Stanislaw Lem Dies in Krakow

1Eye wrote to mention that well-known SF author Stanislaw Lem passed away today. The Polish author was 84, and was probably best known for the novel 'Solaris'. From the AP article: "Solaris, published in 1961 and set on an isolated space stations, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Sodebergh and starring George Clooney."

More than Solaris

[eldavojohn]

I'll remember him for his stories of Ijon Tichy [wikipedia.org] and the satire he would write about regarding anything from governments to advertisements.

One of the first science fiction authors to truly show us that science fiction is more than just a genre of space novels, it's a way to place one's self outside of reality so that it can be safely analyzed and commented on from a distance.

Rest in peace. I eagerly await the day you raise to the ranks of Asimov & Tolkien when the world will remember you as more than "that guy who wrote a story for a George Clooney movie."

I know it will happen.

Great author

[Bytal]

Lem was the bastion of old-school eastern european sci-fi. His sci-fi wasn't about huge robots carrying large breasted women, or random-monster-of-the-week attacking the hapless but plucky space pioneers or even George Clooney's naked ass. Sci-fi for Lem was a way to take a clear look at everything that people took for granted in technology and progress. In both Solaris and His Master's Voice he he tackled space exploration not as an soap opera but as an examination of what it means to be human and what humans see in technological progress. He took our limitations seriously and showed how incredibly alien it will be for humans to seriously venture out into space and even make first contact. And even in talking about all the limitations on scientific and technological progress he never stopped believing in the possibility of human progress through these tools. He was not only a great author but also a great man. RIP Stan.

Re:Great author

[Illbay]

...His sci-fi wasn't about huge robots carrying large breasted women,...

Well, actually neither is most American SF. True, this was a staple of a great deal of American film SciFi (read "sciffy") of the 50s and early 60s, but then most B-movies were corny and cliche' no matter WHAT the genre.

For all the Euro-elitism, American SF has always been of uniform high quality, if only because there was so much of it.

FWIW, can you name ANOTHER well-regarded Polish SF writer?

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The Alienness of the Alien

[qning]

Lem is one of the few SF authors I've read who truly have a sense of the utter alienness of the alien. Other cultures aren't just furry/scaly/tall/short humans with funny names, but things entirely incomprehensible to the humans who interact with them.

I always loved that about his stories. I'm sad he's gone.

Let's interview Michael Kandel

[sukotto]

A lot of people are mentioning Lem's translator Michael Kandel as an amazing guy. Someone who translated the essence of Lem's work, not just the words.

Hey Editors, let's interview him!

(To be honest, the translations are so good that I always kind of thought Lem just wrote in English... even though the Kandel's name is right there in the book)

Re:More than Solaris

[arivanov]

The answer is one word - Tarkovski. It is the same as with the Strugacki brothers. They have around 30 books better and better over the years and the only thing they are know for in the West is one Chapter from "Picnic by the Road". The chapter which was used as a storyline for Tarkovski's "Stalker".

Re:Wasn't he Ukrainian instead ?

[Vo0k]

Except that he has moved to Poland once Ukraine was no longer Polish.

Mickiewicz wrote "Lithuana, my fatherland", making it doubtful.
Sklodowska-Curie after marrying Curie wasn't so much Polish.
Chopin could be considered french with a bit of stretching.
Copernicus being Prussian was Polish just the same as Texan is American. (Poland is a country binding several regions)

But no matter how much you try to twist facts, Lem was Polish, considering himself Polish, being born in a Polish family, spending great most of his life in Poland (no matter how much Poland was wandering over the map in the meantime, torn by wars and pacts between powers) and the fact that he was born in a city which by pact Ribentrop-Molotov doesn't belong to Poland anymore doesn't change a thing.
AFAIK he never had Ukrainian citizenship too.

Stanislaw Lem: a communist conspiracy

[january]

Did you know that Philip K. Dick thought that Lem was a communist conspiracy directed against PKD, and that Lems prose was in fact written by a commitee? Well, you can almost understand that, I'll tell you why.

