Lem, Stanisław

▪ Polish author

born September 12, 1921, Lwów, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine]

died March 27, 2006, Kraków, Poland

      Polish author of science fiction that veers between humanism and despair about human limitations. His books have been translated into more than 35 languages.

      The son of a doctor, Lem studied medicine at Lvov Medical Institute (now Lviv State Medical University) during 1940–41, but his education was interrupted by the German occupation during World War II. After the Soviet Union recaptured the city in 1944 he resumed his studies. By 1946 Lvov had been annexed by Ukraine, and Lem moved to Kraków, Poland, to continue his education at Jagiellonian University. Although he eventually received a certificate of completion of medical studies, he did not take the final medical exams for fear of ending up like many of his friends—with a lifetime commission in the Polish army.

      Beginning in 1946, Lem's first novel, Człowiek z Marsa (“The Man from Mars”), was serialized in the Polish magazine Nowy Świat Przygód (“New World of Adventures”). While working as a scientific research assistant between 1947 and 1950, Lem also published poems, short stories, and scientific essays. An early work—Szpital Przemienienia (1955; Hospital of the Transfiguration)—written in 1948 as a full-length novel, was initially suppressed by Communist Party censors. Two years later Lem was commissioned by a publisher to write a work of science fiction; it became his first published book, Astronauci (1951; “The Astronauts”), and convinced him to become a full-time writer. Later adapted for an East German film, Astronauci (like his other early works) contains elements of conventional Socialist Realism; Lem later criticized these novels as socially simplistic.

      The period of reform known as the “Polish October” of 1956 produced greater freedom of speech in Poland, and Lem blossomed as a serious international science fiction author, writing some 17 books in the next dozen years. Although certain themes recur in all his works, his fiction can be divided into two major groups. The first includes his traditional science fiction, with its vividly imagined fantasies of technological advances, space travel, and alien worlds, such as Eden (1959; Eng. trans. Eden), Powrót z gwiazd (1961; Return from the Stars), Solaris (1961; Eng. trans. Solaris), Niezwyciężony (1964; The Invincible), Głos pana (1968; His Master's Voice), and Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie (1968; Tales of Pirx the Pilot). The second group contains dark allegorical tales, or fables, such as Dzienniki gwiazdowe (1957; The Star Diaries), Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie (1961; Memoirs Found in a Bathtub), and Cyberiada (1965; The Cyberiad).

      Lem's renown rests primarily on three works. Solaris is a deeply philosophical work about contact with an utterly alien intelligence—a planet-girdling, sentient ocean. The book was adapted for film by Soviet director Andrey Tarkovsky (Tarkovsky, Andrey Arsenyevich) and won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972; a second adaptation, directed by Steven Soderbergh of the United States, was released in 2002. His Master's Voice is another classic of traditional science fiction themes. It concerns an all-out effort by scientists to decode, or understand, what appears to be a message from the stars. In an early chapter, Lem inserts a critique of the science fiction genre: the main character, a Pentagon scientist, begins to read science fiction for inspiration, but he is soon bored and disillusioned by its monotonous plots and unimaginative stories. Lem's third great book is The Cyberiad (subtitled Fables for the Cybernetic Age). Read on one level, it is a collection of comic tales about two intelligent robots who travel about the galaxy solving engineering problems; a deeper reading reveals a wealth of profound insights into the human condition.

      In examining the tension between his belief in the inherent goodness of humanity and his deep pessimism about human limitations, Lem often placed ordinary characters—the spaceman Ijon Tichy of The Star Diaries, the title character of Tales of Pirx the Pilot, and the astronaut Hal Bregg of Return from the Stars—in exotic locales. Thrust into the unknown, his characters were able to personify one aspect or another of Lem's philosophy of the future. Ijon Tichy, a recurring character, also appears in the short novel Kongres futurologiczny (1971; The Futurological Congress), a hilarious satire on government and academic conferences. In a Kafkaesque turn, at a hotel in Costa Rica, a conference to propose solutions to overpopulation in a time of violence and terrorism soon dissolves into anarchy as the hotel's water supply is contaminated by a hallucinogen.

      A primary source to aid in understanding Lem's view of the world is his Summa technologiae (1964), a sometimes-brilliant survey of prospective social, cybernetic, and biological advances. In addition to attacking sci-fi novels in His Master's Voice, Lem also wrote nonfiction criticism of the genre in volumes such as Fantastyka i futurologia (1970), portions of which were translated with other material in Microworlds (1984). His scathing evaluations of other sci-fi writers' work led the Science Fiction Writers of America, who had granted him an honorary membership in 1973, to oust him in 1976. In the 1990s Lem forswore science fiction writing and returned to futurological prognostications, most notably those expressed in Okamgnienie (2000).

* * *