Biography of Stanislaw Lem (in English)

Acta Lemiana Monashiensis, 2021

At this place I would like to analyse in more detail Lem's fall as a writer, the fall that began after he published in 1987 his last science fiction novels Fiasco (Fiasco) and Peace on Earth (Pokój na Ziemi). Only two years after the publication of these books, the Soviet ("communist') system collapsed in Poland, but also and definitely, Lem's creative vein ended. His collections of essays published after year 1990, such as Lube czasy (1995, The Pleasant Times), Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju (1996, Secret of the Chinese Room), Sex Wars (1996), Dziury w całym (1997, Holes in the Whole), Bomba megabitowa (1999, Megabit Bomb), Okamgnienie (2000, The Twinkling of an Eye), Dylematy (2003, Dilemmas), Krótkie zwarcia (2004, Short Circuits) and especially Rasa drapieżców. Teksty ostatnie (2006, The Race of Predators. The Last Texts) are of almost unbelievably low quality, especially compared to the generally high quality of his earlier works, especially those written in the 1960s and 1970s. Also in German in Quarber Merkur‎ Nr 125 of 2024 as „Zeit des Verfalls. Die Periode von Lems schriftstellerischem Niedergang” (”The ‎time of decline. The period of Lem’s decline as a writer”)‎. Also in German in Quarber Merkur‎ Nr 125 of 2024 as „Zeit des Verfalls. Die Periode von Lems schriftstellerischem Niedergang” (”The ‎time of decline. The period of Lem’s decline as a writer”)‎.

2021

Professor Agnieszka Gajewska omitted in her book "Holocaust and stars. The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem"1 a very important fact, namely that Stanisław Lem’s father, i.e. doctor Samuel Le(h)m MD, PhD was from 1st October 1945 until his death, i.e. 5th January 1954, full-time officer of the Stalinist State Security Office (UB).

Although socialist realism (in short socrealism) was not born in Poland 1949 in Szczecin, during the Polish Writers ‎Association’s 4th Congress, of but in 1934 in Moscow at the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, where it was fully ‎expressed in the papers of Maxim Gorky and Andrei Zhdanov, the process of transplanting it into Polish soil took a ‎long time, as the elements of socialist realism had already appeared in the works of the revolutionary current and in ‎the prose of social realism before the war ‎. In the years of World War II, socrealism more boldly came to light in the ‎pages of Polish Soviet magazines, such as Almanach Literacki (Literary Almanach) and Nowe Widnokręgi (New ‎Horizons). After the war it was implemented gradually, which is documented by party-controlled literary discussions ‎and numerous works written before 1949, documenting the process of writers “sailing to the wind of great change”. ‎Lem’s socrealistic Hospital of the Transfiguration was thus not built in a vacuum. Its immediate historical and literary ‎context is a group of novels written between 1946 and 1948, often referred to as “settling of accounts by the ‎intelligentsia”. The protagonist of the Hospital of the Transfiguration and the whole trilogy is Stefan Trzyniecki, an ‎anaemic and lonely doctor from a land gentry family, who by working in a hospital tries to overcome the tendency to ‎isolationism, and in the following volumes of Time not Lost paves his way to socialism. It is an attempt to analyse the ‎attitude of the Polish intelligentsia when faced with new historical or social phenomena that overwhelm them. Polish ‎critics unanimously emphasized that the prose of this trend is characterized by a kind of ambivalence: its heroes do ‎not want and are unable to break out of the intelligentsia world of concepts and values, but their stubbornness and ‎faithfulness to the existing ideals leads them to failure, disgrace or non-compliance. They fail when faced with reality, ‎which proves the weakness of their characters or their inability to reconcile their own ideals with the rapidly changing ‎world.‎ Until the end of Stalinism in the People’s Republic of Poland, i.e. up to almost year 1956, socrealism was an official ‎cultural policy of the country. Writers and poets such as Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska created works ‎glorifying Joseph Stalin, the Communist doctrine, and the Polish United Workers’ Party. However, following Stalin’s ‎death, there were some critical opinions expressed about such literature, but Socialist realism was still being practised ‎until the 1956 Polish October, when the policy was finally abandoned ‎. Stanislaw Lm was no exception to this trend, ‎so it is worth to get acquainted his literary output from this period, also because this rather “exotic” literature, ‎especially from the Western point of view, appeared in Poland during the Cold War, which according to some ‎symptoms and experts, could be returning in the third decade of the 21st century. Therefore, I present here ‎characteristic quotations from this period of Lem’s work.‎

2021

In 1979 comes another oil crisis lasting more or less until 1982 and resulting from the support of the West (mainly the USA) for the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the Iranian revolution caused mainly by brutal rule of the Shah, which revolution led to the transformation of Iran from corrupted monarchy, completely dependent on the West into an independent Islamic republic. This resulted in the deepening of the global economic crisis, which basically continues to this day (2021) and which caused also economic collapse in Poland - country that at that time was strongly dependent on economic cooperation with the West. In a letter to SF Commentary, Stanisław Lem wrote that he no longer reads SF. Lem was considered this year as one of the Polish candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but ultimately it was awarded to Czesław Miłosz for mainly political reasons. It was then considered on the so-called West, that Lem was too little opposed to the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland to deserve this, in reality very much political prize.

