S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: LEM, Stanislaw
Aged: 84
Born: September 12, 1921
Where: Lvov, Poland [now L'viv, Ukraine]
Died: March 27, 2006
Where: Krakow, Poland
Interred: Salwatorski Cemetery, Krakow, Poland
Married: Dr. Barbara Lesniak
When: 1953
Awards: Many --- including the Austrian Franz Kafka Prize for Literature, the Order of the White Eagle, at least four honorary doctorate degrees, and the naming of a minor planet, 3836 Lem.
Thumbnail by the late Horst Tappe.
Stanislaw Lem
"We are put together from parts and fragments improvised over a multitude
of eras and epochs ... from temporarily available parts brought in by the
waves, amid countless trials and failures, step by step cobbled together."
Americans won't admit this ... but what we largely know of continental European science fiction writers comes courtesy of the United Kingdom. In other words, we need a little help from our friends. So when a writer of Stanislaw Lem's stature dies in an eastern European country that was overun twice in World War II and behind the Iron Curtain for a while, there is precious little personal or written data that hasn't gone through a UK filter or been translated through two or three awkward languages. Unfortunately, there seems no other way.
Lem was what many writers claim to be, an educated intellectual and a capable writer of high regard. It is estimated that Lem sold (depending on the filter) between 12 to 27 million books in 30 to 41 languages during his life and managed to have his membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America revoked for writing "crude and insulting satirical comments" as proclaimed by Philip K. Dick and Philip Jose Farmer, among others ... (chuckle). Insulting satire? I don't think there's another kind. Maybe the smile was lost in translation.
Stanislaw Lem was born into a well to do Polish-Jewish family, but raised Catholic, at just about the worst possible time. He graduated from the Lvov Gymnazium in 1939, studied medicine at the Lvov Medical Institute in 1940-1941, and worked as a welder and mechanic, when not on the run, until 1944. "I learned to damage German vehicles in such a way that it wouldn't immediately be discovered." After World War II, Lem moved to Krakow, Poland, where he continued his medical studies at Jagellonian University, without taking a doctorate. He worked as an assistant for psychologist Dr. Choynowski at the Konserwatorium Naukoznawcze. From 1946/49 Lem assisted in psychological research, inspiring his first novel Hospital of the Transfiguration which was denied publication by Communist censorship until the Polish uprising in 1956.
In 1949, Lem gave up medical studies to become a full-time professional writer. Among his books that have been mostly translated into English were:
Carl Tighe in a 1999 article describes Lem's career mind-set: "Lem says his task has always been to write prognoses: His warnings on the hazards of biotechnology and genetic engineering, penned more than thirty years ago, are only now being taken seriously by scientific journals. He worries about the gap between the legislative competence of governments and the speed of technical advance; he warns of overpopulation, global warming, and overwhelming ecological damage, of viral epidemics and AIDS, about computer crime, artificial conception, genetic engineering, the limitations of human self-knowledge, and the problems of language."
THINKERS of all kinds ... are common ... boxes full of them. Some sane, some insane. Some right, some wrong. Almost ALL OF THEM share one fate ... they are, as the poet wrote, "destined to blossom unseen and waste their fragrance on the desert air." The majority of people who are writers and must write, driven by Ghod knows what, are a dime a dozen. You can pick one up anywhere. But the combination of those two things, great thinking and compulsive writing, is rare ... and rarer still that the author is also educated, sane, not starving, and has acquired the means to be published and heard ... AND ... is then read over and over again and demanded. Stanislaw Lem comes very close to filling those shoes without peer pressure. If he had a failing, it would be that he didn't suffer fools gladly ... especially if they were writers in his field who didn't know what they were doing ... and/or politicians of any stripe. And Lem cared about Mankind ... fretted, worried, and preached to it and warned it, pointing out possible solutions and roads ahead.
Who listened among those who mattered? Who changed directions to help ward off what is obviously coming? The cynic would say "No one." The atheist would say, "It doesn't matter." The religious would say, "Trust in the Lord" (or applicable deity), etc, etc. Lem, like all before him, died without the answers to the questions he pondered. But he tried to make a difference ... to save a world he saw 'gone-mad' and worsening by the day. Maybe his trying counts for its own sake. It is almost certain that the majority of us will continue as before and be destroyed as before. It is, after all, the nature of things.
There is very little chance that the sole survivor of Mankind will be a naked man carrying a sign that reads "REPENT." Or that a sole Polish Jew will wander past a bookstore and read blurbs behind a dusty window that say ...
"Past is more perfect than future, which makes me sad."
"Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness."
"Space ... humans will never feel at home out there."
"It is true that we live longer now - but the life
of everything around us became much shorter."
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
OBITUARY: New York Times and Various.
