www.on-lang.net

[lukasz]

I know it is completely off topic - but I feel I must let you know. Stanislaw Lem, the most prominent and definitely the best known Polish contemporary writer passed away on March 27 at 3 pm in Cracow of heart failure at the age of 84. He is best remember as a science-fiction writer, but Lem was in fact much more than this: a philosoper and a visionary. Most of the visions he predicted as early as in 1950s and 1960s, such as the internet, virtual reality, cloning, genetic manipuations or globalization, have proven true by now. Lem was also a wise and balanced commentator of this crazy world of ours.

He wrote about 70 books, sold in nearly 30 million copies and translated into over 40 languages. Probably the best known book of his was "Solaris", which was made into movie twice, into 1973 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Sodebergh and starring George Clooney.

If you do not know Lem's books I would recommend three for the start: "The Star Diaries", "The Cyberiad" - a wonderful combination of technology and fairy tales (or better said robot tales) and "Memoirs Found in the Bathtub", perhaps the oddest of all his books, whose hero wanders through the unending halls and rooms of a never precisely defined institution, called "the Building", a great parable of an omnipotent totalitary system. Lem loved experimenting with literary genres and language, and it is clearly seen in his books.

Although his books are known all over the world, Lem himself traveled very little. Born in then Polish Lwow, he had to leave it in 1946 after the city became part of the Soviet Union. He settled in Cracow where he stayed most of his life, with the exception of a few years following the martial law in Poland in 1981, which he spent in Vienna. Although progress in technology and space exploration occuppied the majority of his works, all his books were written on an old mechanical typewriter. He never used a computer for writing.

I am proud Lem was a compatriot of mine and wrote in the same language that I use, although if he was Czech, Russian or Malaysian my opinion of him as a writer would be exactly the same. I only pity he did not receive the Nobel Prize in literature he certainly deserved more than many actual winners, and which is a shame for the Swedish Academy. But now it's too late.

Probably the biggest appreciation of Lem's work was made by another prominent s-f writer, Philip K. Dick. He maintained for a long time that such a writer as Lem did not exist at all, as no sinlge person could collect such a profound knowledge in so many areas, and that "Lem" was actually the name of a group of Soviet authors who must have had access to most modern technologies. Dick could not imagine that all these books could have been written by just one man in his small house with a garden or in his favorite Tatra Mountains in southern Poland.

Stanislaw Lem is not with us any more but he will live on in his works. And I truly believe his books will be read by future generations as well. Millions of his readers, including me, are mourning him and will miss him a lot.

Lem's Official Web Site (English)
Lem's Forum

[claudia]

I know and love Philip K. Dick and unluckily I haven't read anything by Stanislaw Lem..
I'll certainly do it!
Ciao