Good-bye Stanislaw Lem

A great science fiction writer died yesterday. According to the news feeds, he sold over 27 million books and his works were translated into 41 different languages.

I'll remember him for the great time I had reading The Investigation.

The Polish writer had an IQ of 180, and he wrote extremely intelligent science fiction. Truth be told, he was less interested in writing exciting genre adventures, and more interested in philosophical experiments. Luckily for sf fans, he chose, for a time, to conduct these experiments in the realm of speculative fiction.

Interestingly enough, Lem was banned from the SFWA in 1976 for comments berating the state of the art of science fiction in America. Some suggest that he believed American writers of the time were writing thoughtless action/adventure just to make money. Others suggest he got his hands on poor translations and poor examples of American fiction.

Though Lem was later invited back by the SFWA, he declined. This decision was possibly due in part to a surreal letter written to the FBI by Philip K. Dick denouncing Lem as a Marxist propagandist.

For an author interested in the difficulty of communication between the human race and alien species, one has to wonder whether the Polish writer didn't begin to have these ideas when trying to communicate and interact with people from cultures "alien" to him.

You can read more about Stanislaw Lem and get a complete list of his works on his official site.