"[...] Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not [...]"
Stanisław Lem (12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish novelist, most credited for his Science Fiction writings. His works range from philosophical books and analyses to "tall tales", to light and darkly comic satire; and he enjoyed subverting many common genre tropes. He is one of the most recognized and respected Polish writers, as well as one of the most prolific science-fiction writers; and was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle.He loved word-plays, making up new words and divining the future of civilisation from them; it was one of the many ways in which he subjected plot to paradoxical associations rather than to the straight and narrowly reasonable prognoses. He was particularly fond of satirizing religion, technology, and human foibles; typically with a sharp and incisive wit. Later in his career, he grew increasingly critical of technology, particularly the Internet, which he considered little more than a gathering of idiots. Many of his works, both novels and short stories, feature the recurring character Ijon Tichy; an intelligent, accident-prone, adventurer who varies between being the Only Sane Man, and an Unreliable Narrator, occasionally veering into Parody Sue.Lem had a low opinion of most of science fiction, and thought that the existence of the Sci Fi Ghetto was justified, not because the genre is inherently worthless, but because the authors haven't used the possibilities in it. The only contemporary author he considered worthwhile was Philip K. Dick; Dick did not return his respect, but considered Lem's attacks on American science fiction to be unjustified and insulting. At the same time, he also became a target of Dick's increasing paranoia.*
It stemmed from a series of publishings of foreign science-fiction in communist Poland, signatured by Lem - Dick received payment, but in Polish złotys, which he couldn't exchange to dollars. He was already super paranoid, so it added fuel to the fire.
Despite Lem's views, he was defended by Ursula LeGuin in his conflict with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Peace on Earth (Pokój na Ziemi, 1987; transl. 1994)
His work includes examples of:
Altum Videtur: more frequently in his non-fictional works. Arguably, that was less a personal trait of Lem than it was common for the educated Poles as a whole. Due the immense influence the Catholic Church and its liturgical language, Latin, had in Polish culture and history, literary Polish itself became heavily latinized, and it shows.
He studied medicine in Lwów, although he did not finish the studies because he did not want to succumb to the party-mandated doctrine of Lysenkoism. The fact that medicine is the most prominent (if not only) field in which Latin is actually used, probably had its influence too.
Author Tract: Some of the Ijon Tichy stories arguably qualify; but it's usually subtle and well-written.
Black Comedy: A large part of the Ijon Tichy stories is darkly humourous satire.
Celibate Hero: Most of Lem's protagonists are solitary males who also show no interest in romance over the course of the story.
Subverted with Pirx. Sort of. Also averted in Solaris. The main protagonist's "guest" is his dead girlfriend. "Guests" of the others are implied to be their sexual fantasies.
In Return from the Stars, the astronaut protagonist returns to Earth after 120 years. While trying to find a partner (and succeeding, after a fashion), he ultimately stays isolated in a society that has changed too much to re-integrate him.
Crapsaccharine World: Return from the Stars. And The Futurological Congress even more so but it was all a dream.
Crazy Cultural Comparison: Wizja Lokalna (Observation on the Spot) is a veritable fest of complex and multilevel cultural jokes and comparisons. Craziest of which is the discussion of the mating rituals during his visit to some university — both sides are thorougly baffled by the experience: locals by the closed and intimate nature of Earthlings reproduction (for them it's the most public thing possible), and Tichy by the outlandish theories they invent to give this behavior a logical explanation.
Creator Backlash: Against his first published novel The Astronauts and his even earlier short story "Man from Mars".
Golem XIV—despite expressing itself in human language—experiences a rarified world of pure intellect, so far above and beyond human concerns, it has become a Starfish Alien in every sense except the physical. One wonders the extent to which the almost painfully-rigorous Lem felt similarly alienated from his fellow human beings (and, therefore, was an ideal writer to depict what a Deus Est Machina might think about).
In the US, "Golem XIV" appears as a "story" in Lem's anthologyImaginary Magnitude; it takes the form of an article from an academic journal, albeit one eventually given over entirely to the title AI, reproducing its attempt to communicate with humanity. All of the book's contents are in peculiar formats with which Lem was experimenting: such as Fictional Documents, or prefaces which can only hint at the nature of the as-yet-unrealized media they purport to be introducing.
God Is Inept: At the end of Solaris, Kelvin theorizes about a god "whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror." Snow suggests that the ocean might be the first phase of such a god.
"It's comforting to know, when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard."
Lost in Translation: Lem's love of puns and wordplay often make him a daunting task for a translator. For example, his SF whodunnit Katar is translated into English as The Chain of Chance, but is often dubbed The Cold, from its Polish title. Unfortunately the Polish word "katar" does not mean "cold", it just means "runny nose": the hero didn't have a cold, but a hay fever ("katar sienny") — which was an important plot point, but was lost on the translator. The Cyberiad and Mortal Engines are regarded as particularly difficult to translate, since they are written in an idiosyncratic style that relies on the Polish rules of word coinage to create archaic-sounding neologisms.
Mood Whiplash: A characteristic of the Ijon Tichy books, for example The Star Diaries and especially Memoirs of a Space Traveller. See also in Peace on Earth: Actually plot-advancing fragments are interchanged with Ijon Tichy describing his split-brain condition.
Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: He produced works on both ends of the scale. In his serious stories, he worked hard to be accurate, in his comedic ones, anything goes.
No Paper Future: Played for Laughs in the introduction to Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. Seems to be averted in most of his other works.
Old Shame: He said that The Astronauts (his first sci-fi novel) lacks any value.
Random Number God: A theme of many Lem's works, especially The Investigation and The Chain of Chance.
Real Trailer, Fake Movie: His book Imaginary Magnitude contains introductions to nonexistent books. Also A Perfect Vacuum that contains reviews of these. Among Lem's readers, they are collectively known as "apocrypha".
Recycled In Space: He wrote several short stories that are fairy tales IN SPACE! WITH ROBOTS!
Riddle for the Ages: In Solaris, why did the planet send the replicas of people? The main theme of the novel is that we can't find out, because humans can't comprehend a truly alien intelligence.
Sex Is Cool: Deconstructed and parodied. For example, in the twentieth voyage of The Star Diaries, Ijon Tichy whines how ugly and misplaced human sexual organs are. It was his fault. Indirectly.
This theme was revisited in Observation On The Spot.
Starfish Aliens: A recurring theme in his works is the portrayal of profoundly alien civilizations, and the impossibility of understanding them.
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