" and "of man made artificial by Science and through the mass society"; also includes intriguing comments on how modern "Science . . . provides a guarantee that man . . . can never be . . . turned into a cog of any social mechanism—and remain a man" (see esp. vii-xiv).