Stanisław Lem

Lem, Stanislaw (1921– ), Polish writer and philosopher, physician by education, author of several popular science‐fiction novels and short stories. He lived in West Berlin in 1980–3 and in Austria in 1983–8. His early novels, such as The Astronauts (1951) and The Magellan Cloud (1953–5), are utopian fairy tales, depicting interplanetary communist paradise. Lem's best‐known works, Eden (1959) and Solaris (1961), also adapted for film by Andrei Tarkovsky, are more like contemporary existential novels, reflecting on the essence of human civilization, possible contacts with other worlds, and the problems and dilemmas of mutual understanding. These ‘serious’ novels are deeply psychological and display the writer's extreme erudition and keen insight into human nature.

By contrast, quite a number of his novels and stories, for instance, Robot Fairy Tales (1964) or Cyberiade (1965), are full of humour and the grotesque. Closest to traditional fairy tales are Star Diaries of Ijon Tichy, Space Vagabond (1957), a parody on themes, characters, and stylistic clichés of contemporary science fiction, which draws inspiration from Munchausen and Gulliver's Travels. Among Lem's humorous works are also several collections of reviews and prefaces to non‐existent books, such as Provocation (1984).

Lem has received a vast number of national and international literary awards, including a medal from the International Association of Astronauts (1995).

Bibliography

• Berthel, Werner (ed.), Stanislaw Lem. Der dialektische Weise aus Krakow (1976).
• Nikolchina, Miglena, “‘Love and Automata: From Hoffmann to Lem and from Freud to Kristeva’”, in Joe Sanders (ed.), Functions of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Thirteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (1995).
• Ziegfeld, Richard E., Stanislaw Lem (1985).

— Maria Nikolajeva