2021

After finishing his utopian The Magellan Nebula in 1953, Stanisław Lem was no longer an orthodox socrealistic optimist. Although his first dystopian novel Eden was written in the summer of 1958, the first five basically dystopian voyages of Ijon Tichy (Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth and even Twenty-sixth) were published as early as in 1954. The major reasons of this radical change were twofold: 1 Szczepański had his home there, where he rested and met his friends. The house in Kasinka was bought by his from the founders of the YMCA camp. The building burned down in the 1930s, but the owners managed to rebuild it.

Academia.edu, 2025

This is a draft of Calendar of Stanisław Lem Life and Works

The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 2001

Stanisław Lem is known in the English-speaking countries virtually only as a Science Fiction writer. This is despite the fact that two of his best non-fantastic novels were translated into English, and his numerous critical papers and reviews published in such periodicals as Science-Fiction Studies. This is in significant contrast to Lem’s reception in countries such as Germany (with no significant difference between the eastern and western lands), the former Soviet Union and, of course, his native Poland.‎

ACTA LEMIANA MONASHIENSIS VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1‎, 2021

I try to find, why Stanisław Lem avoided any associations with Jews and Jewishness, especially in Poland.

In 1944, Lvov was liberated from the German occupation by the Soviet Army. The Lem family moved then from Zielona Street to Sykstuska Street, as the apartment on Brajerowska Street was then taken by someone else. Stanisław Lem resumed then his interrupted studies at the Lvov Medical Institute, where he was admitted for the second year of studies. He worked scientifically as a junior assistant (volunteer) at the Chair of Normal Physiology of the Lvov Medical Institute under the supervision of Professor Anatol Markovitch Vorobiov, former assistant of the Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov. At that time, he was working on the issue of infrared radiation as an indicator of the functioning of the central nervous system, and he also began experimental research on the topic “Possibilities of creating a galvanic conditioned reflex in a frog” . He also received from the Soviet authorities a scholarship of 150 roubles per month for his excellent results in study and research.

Stanisław Lem is known in the English-speaking countries virtually only as a Science Fiction (SF) writer. This is despite the fact that two of his best non-fantastic novels were translated into English, 1 and his numerous critical papers and reviews published in such periodicals as Science-Fiction Studies. 2 This is in significant contrast to Lem's reception in countries such as Germany (with no significant difference between the eastern and western lands), the former Soviet Union and, of course, his native Poland. The reasons for such a phenomenon are manifold. The most important seems to be the high level of commercialisation of SF in the English-speaking countries, especially in the US. Another is the popular misconception (quite common even in the literary circles of America) that since SF is only a popular genre, with very lowly origins in so-called pulp magazines and comics, no SF writer can be seriously regarded as a true artist. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this rule. First, some SF writers are indeed regarded seriously by the critics (for example Kurt Vonnegut). Secondly, some prominent authors are not regarded as writing SF, in spite of the fact that they really write in this genre. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are the most striking examples of this popular misconception. The reasons for such an artificial and obviously incorrect classification are manifold, and beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore I shall only mention that after H.G. Wells and Karel Čapek, virtually none of the SF writers (including such outstanding authors as Olaf Stapledon) was regarded as a " highbrow " artist. It is important to analyse Lem's non-science fiction novels in order to prove that the classification of Lem as a SF writer is artificial and reductionist. Lem's non-fantastical prose can be divided roughly into autobiographical (or semi-autobiographical) novels and unorthodox detective stories. Both of these genres have important links to Lem's science fiction as well as to his philosophical writings. In his SF, Lem privileged the role of chance and the impossibility of meaningful contact between truly alien cultures. Lem's biographical novels and thrillers can also be read as political works. The reason is that Lem's life was very much influenced by political events, such as the Second World War and two of Poland's major economic and political transitions: I, who experienced the alternative character and fragility of subsequent social systems (from poor prewar Poland, through phases of Soviet, German and again Soviet occupation, and then the People's Republic of Poland and the end of the Soviet protectorate), disregarded fretting about individual psychology and tried to concentrate on this, which as technologicus genius temporis shapes or rather 1 Szpital Przemienienia (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1975) was translated by William Brand as Hospital of the Transfiguration (San Diego & NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988) and Wysoki Zamek (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo MON, 1966) was quite recently translated by Michael Kandel, as Highcastle. A Remembrance (San Diego & NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1995). 2 Some of the most interesting of these are in the collection Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited and with introduction by Franz Rottensteiner (San Diego, NY & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984).