Stanislaw Lem RIP

Stanislaw Lem the Polish science fiction writer responsible for Solaris and The Cyberiad died on March 27th last week. Lem was able to escape the draconian censorship which plagued wider literature in the then communust eastern europe because of writing in the seemingly innocuous field of science fiction, however many of his works contained subversive and satirical themes not to mention a highly complex sense of humour.

His most well known work Solaris describes the events of a crew observing a planet the surface of which is able to bring figures of the human unconscious to life. It was famously adapted for the screen by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971, and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2002.
Other notable works include - A Perfect Vacuum, The Cyberiad, and His Masters Voice.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Lem ceased writing science fiction, instead devoting himself to nonfiction essays on computer crime, as well as technological and ethical problems posed by the expansion of the Internet.


Tarkovsky's Solaris

"Finis vitae sed non amoris"
Solaris