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Biography - Lem, Stanislaw (1921-2006)

Contemporary Authors Online - 2006
Gale Reference Team

Word count: 4042.

citation details

Born September 12, 1921, in Lvov, Poland; died of heart failure, March 27, 2006, in Krakow, Poland;
son of Samuel (a physician); married wife, Barbara (a roentgenologist), August, 1953; children: Tomek
(son). Education: Studied medicine in Lvov, Poland, 1939-41, 1944- 46, and in Krakow, Poland,
1946-48. Memberships: PEN, Science Fiction Research Association, Science Fiction Writers, Polish
Academy of Sciences, Polish Astronautic Society.

Worked as garage mechanic during World War II; Jagellonian University, Krakow, Poland, assistant in
"Science Circle," 1947-49; Zycie Nauki (monthly magazine; title means "The Life of Science"), editor,
1947-49; writer, 1949-2006. Teacher at University of Krakow.

Citations from Polish Ministry of Culture, 1965 and 1973; Polish State Prize for literature, 1976;
Austrian State Prize for foreign literature, 1985; Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation award, 1987; Kafka
award, 1991.

WRITINGS:

IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Dzienniki gwiazdowe (also see below; portions translated in Mortal Engines), Iskry, 1957,
translation by Michael Kandel published as The Star Diaries, illustrated by the author, Seabury,
1976, translation by Joel Stern and Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek published as Memoirs of a
Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy, Harcourt, 1982.
Czas nieutracony (novel; title means "Time Not Lost"), Volume 1: Szpital przemienienia,
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1957, translation by William Brand published as Hospital of the
Transfiguration, Harcourt, 1988, Volume 2: Wsrod umarlych (title means "Among the Dead"),
Volume III: Powrot (title means "Return"), 1957.
Eden, Iskry, 1959, translation by Marc E. Heine published as Eden, Harcourt, 1989.
Sledztwo, Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1959 , translation by Adele Milch published as The
Investigation, Seabury, 1974.
Solaris, Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1961 , French translation by Jean-Michel Jasiensko
published as Solaris, Denoel, 1966, translation from the French edition by Joanna Kilmartin and
Steve Cox published as Solaris, Walker &; Co., 1970, reprinted, Harcourt, 1987.
Pamietnik znaleziony w wannie, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1961, translation by Kandel and
Christine Rose published as Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Seabury, 1973.
Powrot z gwiazd, Czytelnik, 1961, translation by Barbara Marszal and Frank Simpson published
as Return from the Stars, Harcourt, 1980.
Niezwyciezony i inne opowiadania, Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1964, German translation
by Roswitha Dietrich published as Der Unbesiegbare, Verlag Volk und Welt, 1967, translation
from the German edition by Wendayne Ackerman published as The Invincible, Seabury, 1973.
Bajki robotow (also see below; translation published in Mortal Engines; title means "Fables for
Robots"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1964.
Cyberiada, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1965, translation by Kandel published as The Cyberiad:
Fables for the Cybernetic Age, Seabury, 1974.
Wysoki zamek (memoir), Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1966, translation by Kandel

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published as Highcastle: A Remembrance, Harcourt, 1995.

Opowiesci o pilocie Pirxie, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1968, translations by Louis Iribarne
published as Tales of Pirx the Pilot, Harcourt, 1979, and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot, Harcourt,
1981.
Glos pana, Czytelnik, 1968, translation published as His Master's Voice, Harcourt, 1984.
Bezsennosc (title means "Insomnia"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1971, portions translated by
Kandel and published as The Futurological Congress (From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy),
Seabury, 1974.
Doskonala proznia, Czytelnik, 1971, translation by Kandel published as A Perfect Vacuum,
Harcourt, 1979.
Wielkosc urojona, Czytelnik, 1973, translation by Marc E. Heine published as Imaginary
Magnitude (also see below), Harcourt, 1985.
Katar, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1976, translation by Iribarne published as The Chain of
Chance, Harcourt, 1978.
Maska (also see below; portions translated in Mortal Engines; title means "The Mask"),
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1976.
Mortal Engines, translated by Kandel, Seabury, 1977 , reprinted, Harcourt, 1992.
The Cosmic Carnival of Stanislaw Lem: An Anthology of Entertaining Stories by the Modern
Master of Science Fiction, edited by Kandel, Continuum, 1981.
Golem XIV, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1981, translation published in Imaginary Magnitude,
Harcourt, 1985.
Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Franz Rottensteiner, Harcourt,
1984.
Biblioteka XXI Wieka, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986, translation by Catherine S. Leach
published as One Human Minute, Harcourt, 1986.
Fiasko, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987, translation by Kandel, Harcourt, 1987.
Tales of Prix the Pilot, Harcourt, 1990.
Pokoj na Ziemi, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987, translation by Elinor Ford and Kandel published
as Peace on Earth, Harcourt, 1994.
A Stanislaw Lem Reader, edited by Peter Swirski, Northwestern University Press, 1997.

