Stanislaw Lem

[blacbird]

Curiosity question. He's one of my faves, ranking right up there with Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick as a fabulist and satirist, deadpan funny much of the time, with occasional touches reminiscent of Douglas Adams as well. His work varies from straightforwardly serious and often dark, pointed social commentary, to sharp, whimsical and equally pointed social commentary. I've not seen him mentioned in this forum, and I wonder how many people here have read his work.

caw

[MattW]

I read something by him for a SF class in college. It was lumped in with 13 novels to read in a semester, and probably bookended with unfun feminist and communist SF that near ruined me on the genre.

If it helps, I remember browsing it for the exam...

[Higgins]

I read something by him for a SF class in college. It was lumped in with 13 novels to read in a semester, and probably bookended with unfun feminist and communist SF that near ruined me on the genre.

If it helps, I remember browsing it for the exam...

According to French Wikipedia, he wasn't much of a commie, though he did like Fascists even less (he only liked Philip K. Dick)...I'm sure I read Solaris before it was a Russian Movie and long, long before it was une filmoiserie americaine.

Lem est un partisan de la civilisation occidentale (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occident). Malgré la censure inhérente au régime marxiste-léniniste (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxisme-l%C3%A9ninisme) dans lequel il vécut, son œuvre contient une sévère critique du collectivisme (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivisme_politique).
Lem est intronisé membre honoraire de la Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy_Writers_of_America) (SFWA) en 1973 (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973). La SFWA annule cette décision en 1976 (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976) après les critiques de Lem contre la science-fiction (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science-fiction) américaine bas de gamme, mais lui propose toutefois une adhésion ordinaire, ce qu'il refuse. Il décrit cette littérature comme kitsch (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch), pauvrement écrite et plus intéressée par la rentabilité que par les idées ou les nouvelles formes littéraires. De tous les auteurs américains de science-fiction (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science-fiction), il n'adresse des éloges francs qu'à Philip K. Dick (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick).

[MattW]

I wasn't claiming Lem was a commie, but that he got lost in the crowd of drek I had to read.

Is it a rule that anything you have to read for a class loses all possible enjoyment?

[Higgins]

I wasn't claiming Lem was a commie, but that he got lost in the crowd of drek I had to read.

Is it a rule that anything you have to read for a class loses all possible enjoyment?


I always have liked Perry Miller, and only a class would have led me to read him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Miller

[RG570]

I read his collection of Ijon Tichy stories, I thought they were great. Especially the one with the bio-engineered ships and furniture that doubled as meat.

[blacbird]

Whatever political leanings Lem may have, he keeps them pretty well at bay in his fiction. He's an equal-opportunity disparager of pomposity and pettiness and bureaucracy, much in the vein of Vonnegut. Solaris is his best-known novel, but it's not my favorite. I'd recommend:

Eden
Fiasco
Peace on Earth

and for sheer laugh-out-loud fun, a collection of interrelated short pieces called The Cyberiad.

caw

[Jamesaritchie]

I've read him. Started out liking him, soon started not liking him, finally couldn't read him again. Seems to me his politics come through pretty clear, but I stopped being a fan a good while back.

[arkady]

I was introduced to Lem in a Science-Fiction college course, back in the Seventies. I liked him, but didn't have any great urge to run out and buy more. I always had the nagging suspicion that a lot of his subtlety may have been lost in translation.

[Nakhlasmoke]

I've read Lem that enjoyed, but it's been a long time and the details are hazy.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I read the Cyberiad years ago-- but after a while I was like JAR, I just could't read him. The work that did it for me was Tales of Pirx the Pilot. I ended up going what's the point of reading this-- and promptly gave up on Lem.

[sunandshadow]

I read something by him for a SF class in college. It was lumped in with 13 novels to read in a semester, and probably bookended with unfun feminist and communist SF that near ruined me on the genre.

If it helps, I remember browsing it for the exam...

*wonders if this was at Penn State, maybe Paul Youngquist's class* I also read Lem in a college class - my opinion was that it was fun and childlike satire but not really happy. Did not impress me quite as much as Dr. Seuss, Ogden Nash, and Shel Silverstein, other writers I would consider to be in the same category.

[blacbird]

An interesting set of responses, kind of what I was hoping for. I'm bemused that a couple of people seem to regard Lem's work as equivalent to YA fiction, which strikes me as putting Orwell's Animal Farm in the same category, or regarding Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan as an SF adventure of the same level as L. Ron Hubbard's space operas.

Despite that, I like sunandshadow's comment about "fun and childlike satire but not really happy". I agree with that. Lem is not an optimist, but it's worth remembering that he, like Vonnegut, has bad personal remembrance of WWII, being a young adult in Poland at the time, before the Russian Communist domination. In that context it's also worth noting that Poland was the first "Iron Curtain" nation to throw off that domination, by free election, in 1989. And I remain mystified by JAR's comment about Lem's politics, which I still fail to find major expression of in his fiction.

Eastern Europeans have produced a number of satirical fiction writers who adopt the technique of childlike fable (much as Orwell did in Animal Farm) for serious social commentary. Among these are Carel Capek (who invented the word "robot") and Slawomir Mrozek from Czechoslovakia, and, of course, the great Franz Kafka. In his best work, Lem settles nicely among them.

For those who haven't read Lem, I'll post a characteristic passage that illustrates his dry and deadpan wit, which I greatly admire:

"There are papers and programs that give all the news and those that give only the good news. Until now they had been feeding me the second kind, which is why at the base I had the impression that the world had truly improved after the signing of the Geneva Agreement. You would have thought at least the pacifists were happy, but no. A book Dr. Lopez loaned me tells the story of our new society. The author shows that Jesus was a subersive sent to undermine Jewish unity with that love thy neighbor business, on the principle of divide and conquer, which worked, and which a little later brought down the Roman Empire. Jesus himself had no idea he was a subversive, and the apostles too were in the dark, having only the best intentions although everyone what is paved with good intentions. The author, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, says that anyone who proclaims brotherly love and peace on earth should be immediately arrested and interrogated to see what his agenda really is. So it's not surprising that the pacifists have changed their tactics. Some have taken up the cause of delicious animals. There has nevertheless been no decline in the consumption of pork chops."

-- from Peace on Earth

YA? Something tells me no, but then, you might be surprised how astute your 13-yeaar-old can be about such things.

caw

[Marcusthefish]

I've read Solaris (impressive, liked it), The Star Diaries (entertaining, liked it), Peace on Earth (wasn't impressed, didn't enjoy it), and Microworlds, his book of essays on literature (hard going, barely finished it).

I doubt I'll read any more.

MTF