Bibliopath Ping
Posted on 03/27/2006 7:59:20 AM PST by Borges
WARSAW, Poland -- Stanislaw Lem, a popular science fiction writer whose novel "Solaris" was filmed twice, died Monday in his native Poland, his secretary said. He was 84.
Lem died in Krakow, Wojciech Zemek told The Associated Press. Zemek did not give other details or the cause of death, citing only Lem's advanced age.
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 from Polish into more than 40 other languages. His books have sold 27 million copies.
His best-known work, "Solaris," was adapted into films by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. The latter starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
(Excerpt) Read more at stamfordadvocate.com ...
Will the stock of Sun Microsystems dip on this news? :)
Ping!
The Andrei Tarkovsky film is well worth watching.
As I understand it, science fiction was popular in Eastern Europe partly as a way to work around Communist censorship.
Not too many of the Greats of Sci Fi left anymore it seems. RIP, Stanislaw. Solaris was a great, thought-provoking book.
A lot better than the George Clooney version.
May he rest in peace.
The Pirx tales are short stories tracking the career of a spaceship pilot from his days as a cadet at the academy to becoming a ship's master.
The Cyberiad is a series of stories about the adventures of a pair of Master Constructors, Trurl and Klaupacius, as they travel a universe filled with only mechanical beings. Very thought provoking!
The Chain of Chance is a detective story wherein an ex-astronaut attempts to puzzle out a series of deaths at a spa. He recreates the actions of one of the victims and has some very intriguing experiences.
He was a very wise man.
I thought this was a UNIX thread.
Someone gave me the DVD of the Clooney version of this flick. I've tried three times and never made it more than halfway through. A snoozer.
You mean George Looney.
Bibliopath Ping
Lem himself disliked this film.
Between tarkovsky's version and Fox's version, Tarkovsky's is WAY better. (Do you have any comments of Lem's on the Fox version?)
That said anyone familiar with Tarkovsky's other work can see subtle subplots which are advancing Tarkovsky's points (probably not present in the novel, though I haven't read the novel). In fact Tarkovsky's subsequent 'the mirror' rehashes those in their own full length film.
That said Solaris (the novel) was groundbreaking and it's quite sad that it's author has died.
Polish satirical and philosophical science fiction writer, whose novel SOLARIS (1961) was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971. Lem's books have been translated into some 30 languages and sold some 12 million copies. He is probably the best single sci-fi author of the late 20th century not to write in English. Lem often writes in comical style, but examines serious moral questions about technological progress, the limits of science, and our place in the universe.
"Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind - and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there." (from 'Pirx's Tale' in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot, 1983)
Stanislaw Lem was born in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) as the son of Samuel Lem, a prosperous physician (a laryngologist). In his childhood Lew was a voracious reader - he read poetry, novels, popular science books, and his father's anatomy books.
In a autobiographical essay Lem tells, that when his IQ was measured in high school, it was over 180. Lem studied medicine at Lwów University and at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. 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. With false papers that concealed his Jewish origins, he avoided concentrations camps. Toward the end of the war Poland was occupied by the Red Army and the country was closely controlled by the Soviet Union for the next 50 years. In 1946 Lem moved to Kraców. After finishing his studies Lem received his MD. He worked a research assistant in a scientific institution and started to write stories on his spare time. He also wrote articles in the professional press.
In the beginning of his career Lem published lyrical verse, essays on scientific method and realistic novels. His first work was a story CZLOWIEK Z MARSA (1946), which appeared in a magazine. In the 1950s Lem turned seriously into science fiction, publishing ASTRONAUCI (1951), OBLOK MAGELANA (1955), and EDEN (1959), a prophecy in which five ship-wrecked space traveling scientist explore a world where chemical manipulation is a part of the social lassez-faire. He had written in 1948-49 a three-volume autobiographical novel CZAS NIEUTRACONY, but it did not appear until 1957 - due to its first volume which was a problem for the censor.
Lem's early novels and stories were more or less optimistic and based on the conventions of Socialist Realism. He examined technological development, future civilizations, and responsibility of scientist. In the 1960s Lem's visions became more independent, experimental and radical. Although the communist Polish government did not tolerate criticism, authorities regarded science fiction as an unimportant genre of literature, which made possible to ask politically forbidden questions about progress under the disguise of harmless fantasy. In the 1960s Lem was very productive: he wrote among others CYBERIADA (1965, The Cyberiad), a satire in in which two robots have too creative talents, OPOWIESCI O PILOCIE PIRXIE (1968), stories about Pilot Pirx, and SUMMA TECHNOLOGIAE (1964), philosophical essays. The Cyberiad referred in its title to The Iliad and 'cybernetics'. BAJKI ROBOTÓW (1964) was a mixture of fairy tales, social satire, and science fiction, in which highly developed artificial beings have all the negative personal and societal traits of human beings. "The theme he stresses in most of his work," wrote Phil José Farmer in The New York Times, "is that machines will someday be as human as Homo sapiens and perhaps superior to him. Mr. Lem has an almost Dickensian genius for vividly realizing the tragedy and comedy of future machines; the death of one of his androids or computers actually wrings sorrow from the reader." (September 2, 1984)
Lem's adventure stories about Ijon Tichy, an astronaut, laugh at commonly accepted ideas and play with bizarre inventions. In one story an inventor keeps his wife's ''soul'' in a small box, and another a robot proves to be a bad mountain climber. A scientist invents a time machine, in which he ages and dies. Ijon Tichy appeared among others in The Star Diaries (1957) and the collection The Futurological Congress (1971). Peace on Earth (1987) was about military technology. One high-tech weapon slices through the left and right hemispheres of the legendary polymath. As a consequence, Tichy can type only with his right hand, while his left pinches women's behinds and otherwise acts with a will of its own. The fate of nations may depend on the secrets of his confused mind.
