By Marcin Mierzejewski
5 April 2006

A guru of science-fiction literature, a thinker ahead of his time, a cheerful and witty man consistently warning of the inevitable end of humankind. With the passing away of Stanisław Lem Polish literature lost its greatest celebrity-and the world lost one of its sharpest observers and most discerning commentators.

In his novels, which shaped the imagination of several generations of readers throughout the world, he uniquely managed to combine an intriguing plot with the deepest reflection on man's place in the universe, contemplations about the future of mankind in the face of technologies developing at an unprecedented pace and the limitations of human consciousness-which stand in the way of cognition. His science-fiction attracts readers not only with its innovative descriptions of nonexistent technologies and devices-nonexistent at the time of writing but many of them exist now. He also wrote varied and convincing psychological portraits of his characters, something which produces a strong impression of reality, quite uncommon in sci-fi.

Additionally, as a sci-fi writer, Lem made a sort of Copernican revolution in the way we think about aliens. Instead of green anthropoid creatures with tentacles, the extraterrestrial intelligence according to Lem takes the form of a swarm of cosmic "insects," as in The Invincible, or an unfathomable ocean, as in Solaris. He then attempts to establish "contact", something which humankind has dreamt about for so long, but which either turns out to be impossible or at best produce results very far from expectations. One can reasonably presume that Lem's literary visions have influenced the imagination and consciousness of millions of people who have read his books or watched their film adaptations. Our idea of outer space, interplanetary travel and a meeting with an alien intelligence has changed forever under the influence of the creative mind of one man.

Beginnings
Stanisław Lem was born in 1921 in Lviv, which was a Polish city at that time, to a family of a physician. He graduated from high school in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. After the Soviets occupied Lviv he took the technical university entrance exams, but was not enrolled because of his "bourgeois background." Thanks to friends in high places he was able to start his higher education at the Lviv Medical Institute, something he later recalled without much enthusiasm, explaining it was the only way for him to avoid compulsory enlistment in the Red Army.

After Lviv was taken over by the Germans, Lem worked temporarily as a manual laborer-a welder and a mechanic's assistant. In the years 1944-45, when Lviv was seized again by the Soviets, he continued his medical studies. In 1946, within the repatriation operation-or the mass relocation of Polish people from territories taken over after the war by the Soviet Union-Lem had to leave his hometown. He had a sentimental attachment to it until the end of his life. He moved with his parents to Cracow, where he graduated from medical school at Jagiellonian University in 1948. In this period, he started to publish his first literary works, poems and stories in the Cracow press. His short story, "The Man from Mars", came out in 1946, published in installments in the Nowy Świat Przygód magazine.

A turning point in his intellectual development, as he himself used to say, was when Lem met Dr. Mieczysław Choynowski and assumed the post of assistant in the Science Studies Seminar group established by Choynowski. Holding the post in the years 1948-50, Lem had access to publications connected with many fields of knowledge: logic, methodology of science, psychology and history of natural sciences. They proved to be very useful for the future writer and thinker.

In 1948, Lem started writing his first novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration. This realistic story describing the existential dilemmas of a young physician working in a psychiatric hospital during the Nazi occupation, was criticized by communist censors as ideologically dubious. Although the author made many changes, the book could not be published until eight years later. The book came out in 1956, during the post-Stalinist thaw, under the new title Time not Lost. His first science-fiction novel, The Astronauts, was published in 1951. As Lem later reminisced, perhaps half-jokingly, he let the publisher persuade him to work on a sci-fi book only because he was in "a difficult financial situation." This marked the beginning of his great literary career.

Success
The Astronauts scored a success which surpassed expectations, a success reflected in Lem's first foreign editions. This rolling stone started an avalanche-there followed many successive sci-fi books, which were to earn Lem the position of one of the greatest writers in the history of this genre. He wrote a majority of his most important works in the 1960s: Return from the Stars, The Invincible, Tales of Pirx the Pilot and Solaris. The last one is his best-known novel, translated most often and made into a film three times. A German newspaper compared the literary importance of this work to that of Goethe's Faust. In these books, the author followed the classical convention of novels and maintained a serious tone. The second group is made up of his more satirical works, often styled to resemble traditional literary forms: fable, chivalric epic, philosophical tale, for example Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Mortal Engines, The Cyberiad. His later books Eyewitness Account and Peace on Earth can also be included in this category.

