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Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) |
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Polish satirical and philosophical science fiction writer, whose novel Solaris (1961) was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971. By the beginning of the 2000s, Stanislaw Lem's books had been translated into more than 40 languages and sold about almost 35 million copies worldwide. He was one of the best SF authors of the late 20th century not to write in English. Though Lem told his stories often in a humorous tone, he examined serious moral questions about technological progress and the course of our civilization, and our place in the universe. A central theme in his work is the limitation of human understanding. "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, translated by Louis Iribarne, Magdalena Majcherczyk, Michael Kandel, 1982) Stanisław Lem was born in Lwów (now Lvov, Ukraine), the son of
Samuel Lem, a prosperous physician (a laryngologist), and Sabine Lem
(née Wollner), a housewife. The family lived on the second floor of Number Four of
Brajerska Street. Throughout his childhood Lew devoured books voraciously – he read poetry, novels, popular science books, and his father's anatomy books. With his father he used to walk to the Jesuit Garden or toward Saint Jur's Orthodox Church, the enormous barrel in the garden appeared later in a Lem's story, 'The Garden of Darkness' (origin. pub. 1947). At the age of twelve he received from his father as a present a manual Remington Underwood; with this typewriter Lem wrote his books. In an autobiographical essay Lem told, that when his IQ was measured in high school, it was over 180. After finishing high school in 1939, Lem entered the Lvov's Medical Institute, but his studies were interrupted by WW II and he moved to Cracow, where he continued his studies in Jagiellonian University. To avoid being drafted, he did not take his final exams until 1948. During
the war and Nazi occupation Lem worked in the daytime
in a German carshop as a mechanic and welder, and at hight he was a
member of the resistance fighting against the Germans. With false
papers that concealed his Jewish origins, he avoided concentrations
camps. "I have learned how human beings behave under extreme
conditioins – how their behavior when they are under enormous pressures
is almost impossible to predict," Lem said in an autobiogtraphical
essay for the New Yorker. (Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future by Peter Swirski, 2015, p. 16) 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. Lem's family had lost all of their possessions in the
course of the war. After finishing his studies Lem received his MD. He
worked a research assistant at Cracow's Science Council and
started to write stories on his spare time. He also
contributed articles to the professional press. In 1953, he
married Barbara Lesniak, a young student of medicine. Their son, Tomasz
(born 1968), has written about his father in the anecdotal Awantury na tle powszechnego ciążenia
(2010, Gravity-Related Tantrums), in which Lem appears as good-natured,
big child devoid of natural paternal instinct. However, Lem took great
interest in his son's intellectual development, and he loved building
model kits – trains, electric motors, etc. – with him. In the beginning of his career Lem published lyrical verse,
essays on scientific method and realistic novels. His
first novel Czlowiek z Marsa
(1946), appeared in a serialized form in the Kraków
maganine Nowy Swiat Prygod. In the 1950s Lem turned seriously
into science fiction, publishing Astronauci
(1951, The Astronauts), Oblok Magellana (1955, The Magellanic Cloud), 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.
The Russian translators demanded a number of revisions to be made to The
Astronauts, but eventually to book got published. He
had finished 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. Hospital of the Transfiguration (1956), a
novel set in a mental institution during the first days of WW II, came
out three years after Stalin's death. Lem's awards from the
1950s include City of
Cracow's Prize in Literature, the Officer's Cross for the Polish
Renaissance, the Award of the Ministry of Culture,
the Great State Award for Literature in Poland, the Austrian State
Award for European Literature. He rarely went to the award ceremonies,
held aloof from the literary establishment, and did not give interviws Lem's early novels and stories were more or less optimistic
and based on the conventions of Socialist Realism. He examined
technological development, evoliution, future civilizations, and responsibility of
scientist. In The Invincible (1964)
Lem plays with the idea that the automata have their own path of
evolution and develop a swarm
intelligence. What can happen when there is a confrontation between
human and artificial intelligence? (The term AI was coined in the
1950s.) N. Katherine Hayles says in the foreword of the 2020 MIT Press
edition of the book that" [c]ontemporary research on artifical life has
validated Lem's insight that swarms of artificsal beings require only a
few simple rules to manifest complex behaviors and hence each member
needs to carry only a little cognitive power." During the 1960s, Lem's vision 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. This made possible to
ask politically forbidden questions about progress under the disguise
of harmless fantasy. "I wrote my works from a perspective intended to bypass all Marxist censors, simply because I would move about in philosophical and futurological domains where they had nothing to say," Lem explained in an interview. (A Stanislaw Lem Reader, edited Peter Swirski, 1997, p. 22) After the collapse of the Soviet system, he noted that "literature, which refers only to a very concrete type of totalitarian relations, loses a lot of its social relevance and vitality when the system which it critiques collapses." ('Reflections on Literature, Philosophy, and Science', in A Stanislaw Lem Reader, edited by Peter Swirski, 1997, p. 22) In his "golden period" in the 1960s, Lem was very productive: he wrote 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 on cybernetics and biology, the title referring to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. The title of The Cyberiad was formed from The Iliad and "cybernetics". Because this interdisciplinary study was banned in Marxist science, Lem, who had read Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics (1948), invented a new term, "mechanioristics." A member of the Polish Cybernetics society, Lem took an active role in rehabilitation of cybernetics in the Soviet Union. 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," said 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." ('Pornograms and Supercomputers' by Philip José Farmer, The New York Times, September 2, 1984) Lem's