"And do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"But you didn't think a robot would, right?"
"Right."
(from 'The Inquest' in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot, 1983)
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (trans. 1973) is a story about an aspiring agent, who seeks his mission and the meaning of his existence. In Return from the Stars (trans. 1980) a space pilot returns to Earth after a 10 year journey. He has to adjust himself to a new world - meanwhile 120 years had passed in Earth time. Imaginary Magnitude (trans. 1984), moves into the literary world of Jorge Luis Borges, and consists only of introductions of other (imaginary) books. However, Lem has criticized Borgets's hermetic approach to literature: "We are building newer, richer, and more terrible paradises and hells; but in his books Borges knows nothing about them." One Human Minute (1986) was a collection of essays masqueraded as reviews of books that have not yet been written. The second ''review'' is about ''the military evolution of civilization'', seen from the viewpoint of the 21st century. It describes how arms builders managed to overcome all obstacles and create really effective 'synsects'' to fight a modern war. "The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order..." (from One Human Minute) FIASKO (1986, trans. 1987) was a meditation on the nature of culture and technology, in which aliens avoid contact with humans. A spaceship, the Hermes, is sent to Quinta, which reveals evidence of life but remains silent. When the spaceship approches the planet, they find out that the Quintas have developed a Cosmic War Zone.
Lem's most famous novel Solaris is among the classic science fiction novels of the 1960s. In it the author explores one of his favorite subjects - the limitations of human understanding. The story is set in a space station hovering above the planet Solaris. Scientists probe the mysteries the planet where the only living thing is an intelligent ocean, that covers the whole surface. Andrei Tarkovsky's film adaptation of the novel from 1972 has been called the 2001: A Space Odyssey of Russian sci-fi cinema. However, the director was not interested in special effects or superficial science fiction elements, rockets and space stations, and later said that the film "would have stood out more vividly and boldly had we managed to dispense with these things altogether." In the story a scientist (Donatis Banionis) is sent to investigate why his colleagues have suffered mental breakdowns on the space station. He discovers that the mysterious organic, sentient 'ocean' of the planet is capable of either reproducing images and people from a person's past, innermost obsessions, or causing him to fantasize that he is seeing such visions. Banionis himself is haunted by a reincarnation of his suicided wife (Natalja Bondartshuk), who appears in physical form. Horrified he kills her, but a replica arrives again, and the meetings forces him to face up the past events of his life. The vast fluid "brain" remains enigma for human intelligence and probing - the phantoms may be an attempt by it to communicate. Towards the end of the movie - differing from Lem's novel - Solaris replicates a small portion of Earth upon its surface.
In his memoirs, Highcastle: A Remembrance (1997), the author describes his childhood as the son of a doctor in Lvov between the two world wars. His favorite writers were Sienkiewicz, Verne, Dumas and Wells. The book ends in his military training in 1935. "During the three years of my military training," Lem writes, "there was no mention made, not once, of the existence of tanks." Four years later the Polish Army fought against German tanks on horseback.
Several of Lem's books were translated into English in the 1980s, and his writings appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Penthouse, and Omni. From 1983 Lem has lived in Austria and Italy, but he has not identified himself with the dissident writers. After writing POKÒJ NA ZIEMI (1987), Lem announced that he will finish his career as a novelist and publish only essays and columns. Lem expressed his disappointment in current science fiction in Microwords: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy (1984). Science fiction should examine, according to Lem, scientific problems or mysteries, but it offers hostile monsters and juvenile fantasy. However, in 2000 Lem published a new novel, OKAMGNIENIE, about how the word ends happily.
