Polish writer Stanislaw Lem was born in Lvov in 1921, and moved with his family to Krakow shortly after the Second World War when the Soviet Union annexed parts of eastern Poland. Lem had begun to study medicine before the war, and resumed those studies afterward, but refused to take his final exams in order to avoid serving as a military doctor. He had been an avid reader since childhood, and during the post-war years Lem began writing as well, publishing poetry in 1946 and sci-fi novellas shortly afterward.
Lem finished his first important novel, The Hospital of the Transfiguration, in 1948, though it was suppressed by the communist authorities until the mid-fifties. Solaris, the novel most Americans are familiar with because of the Steven Soderbergh film, was published in 1961. Lem was politely tolerant in his comments about that film, though he did say that “the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space…”
Much of Lem’s work has a very Kafkaesque feel to it. The characters often do not quite understand the situation they are in, and the right course of action is often uncertain. This is probably most obvious in Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, a short novel first published in 1961, that could have been written by Franz Kafka himself. The protagonist is an agent on a mission into an old, decrepit military command center, except that he doesn’t know what his mission is or even who he’s working for.
Lem has often been very critical of American science fiction, claiming basically that it is too commercial and shallow. The one exception, according to Lem, was Philip K. Dick, who actually had something serious to say between the bursts of rocket engines. Dick, bless his heart, returned the favor by sending a letter to the FBI claiming that Lem was actually not a person at all, but probably a committee of Iron Curtain party functionaries. Later, in a more rational mood, Dick did become somewhat more supportive of Lem.
My personal favorite among Lem’s novels is probably Peace on Earth, though The Invincible is a close second. The protagonist of Peace on Earth is Ijon Tichy, an astronaut who figures prominently in many of Lem’s other stories. Tichy is sent to the moon to investigate the activities of American and Soviet military robots there, but a well-aimed laser shot to the head slices his corpus callosum. He survives and returns to earth, but the right side of his brain is separated from the left, and the two halves engage in a struggle to both report on and sabotage the mission.
I like Lem, because he shows that science fiction is more than just laser blasts and little green men. His best work, and even much of his mediocre work, requires thought, not just glandular excitement.
Barbara and Tomasz Lem, “Lem About Himself”, Stanislaw Lem- The Official Site