IN POLISH

Astronauci (title means "The Astronauts"), Czytelnik, 1951.

(With Roman Hussarski) Jacht Paradise (play), Czytelnik, 1951.
Sezam i inne opowiadania (title means "Sesame and Other Stories"), Iskry, 1954.
Oblok Magellana (title means "The Magellan Nebula"), Iskry, 1955.
Dialogi (nonfiction; title means "Dialogues"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1957.
Inwazja z Aldebarana (title means "Invasion from Aldebaran"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1959.
Ksiega robotow (title means "Book of Robots"), Iskry, 1961.
Wejscie na orbite (nonfiction; title means "Getting into Orbit"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1962.
Noc ksiezycowa (title means "Lunar Night"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963.
Summa technologiae (nonfiction), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1964.
Ratujmy kosmos i inne opowiadania (title means "Let Us Save the Cosmos and Other Stories"),
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1966.
Filozofia prypadku: Literatura w swietle empirii (nonfiction; title means "The Philosophy of
Chance: Literature Considered Empirically"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1968.
Opowiadania (title means "Stories"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1969.
Fantastyka i futurologia (nonfiction; title means "Science Fiction and Futurology"), Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 1970.
Opowiadania wybrane (title means "Selected Stories"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1973.
Rozprawy i szkice (title means "Essays and Sketches"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1975.
Suplement (title means "Supplement"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1976.
Powtorka (title means "Repetition"), Iskry, 1979.

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Wizja lokalna (title means "The Scene of the Crime"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1982.
Prowokacja (title means "Provocation"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984.
(With Stanislaw Beres) Rozmowy ze Stanislawem Lemem (title means "Conversations with
Stanislaw Lem"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987.
Ciemnosc i plesn (title means "Darkness and Mildew"), Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1988.
Wysoki Zamek: Wiersze Modzieancze, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1991.
Dziury w calym, Znak, 1997.
Ogolna teoria dziur, Znak, 1997.
Apokryfy, Wydawn Znak, 1998.
Bomba Magabitowa, Literackie, 1999.

Also author of screenplay, "Przekledaniec" (title means "Roly Poly"), Film Polski.OTHER

(Contributor) Science Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1976.

(Contributor) The Mind's Eye: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Basic Books, 1981.
The Chain of Chance, Northwestern University Press, 2000.

Contributor to magazines in Europe and America, including New Yorker.

"Sidelights"

Polish author Stanislaw Lem was the best known, most widely translated science fiction writer outside
the English-speaking world. With more than twenty million books sold in some thirty-six languages,
Lem earned international recognition; he proved especially popular in both Germany and the Soviet
Union, where he has been regarded as a leading contemporary philosopher of science. As George
Zebrowski notes in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, however, Lem's stature as a deep
thinker transcends the science fiction genre. "Lem has now reached an all but unattainable position for
an SF writer," claims Zebrowski. "He is recognized as one of the world's finest writers." New York
Times columnist John Leonard calls Lem "a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays in
earnest with every concept of philosophy and physics, from free will to probability theory."