For further reading: Stanislaw Lem by E. Balcerzak (1973); New Worlds for Old by David Ketterer (1974); Stanislaw Lem by Joseph Olander, Martin Greenberg (1983); Just the Other Day: Essays on the Suture of the Future, ed. by Luk de Vois (1985); 'Stanislaw Lem' by Richard E. Ziegfeld, in Science Fiction Studies, vol. 1 (1985); Hard Science Fiction, ed. by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (1986); Stanislaw Lem by J. Madison Davis (1987); Rozmowy ze Stanislawem Lemem, with Stanislaw Berés (1987); Weltprothesen und Prothesenwelten: Zu den technischen Prognosen Arno Schmidts und Stanislaw Lems by Bernd Flessner (1991); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); A Stanislaw Lem Reader, ed. by Peter Swirski (1997); Stanislaw Lems Prognose des Epochenendes by Holger Arndt (2001)
SELECTED WORKS:
CZLOWIEK Z MARSA, 1946 (serialized in Nowy Swiat Prygod)
ASTRONAUCI, 1951 - The Astronauts - Kuoleman planeetta - film Der schweigende Stern (DDR / Poland, 1959), dir. by Kurt Maetzig, starring Kurt Rackelmann, Ignacy Machowski, Gunter Simon
JACHT PARADISE, 1951 (with Roman Hussarski)
SEZAM I INNE OPOWIADANIA, 1955
OBLOK MAGELLANA, 1955
DIALOGI, 1957
DZIENNIKI GWIAZDOWE, 1957 - The Star Diaries - Tähtipäiväkirjat
SZPITAL PRZEMIENIENIA, 1957 - The Hospital of the Transfiguration
CZAS NIEUTRACONI, 1957 (3 vols.)
SLEDZTWO, 1959 - The Investigation of Eden
INWAZJA Z ALDEBARANA, 1959
EDEN, 1959 - Eden (trans. by Marc E. Heine) - Eeden
POWROT Z GWIAZD, 1961 - Return from The Stars - Paluu tähdistä
PAMIETNIK ZNALEZIONY W WANNIE, 1961 - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
SOLARIS, 1961 - film Soljaris /Solaris (1972), dir. by Andrei Tarkovski, starring Donatas Banionis, Natalija Bondartšuk, Juri Järvet; film 2002, dir. by Steven Soderberg, starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis
KSIEGA ROBOTÓW, 1961
WEJSCIE NA ORBITE, 1962
NOC KSIEZYCOWA, 1963
BAJKI ROBOTÓW, 1964 - Konekansan satuja ja tarinoita (suom. Seppo Sipilä)
NIEZWYCIEZONY I INNE OPOWIADANIA, 1964 - The Invincible - Voittamaton
SUMMA TECHNOLOGIAE, 1964
CYBERIADA, 1965 - Cyberiad (trans. by Michael Kandel) - Kyberias
POLOWANIE, 1965
RATUJMY KOSKOS, 1966
WYSOKI ZAMEK, 1966
OPOWIESCI O PILOCIE PIRXIE, 1968 - Tales of Pirx the Pilot; More Tales of Pirx the Pilot - film Test pilota Pirxa (1978) was based on the short story 'Rozprawa,' dir. by Marek Piestrak, starring Sergei Desnitski, Bleslaw Abart, Vladimir Ivašov
GLOS PANA, 1968 - His Master's Voice (trans. by Michael Kandel) - Isännän ääni
OPOWIADANIA, 1969
FANTASTYKA I FUTUROLOGIA, 1970
DOSKONALA PROZNIA, 1971 - A Perfect Vacuum (trans. by Michael Kandel)
BEZSENNOSC, 1971 - from the collection transl. The Futurological Congress - Futurologinen kongressi
DZIENNIKI GWIAZDOWE, 1971 - parts published earlier, translated as The Star Diaries / Memoirs of a Space Traveler: The Further Reminiscenes of Ijon Tichy (translated by Joel Stern and Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek)
OPOWIADANIA WYBRANE, 1973
WIELKOSC UROJONA, 1973
GOLEM XIV, 1973 - selections published under the title Imaginary Magnitude
ROZPRAWY I SZKICE, 1975
MASKA, 1976 - part in Mortal Engines
SUPPLEMENT, 1976
Mortal Engines, 1977 (trans. by Michael Kandel)
KATAR, 1977 - The Chain of Change (trans. by Louis Iribarne) - Nuha
POWTÓRKA, 1979
The Cosmic Carnival of Stanislaw Lem, 1981
WISNA LOKALNA, 1982
PROWOKACJA, 1984
Microwords: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, 1984 (ed. by Franz Rottensteiner)
BIBLIOTEKA XXI WIEKU, 1986 - One Human Minute (translated by Catherine S. Leach)
FIASKO, 1987 - Fiasco (translated by Michael Kandel) - Fiasco
POKÓJ NA ZIEMI, 1987
SOZMOWY ZE STANISLAWEM LEMEM, 1987 (with Stanislaw Berés)
POKÒJ NA ZIEMI, 1987 - Peace on Earth (trans. by Elinor Ford and Michael Kandel) - Rauha maassa
CIEMNOSC I PLESN, 1988
DZIENNIKI GWIAZDOWE, 1991
WYSOKI ZAMEK, 1995 - Highcastle: A Remembrance (trans. by Michael Kandel)
A Stanislaw Lem Reader, 1997 (ed. by Peter Swirski)
OKAMGNIENIE, 2000
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/slem.htm
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