Stanislaw Lem: Difference between revisions

{{creator}}

 

{{quote|''"[...] Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not [...]"''|[[Philip K. Dick]]'s [http://www.lem.pl/english/faq#P.K.Dick letter to FBI]}}

 

 

[[Pungeon Master|He loved word-plays]], making up new words and divining the future of civilisation from them; it was one of the many ways in which he subjected plot to paradoxical associations rather than to the straight and narrowly reasonable prognoses. He was particularly fond of satirizing religion, technology, and human foibles; typically with a sharp and incisive wit. Later in his career, he grew increasingly critical of technology, particularly the Internet, which he considered little more than a gathering of idiots. Many of his works, both novels and short stories, feature the recurring character Ijon Tichy; an intelligent, accident-prone, adventurer who varies between being the [[Only Sane Man]], and an [[Unreliable Narrator]], occasionally veering into [[Parody Sue]].

Lem had [[Sturgeon's Law|a low opinion of most of science fiction]], and thought that the existence of the [[Sci Fi Ghetto]] was justified, not because the genre is inherently worthless, but because the authors haven't used the possibilities in it. The only contemporary author he considered worthwhile was [[Philip K. Dick]]; Dick did not return his respect, but considered Lem's attacks on American science fiction to be unjustified and insulting. At the same time, he also became a target of Dick's increasing paranoia.<ref>It stemmed from a series of publishings of foreign science-fiction in communist Poland, signatured by Lem - Dick received payment, but in Polish złotys, which he couldn't exchange to dollars. He was already super paranoid, so it added fuel to the fire.</ref> Despite Lem's views, he was defended by [[Ursula K. Le Guin|Ursula LeGuin]] in his conflict with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

 

* ''[[The Astronauts]]'' (Astronauci, 1951)

* ''[[Return From the Stars]]'' (Powrót z gwiazd, 1961; trans. 1980)

* ''The Invincible'' (Niezwyciężony, 1964)

* ''Summa Technologiae'' (1964/67)

* ''The Chain of Chance'' (Katar, 1975)

* ''Golem XIV'' (1981)

* [[A Worldwide Punomenon]]: Quite a lot in his less serious works. Especially ''[[The Star Diaries]]''.

* [[Altum Videtur]]: more frequently in his non-fictional works. Arguably, that was less a personal trait of Lem than it was common for the educated Poles as a whole. Due the immense influence the [[Catholic Church]] and its liturgical language, Latin, had in Polish culture and history, literary Polish itself became heavily latinized, and it shows.

** He studied medicine in Lwów, although he did not finish the studies because he did not want to succumb to the party-mandated doctrine of Lysenkoism. The fact that medicine is the most prominent (if not only) field in which Latin is actually used, probably had its influence too.

* [[Author Tract]]: Some of the Ijon Tichy stories arguably qualify; but it's usually subtle and well-written.

* [[Black Comedy]]: A large part of the Ijon Tichy stories is darkly humourous satire.

* [[Casual Interstellar Travel]]: Exaggerated: Ijon Tichy once turned his rocket around and headed back several parsec because he had left his pocket knife in a spaceport cafeteria.<ref>Turns out it was in his pocket all along.</ref>

* [[Crapsack World]]

* [[Crap Saccharine World]]: ''Return from the Stars''. And ''The Futurological Congress'' even more so {{spoiler|but it was all a dream.}}

* [[Creator Backlash]]: Against his first published novel ''The Astronauts'' and his even earlier short story "Man from Mars".

* [[Deus Est Machina]]: Golem XIV in the book of the same name.

** Also the [[Fun with Acronyms|Digital Engrammic Universal System]] (called the General Operational Device in the original) from ''Fiasco''. [[Lampshade Hanging|One character notes that the acronym was probably intentional]].

* [[Dystopia]]: He portrayed many dystopian societies, and wrote about the impossibility of creating an [[Utopia]].

** In the twenty-first voyage, Lem creates an alien species having the exact appearance of humans for speculating on the future of bioengineering; throughout the story, [[Lampshade Hanging|he even calls them humans "for convenience"]].

** At the end of the twenty-fifth voyage {{spoiler|a group of [[Starfish Aliens]] living on an extremely hot planet discuss a possibility of an intelligent species living in a lower temperature; the oldest one explains that the existence of such creatures is impossible, and any other sapient species must be exactly like them.}}

** "It's comforting to know, when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard."

* [[Humans Are Cthulhu]]: ''Robot Tales'' treats humans like this.

* [[Mechanical Evolution]], [[Mechanical Lifeforms]]: ''The Invincible'' the most prominent example, though the latter trope is recurring in his work.

* [[Minovsky Physics]]:

* [[Recycled in Space]]: He wrote several short stories that are fairy tales <small>IN SPACE! WITH ROBOTS!</small>

* [[Religious Robot]]: ''The Star Diaries'' has robot monks. They are aware that if they connected to a robot with all the facts on religion they would become atheists, so they choose not to connect to other robots out of religious principle.

* [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]]: In ''[[The Cyberiad]]'', intentionally.

* [[Scenery Porn]]: The description of the spaceport given in ''[[Tales of Pirx the Pilot]]''.

* [[Sex Is Evil]]: One of Ijon Tichy's ancestors created a substance that made sex painful, so humanity wouldn't be controlled by carnal desires anymore. When he put it into the water supply of his city, he was lynched.

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: ''Fiasco''. With a title like that, it's pretty much unavoidable.

* [[Space Pirates]]: Ijon Tichy mentions that [[Black Sheep|his grandfather made a committed attempt]], but it didn't pay off.

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: A recurring theme in his works is the portrayal of profoundly alien civilizations, and the impossibility of understanding them.

* [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]: The HPLD civilization (meaning ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Highest Possible Level of Development]]'') encountered by Klapaucius in ''[[The Cyberiad]]''.

* [[Time Travel]]: Ijon Tichy gets handed the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] several times, the most amusing instance probably being the episode when Tichy, [[Temporal Paradox|caught in a time loop]], is [[Amusing Injuries|banged on the head with a saucepan]] wielded by a [[My Future Self and Me|future version of himself]] ([[Foregone Conclusion|then goes on to bang a saucepan on the head of a past version of himself]]). For ''a week''.

** A much darker example has a hapless inventor test his prototype time machine in Tichy's living room by a casual trip 50 years into the future - realizing too late that the trip actually ''will'' take him 50 years. [[Buried Alive|And the machine has no emergency brake.]]

* [[Through the Eyes of Madness]]: Ijon Tichy experiences this in ''[[The Futurological Congress]]'' after he and his colleagues are dosed with powerful hallucinogenic drugs by a terrorist group.