The circumstances of Lem's life predisposed him to a philosophical frame of mind. Before he was
born, his father narrowly escaped execution by firing squad--marching to his death, the elder Lem was
recognized by a friend passing in the street who persuaded the commander to rescind the order. Later,
during the Second World War, Lem himself came within inches of capture by the Nazis when a soldier
brushed him as he carried a concealed weapon for the Resistance. These moments of chance
salvation affected Lem profoundly; they have found their way into both his fiction and his nonfiction. To
quote Paul Delany in the New York Times Book Review, Lem's books "are haunted by the whims of
chance, the insignificance of individual fate in the perspective of the species, the ease with which a
thoughtless move--but, just as well, a thoughtful one--can lead to disaster."

Lem was raised in Lvov, Poland, the son of a prosperous doctor. As he grew he indulged in flights of
fancy, creating entire fictitious worlds and then outfitting himself with "papers"--passports, diplomas,
and certificates--that gave him the highest honors in his imaginary kingdom. Lem decided to study
medicine as his father had, and he was in medical school when World War II began. Jewish by
descent, he and his family used forged documents to escape internment in the ghetto, and he
continued his studies when he could. When rule by the Soviet Union replaced Nazi occupation after
the war, Lem decided not to practice medicine--he would have had to serve as an army doctor. He
deliberately flunked his last examination and went to work helping to support his aging parents. The
work to which he committed himself was writing, and soon he was selling stories and essays to
periodicals in Poland. Lem's life from his birth until 1935, when he began military training, is covered in
his memoir Highcastle: A Remembrance, published in Polish in 1966 and in English translation in
1995. "An entire vanished world has been lovingly and quirkily recalled in these pages," remarks
Thomas Swick in the New York Times Book Review.

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"In postwar Poland," writes Delany, "science fiction appealed to Mr. Lem as a genre in which an
original mind could still express itself with relative freedom.... When he writes allegories of the Cold
War, his viewpoint is that of a spectator rather than a partisan; and his books ... are probably more
popular in the Soviet Union than in the United States." Lem's artistic freedom has developed slowly;
not surprisingly, his earliest fiction was "fashioned more or less along the obligatory ideological lines of
its time," according to Stanislaw Baranczak in the New Republic. Having lived through the horrors of a
World War, Lem wrote several novels depicting a rosy future of one-world government, free of the
nuclear threat. "My first two books--which I now never release for reprinting--there's nothing
Communist Party about them, but there is this wonderful world that could evoke in a certain sense the
communist utopia," Lem told the Washington Post. "Now I won't allow them to be republished because
I simply stopped believing in the utopia." Although he became dissatisfied with them in time, Lem's
early novels helped to establish his reputation, thereby assuring an audience--and a Polish
publisher--for his subsequent work.

Lem first reached a number of Western readers with the novel Solaris, a book that explores a favorite
Lem theme--man's inadequacies in an alien environment. The account of a scientific expedition sent to
study a huge, thinking ocean on the planet Solaris, the novel describes the paranoia and fear of the
unknown to which the researchers succumb. Frustrated by their inability to communicate with the
inscrutable liquid mass, the researchers bombard it with radiation. In response the being somehow
creates physical manifestations based on the humans' most submerged psychological traumas. Hence
the novel becomes a study of humanity's inability to comprehend the nature of vastly different
intelligences. A similar theme appears in Lem's novels The Invincible and Fiasco, both of which
concern confrontation between humans and phenomena they cannot comprehend.

"Books such as Solaris and Fiasco do more than present intellectual arguments about the universe in
an unmistakably Central European voice," writes John Clute in the Times Literary Supplement. "As
science fiction of the highest order, and as examples of surreally barbed wit, they are very threatening
texts indeed. They demand attentive reading, and they show contempt for those too lazy to pay heed."
Zebrowski concludes that Lem "realistically shows us what it would be like to come face to face with
genuine `differentness'--an alien non-human system or being which is beyond our understanding....
We go out into the universe only to meet ourselves and fight with ourselves."

Lem's forays into future worlds included not only alien life forms but also advanced technology--
cyborgs and computers with vast capabilities that nevertheless reflect the foibles of their creators. New
York Times Book Review contributor Philip Jose Farmer believes that Lem "has no equal in his literary
explorations of machines and their physical and philosophical potentialities.... The theme he stresses
in most of his work 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." Lem's tales suggest that humanity and technology are locked into a symbiotic relationship that
can amplify the consequences of good and evil. According to Voice Literary Supplement reviewer
David Berreby, the author "doesn't believe technology can change human nature, but he's far too
subtle to conclude that technology makes no difference. It extends the reach of human folly and
restricts the human imagination to those things that mechanisms make possible." Berreby concludes:
"The new tools of relentlessly advancing science change what people can do, but they don't change
people."