Lem did not limit himself to science-fiction. The Investigation, published in 1959, and its continuation in terms of genre, The Chain of Chance, are a mix of sci-fi and the detective novel. He described his childhood years in Lviv in the autobiographical novel Highcastle. A Remembrance. He also searched for new forms, making a contribution to expanding the borders of literary expression. In the early 1970s, Lem published two brilliant and stylistically and intellectually sophisticated collections of sketches about nonexistent books: A Perfect Vacuum and Imaginary Magnitude.

He also wrote discursive works in the form of essays and scientific treatises combining philosophy, futurology and science-fiction. Summa Technologiae, which the writer regarded as his life's work, occupies a special place here. It is in Summa that Lem presented his prophetic visions, of which some have already come true, concerning the development of genetic engineering, the notion of virtual reality, etc.

From behind the Iron Curtain
In the early 1970s, Lem's books started to come out on the American market in excellent translations by Michael Kandel-it was a real discovery for people interested in science-fiction. The New York Times devoted a cover page of its famous literary supplement to Lem and in 1973 the Science Fiction Writers of America gave him honorary membership, which they revoked after a short while for critical remarks about American sci-fi literature. In this way, Lem-as one of few writers in communist Poland-managed to break through the Iron Curtain and become part of global culture, permanently and successfully. In the West, he still remains perhaps the most recognizable Polish author and at the same time one of the best-known Poles, apart from Pope John Paul II and Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa.

Earlier, he had already won renown in the Eastern bloc. Despite reservations about Lem's first novel, his scientific outlook and sci-fi subject matter, connected with man's conquest of outer space, his prose turned out to be attractive also for the ideologists ruling the Soviet empire. It was these people that decided about the number of translations and the size of the print run.

This is how the writer remembered the realities of those years: "The Astronauts was published in East Germany as Der Planet des Todes [Planet of the Dead-ed.] and The Magellan Nebula came out there under the bizarre title of Gast im Weltraum [Guest in Space-ed.], but the book had eight or nine major print runs. I used to take a wad of Eastern Deutschemarks from a bank, go to West Berlin by subway and exchange the money into Western Deutschemarks-three for one. And I was shopping like crazy, buying various things, mainly for my wife (...). At first, I was a bit afraid. When we got off the subway and I saw West German policemen wearing long white coats, I had the impression that there was a sign on my forehead screaming: 'I'm a Red!'‚ and that the policemen were about to jump me."

However, ideologists probably underestimated the versatility of the writer's mind and vision, which in fact was falling outside the rules of the "one and only right" doctrine. In Russia, Lem is still one of their favorite writers of the 20th century and is considered to be an author whose way of thinking was evidence not so much of the superiority of the materialist vision of the world as of the power of independent and free thought.

Apocalypse wow!
Lem defied definition until the end of his life. In Poland, his most fervent admirers included people brought up in the Catholic tradition. It did not discourage them that their guru spoke in quite skeptical terms about the existence of God. For several generations of Poles, not only sci-fi fans, Lem has been an indisputable authority on matters connected with futurology and other issues. In the later period of his life, when he gave up writing sci-fi, Lem eagerly commented on contemporary problems, criticizing for example the Polish realities. The writer took care not to be pigeonholed ideologically and used to publish his features simultaneously in newspapers of a completely different provenance-the postcommunist Przegląd and the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny. He was not afraid of sharp judgments and colorful phrasing, writing for example that "Poland is, if you'll pardon the expression, a civilizational jerkwater country", "the world is governed by idiots or madmen," and "President Bush has the quality of being stupid." Until the end he remained a "merry prophet of the apocalypse," as he was called in one obituary in the Italian press. "If you are asking about the future of mankind, I always feel anxious when I think about it. We are inevitably heading for a nuclear conflict. However, I don't know when the final clash will take place, for if I knew that I would probably be sitting locked in the U.S. president's safe," Lem said with his characteristic sense of humor in one recent interview.

He died on March 27 in Cracow's Collegium Medicum, the research hospital of Jagiellonian University where he himself had studied medicine. Suffering from heart disease, he stayed in the hospital for several weeks. In September he would have turned 85. For the fans of his books this death marked an end of an era-a genius that will no longer share his original visions and prophecies with the world.