adventure stories about Ijon Tichy, an astronaut, laugh
at commonly accepted ideas and play with bizarre inventions and absurd
enterprises – an inventor keeps his wife's ''soul'' in a small box, a
robot proves to be a bad mountain climber, a scientist
invents a time machine, in which he ages and dies, and Tichy gets
involved in an expedition to create the Proto-atom. Ijon Tichy tells
his stories although he knows that no one will believe him. He
appeared,
among others, in The Star Diaries (1957) and the collection The
Futurological Congress (1971). The New Yorker published many of Lem's stories. 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?" Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (tr. 1973) is a story about
an aspiring agent, who seeks his mission and the meaning of his
existence. In Return from the Stars (tr. 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. A Perfect Vacuum (1971) 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. Lem
describes how arms builders managed to overcome all obstacles and
create really effective "synsects'' to fight a modern war. Also Imaginary
Magnitude (tr. 1984) moved in the literary world of Jorge Luis Borges. It consisted only of
introductions to 16 (imaginary) books. However, Lem has criticized
Borges'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." ('If the Sea Were Intelligent' by Jonathan Culler, The New York Times, March 24, 1985) It has been said that Lem was "a moralist who doesn't moralize." (Peter Haffner, in Science Fiction Studies, Vol 28, No. 1, March 2001) Technology is neither good or bad, but it can have disastrous effects. "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." (One
Human Minute, translated by Catherine S. Leach, 1986, p. 96) Fiasco (1986, tr. 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 work, Solaris, is among the classic
science fiction novels of the 1960s. In it the author explored one of
his favorite subjects – limits of our understanding of the universe.
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. Noteworthy, 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." ('Tarkovsky's Solaris and the (Im)possibility of a Science Fiction Cinema' by Leon Marvell, in Endangering Science Fiction Film, edited by Sean Redmond and Leon Marvell, 2016, p. 139) Lem himself viewed with suspicion modern innovations and never taught himself to use a computer, but remained faithful to his old Remington Underwood. And in general, Lem had little good to say about of his contemporary English-language science fiction writers. In the film 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. Also, not fully happy with Steven Soderbergh's version of the novel, Lem said that "the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space... As Solaris author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled 'Solaris' and not 'Love in Outer Spce'." (Solaris, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky: Psychological and Philosophical Aspects by Nicolae Sfetcu, 2019, pp. 4-5) Lem had reservations about Tarkovsky's adaptation, too: "he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment." ('The Soviet Nomad: Tarkovsky’s Science Fiction War Machine' by Brook W. R. Pearson, in Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 35, 2015) In his memoirs, Highcastle: A Remembrance (1997), Lem described 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 wrote, "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.
Though he traveled
extensively in Europe, he refused all invitations to North America.
He also declined an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.
Between 1982 and 1988 Lem lived in Germany, Austria and
Italy, but while abroad he did not identify himself with the dissident
writers. On the other hand, he refused to join the government-run
Writer's Union. In 1985 he received Austrian State Award for Culture. Summarizing the results of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project, Lem said in 1983 that he considers the universe silent. Lem returned in 1988 to Poland, where a wave of strikes forced the government to recognize the Solidarity union, which sought workers' rights and liberties. He had enjoyed his life in the West, but found the intellectual life in his own home country more interesting. Upon the publication of Pokój na Ziemi (1987, Peace on Earth), an Ijon Tichy satire on the moon, Lem announced that he will finish his career as a novelist and focus only on 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. Lem died of heart failure on 27 March, 2006, in Cracow. 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); A Stanislaw Lem Reader, ed. by Peter Swirski (1997); Stanislaw Lems Prognose des Epochenendes by Holger Arndt (2001); Between Literature and Science: Poe, Lem, and Explorations in Aesthetics, Cognitive Science, and Literary Knowledge by Peter Swirski (2001); The Art And Science of Stanislaw Lem by Peter Swirski (2006); Lemography: Stanislaw Lem in the Eyes of the World, edited by Peter Swirski and Waclaw M. Osadnik (2014); Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future by Peter Swirski (2015); Between an Animal and a Machine: Stanislaw Lem's Technological Utopia by Pawel Majewski; translation from Polish by Olga Kaczmarek (2018); Stanisław Lem: wypędzony z wysokiego zamku: biografia by Agnieszka Gajewska (2021); Stanisław Lem: fantastyka naukowa i fikcje nauki, pod redakcją Doroty Heck (2021) ; Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem by Agnieszka Gajewska; translated by Katarzyna Gucio (2022) Selected works:
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