dresese

Stanislaw Lem dies

My favorite author, Stanislaw Lem, passed away today in Krakow. He was not only the best-selling science fiction author worldwide, but, even better, he deserved to be. He wasn't ever very popular in the states. I only knew of him when my college roommate showed me some of his books. Later, I picked them up and was completely blown away.

For anyone wanting his best works, I recommend:

• Fiasco, a truly important book about humanity's first meeting with an alien civilization. As you can tell from the title, it doesn't go so well. Lem had such an obviously more correct view of the whole contact scenario than even geniuses such as Arthur C. Clarke had. This one starts off very slow, so bear with it.

• Memoirs Found In a Bathtub, currently my favorite book. It has black humor in spades, great symbolism, and it is just mind bending in a way that I really appreciate.

• The Futurological Congress, probably Lem's funniest book. At the same time, one of his scariest. It also has one of my favorite passages of Lem's, on the nature of evil.

There is more. I didn't even mention his most famous novel, Solaris, which is like Fiasco; a great critique on contact, both between the human race and alien intelligence, and between people. It is a very profound book, but I'm a little disappointed in the translation. It is translated from a French abridged translation, and I think Lem's message suffers from that. There's not only many more wonderful books of his I could mention, but he also published many more that have not yet been translated to English. I can only hope that these keep appearing.

Now that Lem is dead, I feel that science fiction is no longer worth reading. The only person alive that could produce books as good as Lem is Robert Silverberg. But Silverberg hasn't written much of interest in a while, and even at his best, only a few are nearly as good as Lem's works.

Lem's books are under-recognized in the U.S. I urge anyone who reads this to pick up a copy of his books and read them. He wasn't just a good writer, he was a writer who really saw things as they truly are, and truly understood science fiction. It was rare when he started, and it's even more rare today. I'll miss you, Lem.