His books, translated into 41 languages, have been published in more than 27 million copies. He was considered as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, but never received it. He used to say ironically that apparently he was not left-wing enough. Or perhaps an American critic was right when he wrote in the 1980s: "If Lem does not receive the Nobel Prize before the end of the century the only explanation will be that someone must have told the committee that he is a science-fiction writer."


BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Man from Mars (Człowiek z Marsa, 1946)
The Astronauts (Astronauci, 1951)
Hospital of the Transfiguration (Szpital Przemienienia, 1955)
The Magellan Nebula (Obłok Magellana, 1955)
Dialogs (Dialogi, 1957)
The Star Diaries (Dzienniki gwiazdowe, 1957)
Eden (Eden, 1959)
The Investigation (Śledztwo, 1959)
Return from the Stars (Powrót z gwiazd, 1961)
Solaris (Solaris, 1961)
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie, 1961)
The Invincible (Niezwyciężony, 1964)
Mortal Engines (Bajki robotów, 1964)
Summa Technologiæ (Summa Technologiae, 1964)
The Cyberiad (Cyberiada, 1965)
Highcastle. A Remembrance (Wysoki Zamek, 1966)
His Master's Voice (Głos Pana, 1968)
The Philosophy of Chance (Filozofia przypadku, 1968)
Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie, 1968)
Science Fiction and Futurology (Fantastyka i futurologia, 1970)
A Perfect Vacuum (Doskonała próżnia, 1971)
Imaginary Magnitude (Wielkość urojona, 1973)
The Chain of Chance (Katar, 1976)
Golem XIV (Golem XIV, 1981)
Eyewitness Account (Wizja lokalna, 1982)
The Futurological Congress (Kongres futurologiczny, 1983)
Fiasco (Fiasko, 1987)
Peace on Earth (Pokój na Ziemi, 1987)
A Secret of the Chinese Room (Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju, 1996)
A Blink of an Eye (Okamgnienie, 2000)


Adaptations of Lem's Books for the Screen
1959-Der schweigende Stern / First Spaceship on Venus. Dir.: Kurt Maetzig. Prod.: Poland-East Germany
1963-Ikarie XB-1 / Voyage to the End of the Universe. Dir.: Jindrich Polak. Prod.: Czechoslovakia
1965-Profesor Zazul, Przyjaciel / Professor Zazul, A Friend. Dir. Marek Nowicki, Jerzy Stawicki. Prod.: Poland
1968-Przekładaniec / Layer Cake. Dir.: Andrzej Wajda. Screenplay: Stanisław Lem. Prod.: Poland
1970-Solaris. Dir.: Nikolai Nirenburg. Prod.: USSR
1972-Solaris. Dir.: Andrei Tarkovsky. Prod.: USSR
1973-Śledztwo / The Investigation. Dir.: Marek Piestrak. Prod.: Poland
1978-Szpital przemienienia / Hospital of the Transfiguration. Dir.: Edward Żebrowski. Prod.: Poland
"Test pilota Pirxa" / Test Pilot Pirx. Dir.: Marek Piestrak. Prod.: Poland-USSR
1988-Victim of the Brain. Dir.: Piet Hoenderdos. Prod.: The Netherlands
1994-Marianengraben. Dir.: Achim Bornhak. Prod.: Germany
1997-Śledztwo / The Investigation (TV Theater).
Dir. Waldemar Krzystek. Prod.: Poland
2002-Solaris. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Prod.: USA


From the writer's official website www.lem.pl:
"I am irritated by evil and stupidity. Evil results from stupidity, while stupidity feeds on Evil. Television is full of violence and desensitizes us.

Internet makes it easier to hurt our neighbors. I recently read an article about a young man who tried to (almost successfully) gain control of a computer of a large American aircraft carrier. Had I written such a story some thirty years ago, everybody would consider me mad. However nowadays such a paradox is possible. The entire history of humankind is just a little second on the geological clock. We live in a period of an incredible acceleration. We are like a man who jumped off the roof of a fifty-story building and reached the thirtieth floor. Someone looking out of the windows asks: 'How are you doing?' and the falling man replies: 'Everything is fine, so far.' We are unaware of the speed that captured us. The technology moves forward, however the control of its direction is very weak."

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