History Literature / TalesOfPirxThePilot

** Terminus, the eponymous robot of the same story, that Pirx deducts was trapped in the Coriolanus' wreckage unable to move as the cold would have congealed the oil lubricating its joints, the robot's brain still functioning [[spoiler: and picking the communications of the ship's surviving crewmen]].

** Terminus, the eponymous robot of the same story, that Pirx deducts was trapped in the Coriolanus' wreckage unable to move as the cold would have congealed the joints' oil and only with its brain functioning [[spoiler: and picking the communications of the ship's surviving crewmen]].

* SpaceMadness[=/=]SanitySlippage: In ''The Patrol'' Pirx goes through one of those. [[spoiler: He gets better, though.]] In another story, set in Pirx's cadet days, he lasts seven hours in a sensory deprication tank, a record for his class, and the description of his experiences is pretty trippy.

* SuperOCD: In ''Ananke'', a programmer's very acute obsessive-compulsive disorder is ultimately what caused Ariel to crash. [[spoiler: The man had been in charge of training the navigational computer and inadvertently "taught" it to request all the information available, which overloads the memory.]] The disorder is described from a point of view of a subordinate who never realised his boss's obsession with detail and insistence on keeping to strange rules were OCD until when he's describing them.

* WorkingClassHero: Pirx combines being no-nonsense, outside-the-box thinking guy who, at the same time, isn't particularly well-educated or trained (for his station, that is) and considers the whole space piloting thing a job like any other. It's even used as a plot point in ''The Inquest'', where his unflappable common sense is both what saves the day and why he's picked for the test in the first place.

* TheEveryman: Pirx, bordering on RidiculouslyAverageGuy. And it's the whole point of those stories - the era of heroic, bold explorers of the outer space is long gone and he's just a guy that does boring freight jobs and menial missions, not particularly skilled, but also far from incompetent. He's just average Joe in increasingly average space - a complete novelty when it was written in the late 50s.

* ForbiddenFruit: After two incidents of rockets going missing in space with no apparent cause, pilots in ''The Patrol'' are forbidden from bringing unauthorised or personal items to their ships. Directly as a result of that regulation, Pirx takes pride from managing to smuggle in a small skill toy about [[Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs saving three little pigs]] - even if he can't play with it due to lack of gravity.

* OnlySaneMan: Pirx has a streak of WorkingClassHero-style common sense and decency which makes him appear as one throughout the tales.

* SpaceTrucker: Ever increasing number of people are doing this as their job. Pirx himself is working ''part time'' as a freight pilot when needing extra cash between more requiring missions and it's implied to be a regular situation for many pilots and astrogators. However, the job still has strict requirements, takes years of intense training and selection and is no joke, so it's not entirely stripped out of an elite status, even if being trivial by itself.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: ''Hunt'' is set up as a standard MurderousMalfunctioningMachine scenario. Only that in the end, Pirx is eaten by his consciousness when [[spoiler: Setaur saves his life and he repays for that by gunning the robot down]].
* WorkingClassHero: Pirx combines being no-nonsense, outside-the-box thinking guy that in the same time has lowly origins, isn't particularly well-educated or trained (for his station, that is) and considers the whole space piloting thing a job like any other. It's even used as a plot point in ''The Inquest'', where his unflappable common sense is both what saves the day and why he's picked for the test in the first place.

* MurderousMalfunctioningMachine: The robot in ''The Hunt'' seems to run on this - it was a mining robot before it went nuts.

* TheAllegedCar: Blue Star from ''Terminus'' is a literal piece of space junk rebuild into a new ship from bits and pieces and outfitted with a new reactor. How bad is it? It can barely reach 2nd cosmic velocity during the lift-off, while overloading said reactor in the process and leaking all sorts of fluids from the piping. Pirx's entire comfort comes from the fact that others managed to fly this bucket of bolts and it has been given a green light by the safety commitee, so maybe he will luck out with his freight, too.

The main focus of the books is, unsurprisingly, on space travel and how mankind uses and is changed by it. Another main theme is how robots and computers act and evolve, with a healthy, realistic dose of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman The future itself is described in rather [[UsedFuture gritty tones]] and quite [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hard SF]] ([[Creator/StanislawLem The author]] was known for being HardOnSoftScience). A sort-of-sequel (or possibly conclusion) to these stories is the novel ''Literature/{{Fiasco}}'', in which Pirx doesn't technically appear, but [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute his protege]] does.