Very few of Lem's numerous stories, then, depict improvements in the human condition. His characters
are almost always victims of clumsiness, psychological vulnerability, crackpot ambition, or
incompetence. As Adam Mars-Jones puts it in the Times Literary Supplement, however far Lem
extrapolates into the future, and however far into the universe he extends his speculations, "he is
exploring recognisable human possibilities. The settings may be cosmic, but the morals are terrestrial."
Critics find Lem's outlook bleak--in The Nation, Kurt Vonnegut called the author "a master of utterly

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terminal pessimism, appalled by all that an insane humanity may yet survive to do."

An example of Lem's guiding philosophy of human nature is evident in Peace on Earth, which depicts
an Earth on which war has been banished to the moon, played out there by self-adapting machines so
that no humans are hurt in the process. Thus, humanity has defused the danger of battle but has kept
the war-game fun of it. However, this convenient solution to war is threatened when the world's
governments begin to suspect that the moon-bound machines are preparing to invade Earth on their
own. The governments send Ijon Tichy, a recurring Lem hero, to the moon to investigate, but he comes
back having been subjected to a mind-altering operation by the machines: they have given him a
callotomy, deconnecting his brain's two hemispheres. Thus, Tichy's left side is in constant battle with
his right. Furthermore, Tichy's right hemisphere knows details about the machines' plans but is unable
to articulate them (verbal prowess being centered in the left hemisphere). The result is a darkly comic
vision of the future in which Lem is able to explore his trademark theme of technological advancement
amid humanity's tendency toward self-destruction. "As well as provoking in a purely intellectual sense,"
writes Giles Foden in the Times Literary Supplement, "Lem is a moralist and (rare in the genre) a
stylist. If, strange thought, Samuel Beckett had written science fiction, he might have written it like
this."

Pessimistic or hopeful, darkly comic or ironic, Lem's works abound in subtle philosophy and sociology.
Washington Post correspondent Jackson Diehl observes that Lem advances a view of man "as a
creature unable to find a stable place in the universe or control the consequences of accelerating
technological advances." Baranczak concludes: "Lem is one of those writers who is interested more in
the essential immutability of human existence than in any superficial evolution that history may
provide. Paradoxically, he visualizes the future only to find more proof of his suspicion that human fate
has remained, will remain, bound by the same laws of pain, love, and death, no matter what space
suits we wear or what utopias we build."

Literary critics have noted that Lem's work resembles that favorite European genre, the fable or fairy
tale. Lem is by training a scientist, however, and his books reveal an up-to-date knowledge of
medicine, engineering, and cybernetics. The author also enjoys experimenting with form; several of his
works offer "book reviews" or "introductions" to books that will be written in the future, and many of his
conventional stories offer philosophical speculation and technical data. "In spite of the scientific
authority that informs even the lightest of these near-parables, their immediate appeal grows out of the
sensibility behind them," writes Peter S. Beagle in the New York Times Book Review. "Every Lem story
is haunted by a passionate, prophetic understanding of what the human being is going to have to learn
and become merely to survive, coupled with an unblinded realism about the nature of the species."

Lem was therefore a philosopher concerned with the moral and ethical consequences of advancing
technology, a storyteller who felt that science fiction implies an obligation to verisimilitude, and a
literary practitioner who was compelled to craft high-quality work. Delany writes: "Starting at the very
edge of current theories of artificial intelligence, communications, cosmology and nuclear strategy,
[Lem] soars out into dizzy flights of speculation, grafting one field onto another to populate whole new
realms of possibility." As the author himself put it in an essay for the Contemporary Authors
Autobiography Series, "I am trying not to limit the meaning of the name of this category of writing but
rather to expand it."

