Stanislaw Lem



         


The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is Stanisław Lem.

Stanisław Lem (born September 12, 1921) is a Polish satirical, philosophical and science fiction writer. His books have been translated into 40 languages and sold over 27 million copies.

Stanisław Lem was born in Lwów, Poland in 1921 (now Lviv, Ukraine), the son of a physician. He studied medicine at Lwów University, but World War II interrupted his studies. During the war and Nazi occupation Lem worked as a car mechanic and welder, and was a member of the resistance fighting against the Germans. Toward the end of the war the Red Army occupied Poland, and the country was closely controlled by the Soviet Union for the next 50 years. In 1946 Lem "repatriated" from Soviet territory to Kraków and started medical studies at the Jagiellonian University. After finishing his studies Stanislaw Lem opted not to take final exams to avoid a career as a military doctor, and received only a certificate of completion of studies. He worked as a research assistant in a scientific institution and started to write stories in his spare time. In 1981 he received an honorary degree from the Wroclaw Polytechnic, later from Opole University, University of Lwów, and finally from the Jagiellonian University. See also .

Lem principally wrote about impossibility of communication between humans and profoundly alien civilizations and about the technological future of humanity. The latter topic included, by implication, ideal and utopian societies and the problem of human existence in a world where there is little to do because of technological development. His alien societies included swarms of mechanical flies (in The Invincible) and the Ocean (in Solaris). Issues of technological utopias appeared in Peace on Earth, in Observation on the Spot, and, to a lesser extent, in The Cyberiad. Lem is a proponent of modern Western civilization, and, despite having spent a significant portion of his career in Communist Poland and its attendant ideological censorship, his opus contains harsh critcism of collectivist societies.

Lem was awarded an honorary membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in 1973, which was then rescinded in 1976 after he made comments about American pulp science fiction literature. He described it as kitsch, ill thought-out, poorly written, and interested more making money than ideas or new literary forms. The SWFA then offered him a regular membership, which he refused.

Lem's early criticism of American science fiction suffered from low volume of pulp SF available in socialist Poland and his early opinions were based mainly on reviews in European press. In particular, he formed a low opinion of Philip K. Dick after reading only one of his novels and a few reviews, and later Lem admitted that his criticism had been premature, sarcastically claiming that Dick's works are outstanding in American SF, as in this case kitsch-ness is intentional. Lem's writing is full of very intelligent humor, full of puns, wordplay and other tricks, and has been translated brilliantly into English by Michael Kandel.

In 1977 he was recognized as an honorary citizen of Kraków.

Texts by Lem were set to music by Esa-Pekka Salonen in his 1982 piece, Floof.

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