Being Polish, I grew up with Lem's prose. A lot has been said on that already here, so I'll make it short. Lem's prose was unbelievably diverse, ranging from "classic" SF stories in the archetypic SF setup (rockets, pilots, robots etc. in the Pirx series) through grotesque and postmodern, humorous and twisted stories about the Ijon Tichy, to the utterly fantastic Cyberiade, the XX century version of the Grimm tales; don't forget the critiques on non-existing books, which remind me so much of Jorge Luis Borges.

However, not only the forms were diverse; Lem pondered upon a whole lot of subjects. Just to name a few examples: he envisioned VR technology in the early sixties, and analysed its impact both, seriously and in a very hillarious manner. He belonged to the first who recognized how our society relies on information storage, and the motive of a civilisation collapse due to the destruction of the information storages (paper, in his early works, and computers / networks later on). His thoughts on the possibilities on communications with aliens (or, lack of such possibilities) are unique and very intelligent.

His last book, printed in 1989, is called "Fiasco". The story follows the lines of one of the first books by Lem, called "The Magellans Cloud" -- an optimistic, communist utopy, which ends in the first contact between humans and aliens. However, "Fiasco" (the title says it all) is utterly pesimistic, and its bottom line is that we cannot really communicate not only with the aliens, but even with each other. The book contains several plays on earlier prose of Lem, including fragments of his early stories; moreover, the bold Pilot Pirx is killed in the first chapter.

Lem never went back to writing prose. Personally, I think that with "Fiasco" he conveys the message that everything he had to tell he told us; but the communication with us, the readers, the aliens, was a Fiasco after all.

Cheers,
January

Re:Great author

[QNeX]

Well-regarded Polish author? Well, being a Pole I can share some thoughts
about interesting authors past and present. Most of them haven't been translated
to English, yet some of them surely will be.

If we talk about Iron Courtain authors, Janusz Zajdel (died in 1985) is a must.
He's novels like Limes Inferior or Paradyzja show great deal about falsehoods of
governments, absurdities of total crontrol, etc. Much like Aldus Huxley's Brave
New World, yet written from within iron courtain. A must. Translated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_A._Zajdel>

From current authors I would recommend Jacek Dukaj. His all books are original and
different from eachother, he combines Gaiman's atmosphere with Dick's imagination
and Zelazny's plot making... Yhh, well, highly original author, each and every
book is a delight. A definite must read. Don't know if he's been translated (and
the translation would be hard, as he, for example, uses special grammar for post-human
beings (think: Brinn's uplift saga, only it's not vocabulary but grammar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukaj>

And finally, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiski with his Apostezjon trilogy. One of the best things
I have read. It moved me deeply, as it brought deep insight on religion (among other
things), given from the sci-fi perspective...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Wnuk-Lipi%C5%8 4ski>

Oh, and it's also worth to mention that Andrzej Sapkowski is one of the most known
world-wide Polish authors, though it is not a sci-fi, but a fantasy and as such it
has a bit different ideas and features to work on. It is good, but in my opinion
if you are looking for something which does The Thing like Stanisaw Lem's work did,
you should rather look for the former three authors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapkowski>

Re:Let's interview Michael Kandel

[sakusha]

Huh? You mean "Trurl's Prescription," the story of the Steelypips and the THING that wouldn't go away? Don't be ridiculous, that's a universal human experience, not an exclusively Polish one.

Re:More than Solaris

[dschuetz]

I can't understand why he is "best known for Solaris" when it is far from his best work

well, there was that movie (and I mean the original, not the remake). I saw it back in college and loved it...got it at home but haven't gotten around to watching it yet. (I also have the clooney film, was a $5 xmas gift, just for completness' sake).

Anyway, could part of the problem with Solaris be that the translation isn't as good as his others? As far as I know, the only English translation of Solaris was based on an intermediate French translation.

Has Michael Kandal translated Solaris, and if so, is it available (maybe) in europe or somewhere?

Re:More than Solaris

[ccp]

I can't understand why he is "best known for Solaris" when it is far from his best work. "The Cyberiad", for example, was a collection of much better stories.

Well, having read both in the splendid Spanish translation, direct from the Polish (Minotauro, Argentina), I respectfully disagree.
"The Ciberyad" is, as you said, delightful, but "Solaris" is deep.

It looks like the (in)famous English translation was horrible indeed, because "Solaris" is appreciated very differently by English and non-English speaking readers.

Note to myself: find the English version, just to see.

Cheers,
CC