That expansion of science fiction into literary and philosophical terrain has become a Lem trademark.
His works have appeared in the New Yorker, and his books are widely reviewed for discerning
mainstream audiences. "Those who have read any of ... Lem's numerous books know that even the
most timeworn subject can be the occasion for fresh surprises," observes Paul Gray in Time. "Lem's
international reputation rests on two qualities rarely found together in one mortal: he is both a superb
literary fantasist, ... and a knowledgeable philosopher of the means and meanings of technology. Lem
... not only builds castles in the air, he also provides meticulous blueprints and rationales for their
construction." Bloomsbury Review contributor J. Madison Davis declares that with his romantic attitude

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towards art, Lem "challenges himself constantly in search of the new.... If the reader takes the active
role Lem demands, reading can take on the quality of conversation with a unique character whose
writings should be more appreciated."

Washington Post correspondent Jackson Diehl notes that the author "has avoided confrontation with
Polish governments, yet he retains the respect of both dissident writers and western critics, who
acknowledge him as a major artist.... He seems to be regarded by Polish authorities as a kind of
international cultural showpiece, exempted from the normal constraints of East Bloc life in tacit
exchange for his retention of citizenship." Lem does not see himself as apolitical; rather, he feels that
his work confronts the human condition on a global basis--the human race as a species, not a body
politic. "I have always resisted the label of science fiction," he told the Washington Post. "I've always
believed in science, but I write about the real world.... I write about what is happening, only in my own
way, in my own terms."

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 1, Gale, 1984.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 40, 1986.
Davis, J. Madison, Stanislaw Lem, Starmont House (Washington), 1990.
Updike, John, Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism, Vintage Books, 1984.

PERIODICALS

Analog Science Fiction &; Fact, February, 1995, p. 165, June, 1996, p. 150.
Bloomsbury Review, October, 1985.
Books Abroad, spring, 1975.
Chicago Tribune Book World, June 8, 1980, February 10, 1985.
Detroit News, April 8, 1979.
Discover, December, 1986.
Kliatt, May, 1996, p. 18.
Library Journal, August, 1989, p. 167.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 7, 1982, December 5, 1982, November 11, 1984,
September 8, 1985, July 6, 1986, July 13, 1986, January 7, 1996, p. 14.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May, 1971, July, 1974, July, 1979, April, 1981.
Nation, May 13, 1978, April 2, 1990, p. 462.
New Republic, November 26, 1977, February 7, 1983, November 7, 1988, May 20, 1996, p. 39.
New Statesman, June 1, 1979.
Newsweek, February 26, 1979, June 30, 1980.
New Yorker, February 26, 1979, September 8, 1980, January 30, 1984.
New York Review of Books, May 12, 1977.
New York Times, February 9, 1979, January 22, 1982.
New York Times Book Review, August 29, 1976, February 11, 1979, February 17, 1980, May
25, 1982, September 19, 1982, March 20, 1983, September 2, 1984, March 24, 1985, February
9, 1986, June 7, 1987, October 30, 1988, October 1, 1989, p. 40, October 16, 1994, p. 40,
September 17, 1995, p. 14.
Partisan Review, summer, 1976.
Publishers Weekly, September 5, 1994, p. 96, July 31, 1995, p. 62.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review, June 5, 1979, June, 1983.
Science-Fiction Studies, July, 1977, November, 1986.
Time, January 29, 1979, September 17, 1984, June 1, 1987.
Times Literary Supplement, November 17, 1978, November 7, 1980, March 19, 1982, March
11, 1983, April 8, 1983, February 8, 1985, December 27, 1985, December 4, 1987, March 3,

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1989, June 23, 1995, p. 27.

Tribune Books (Chicago), July 12, 1987, October 23, 1988.
Village Voice, May 16, 1989.
Voice Literary Supplement, June, 1987.
Washington Post, July 11, 1987.
Washington Post Book World, February 28, 1982, February 27, 1983, April 24, 1983, February
24, 1985, October 30, 1988.
World Literature Today, autumn, 1977, summer, 1978, winter, 1980. *

Citation Details
Title: Biography - Lem, Stanislaw (1921-2006)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Contemporary Authors Online (Biography)
Date: 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale

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