Stanisław Lem

[Mr. Gone]

http://lem.pl/

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem

[Claude]

R.I.P. Mr Lem.

I haven't read any of his books, but Andrej Tarkovsky's film adaptation of "Solaris" is one of my favourite movies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(film)

[Kalo]

Another great one gone.

Lem is one of my favorite writers. I devoured his stuff in the 1970s when it was first being translated and published here in the States. Even then, I could see that he stood head and shoulders above the rest of the SF genre (with the exceptions of Phillip K. Dick and Olaf Stapledon). I read almost all of his books again about ten years ago, and I was pleased at how well they held up.

Thanks for those links!

[7/4]

Bummer. RIP.

[7/4]

March 27, 2006

Author of 'Solaris' Dies at 84

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Stanislaw Lem, a science fiction writer whose novel ''Solaris'' was made into a movie starring George Clooney, died Monday in his native Poland, his secretary said. He was 84.

Lem died in a Krakow hospital from heart failure ''connected to his old age,'' the secretary, Wojciech Zemek, told The Associated Press.

Lem was one of the most popular science fiction authors of recent decades to write in a language other than English, and his works were translated into more than 40 other languages. His books have sold 27 million copies.

His best-known work, ''Solaris,'' was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. That version starred Clooney and Natascha McElhone.

His first important novel, ''Hospital of the Transfiguration,'' was censored by communist authorities for eight years before its release in 1956 amid a thaw following the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Other works include ''The Invincible,'' ''The Cyberiad,'' ''His Master's Voice,'' ''The Star Diaries,'' ''The Futurological Congress'' and ''Tales of Prix the Pilot.''

Lem was born into a Polish Jewish family on Sept. 21, 1921, in Lviv, then a Polish city but now part of Ukraine.

His father was a doctor and he initially appeared set to follow in that path, taking up medical studies in Lviv before World War II.

After surviving the Nazi occupation, in part thanks to forged documents that concealed his Jewish background, Lem continued his medical studies in Krakow. Soon afterward, however, he took up writing science fiction.

Lem is survived by his wife and a son, Zemek said. Funeral arrangements were not disclosed.

[P.L.M]

A great writer's gone.

None of the "Solaris" movies are up to the book.

Far to be.

[BruceH]

Wow.

I've been reading his stuff since junior high, and I have to agree with Kalo that much of it holds up well. (I'd have to say, though, that in addition to Stapledon and Phillip K. Dick, Sturgeon, Le Guin, and a few others could be mentioned in the same sentence as Lem.) I know we all gotta go sometime, but the big ones seem to be going thick and fast these days. RIP.

[7/4]

March 28, 2006

Stanislaw Lem, Author of Science Fiction Classics, Is Dead at 84

By BEN SISARIO

Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer who, in novels like "Solaris" and "His Master's Voice," contemplated man's place in the universe in sardonic and sometimes bleak terms, died yesterday in Krakow, Poland. He was 84.

The cause was heart failure, his secretary, Wojciech Zemek, told The Associated Press.

Mr. Lem was a giant of mid-20th-century science fiction, in a league with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. And he addressed many of the themes they did: the meaning of human life among superintelligent machines, the frustrations of communicating with aliens, the likelihood that mankind could understand a universe in which it was but a speck. His books have been translated into at least 35 languages and have sold 27 million copies.

What drew the admiration of many of his fellow writers was the intensity with which he studied the limitations of humanity, in ways that could be both awed and pessimistic.

In "Solaris," a densely ruminative novel first published in 1961 — and made into films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and Steven Soderbergh (2002) — contact is made with a dangerous and unknowable alien intelligence in the form of a plasma ocean surrounding a distant planet. As they attempt to understand the organism, astronauts aboard a space ship are plagued by hallucinations drawn from their own memories.

In "His Master's Voice," published in 1968, scientists in a Pentagon-sponsored project are similarly perplexed by a superior alien communication, this time from a pulsating neutrino ray. But the failed experiment gives the ill-tempered narrator, Peter Hogarth, a sense of wonderment: "The oddest thing," he says, "is that defeat, unequivocal as it was, left in my memory a taste of nobility, and that those hours, those weeks, are, when I think of them today, precious to me."

Born in 1921 in Lviv — then part of Poland but now in Ukraine — Mr. Lem began to study medicine as a young man, but his education was interrupted by World War II. He worked as a mechanic during the war and later returned to his medical studies but did not take his final exams out of fear that his services would be needed in the military. His first literary works were poems and short stories.

He emerged as a major science-fiction author in the early 1950's with works that he later disavowed as simplistic, and he sometimes ran afoul of the Communist censors. In one early book, "The Cloud of Magellan," he had wanted to write about cybernetics, a banned concept. "In order to get the novel through," he told The New York Times in 1983, "I had to rename the field 'mechanioristics' — I created a new term." An editor wasn't fooled, and for a time, Mr. Lem said, the book remained unpublished.

Among his other works are "The Invincible" (1964) and "The Cyberiad" (1967). Some, like "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" (1961) and "The Futurological Congress" (1971), are darkly satirical pictures of cold war-era life, involving technocratic societies that have broken down under the weight of their advanced machines.

Mr. Lem sometimes ridiculed his chosen genre. In "His Master's Voice," Hogarth, in an effort to come up with new ideas, tries reading some science-fiction stories but dismisses them as "pseudo-scientific fairy tales."

Some of his most ambitious works drifted into experimental and philosophical territory. "Summa Technologiae" (1964) is a speculative survey of cybernetics and biology, and "A Perfect Vacuum" (1971) is a self-conscious experiment in meta-fiction, a set of reviews of 16 nonexistent books. One of the books reviewed is "A Perfect Vacuum" itself. "Did Lem really think," the review reads, "he would not be seen through all this machination?"

Mr. Lem's survivors include his wife and a son, The A.P. said.