Stanislaw Lem, science fiction writer

WARSAW – Stanislaw Lem, a popular science fiction author whose works included ‘Solaris’, died last week in his native Poland.

He was 84. 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.Lem’s best-known work, ‘Solaris’ was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and, in 2002, by Steven Soderbergh – the latter starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.Set on a spaceship above a fictional planet, it features a psychologist meeting the likeness of a long-dead lover as he and the crew grapple with suppressed memories of lost loves.Lem’s first important novel, ‘Hospital of the Transfiguration’, was censored by communist authorities for eight years before its release, in 1956, amid a thaw following the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.Other works include ‘The Invincible’, ‘The Cyberiad’, ‘His Master’s Voice’, ‘The Star Diaries’, ‘The Futurological Congress’ and ‘Tales of Prix the Pilot’.”A great artist has died, a man with the hallmarks of a genius,” renowned Polish film director Andrzej Wajda told the country’s Pap news agency.”He was an amazingly talented man, and Polish literature never had anyone like him before,” said Tomasz Fialkowski, co-author of a book of interviews with Lem and the deputy editor of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.While Lem was widely known as a writer of science fiction, his works were never simple tales of spaceships and light-sabers.”He wrote about all the new scientific discoveries, about the evolution of man and the evolution of technology, and in his books he foresaw a whole host of things that we now see before our eyes, such as virtual reality,” Fialkowski said.While his novels often took place in space in the undetermined future, Lem “connected it all with his interest in what is going on in the here and now, with politics”, Fialkowski said.Lem reached his creative peak in the 1960s and 1970s – years before Poland threw off communist rule in 1989.He used the fantastical format of science fiction to criticise totalitarianism with satirical stories.They made it past communist censors who did not take the genre seriously.In ‘The Futurological Congress’, Lem created a rollicking satire of a cosmonaut taking part in a congress in Costa Rica that, Fialkowski said, shows the author’s disdain of Poland’s communist authorities.The book was published in the early 1970s.Lem was born into a Polish Jewish family on September 21 1921 in Lviv, then a Polish city but now part of Ukraine.His father was a doctor and he initially appeared set to follow in that path, taking up medical studies in Lviv before World War II.After surviving the Nazi occupation, in part thanks to forged documents that concealed his Jewish background, Lem continued his medical studies in Krakow.Soon afterward, however, he took up writing science fiction.- Nampa-APLem 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.Lem’s best-known work, ‘Solaris’ was adapted into films by director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and, in 2002, by Steven Soderbergh – the latter starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.Set on a spaceship above a fictional planet, it features a psychologist meeting the likeness of a long-dead lover as he and the crew grapple with suppressed memories of lost loves.Lem’s first important novel, ‘Hospital of the Transfiguration’, was censored by communist authorities for eight years before its release, in 1956, amid a thaw following the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.Other works include ‘The Invincible’, ‘The Cyberiad’, ‘His Master’s Voice’, ‘The Star Diaries’, ‘The Futurological Congress’ and ‘Tales of Prix the Pilot’.”A great artist has died, a man with the hallmarks of a genius,” renowned Polish film director Andrzej Wajda told the country’s Pap news agency.”He was an amazingly talented man, and Polish literature never had anyone like him before,” said Tomasz Fialkowski, co-author of a book of interviews with Lem and the deputy editor of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.While Lem was widely known as a writer of science fiction, his works were never simple tales of spaceships and light-sabers.”He wrote about all the new scientific discoveries, about the evolution of man and the evolution of technology, and in his books he foresaw a whole host of things that we now see before our eyes, such as virtual reality,” Fialkowski said.While his novels often took place in space in the undetermined future, Lem “connected it all with his interest in what is going on in the here and now, with politics”, Fialkowski said.Lem reached his creative peak in the 1960s and 1970s – years before Poland threw off communist rule in 1989.He used the fantastical format of science fiction to criticise totalitarianism with satirical stories.They made it past communist censors who did not take the genre seriously.In ‘The Futurological Congress’, Lem created a rollicking satire of a cosmonaut taking part in a congress in Costa Rica that, Fialkowski said, shows the author’s disdain of Poland’s communist authorities.The book was published in the early 1970s.Lem was born into a Polish Jewish family on September 21 1921 in Lviv, then a Polish city but now part of Ukraine.His father was a doctor and he initially appeared set to follow in that path, taking up medical studies in Lviv before World War II.After surviving the Nazi occupation, in part thanks to forged documents that concealed his Jewish background, Lem continued his medical studies in Krakow.Soon afterward, however, he took up writing science fiction.- Nampa-AP