It’s the birthday of one of science fiction’s most prominent authors, Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), whose first name required me to figure out how to get a Polish “L with stroke” out of my keyboard, so that’s six or seven minutes of my life I’m not getting back. Lem is best known for his novels Solaris (1961, made into movies twice) and His Master’s Voice (1968) and for his collection The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (1965).

NB: Lem had a sweet round face and very big eyes that made him look like a tarsier.

Lem was born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) and had a happy childhood (there’s a first!). His father was a laryngologist, and Lem himself started medical school in 1939, but Germany invaded and life changed. His family was Jewish and stayed safe by using false papers; most of Lem’s friends died in the camps. Lem himself worked as a mechanic and “learnt to damage German vehicles in such a way that it wouldn’t be immediately discovered” (from an obituary linked here).

Lem continued his medical studies after the war but ultimately ditched medicine, disagreeing with the theories of biologist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and also fearing he’d end up having to work for the military. (Google Lysenko: he had some truly nutty ideas about plant genetics and also looked like the Russian villain from every movie containing a Russian villain ever.) Lem’s first novel, The Man from Mars (1946), was originally published serially, and his first novel written as a full-length novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration (1955), was suppressed by the Communist Party, so his first novel to appear *as* a novel was The Astronauts (1951). His career took off in the 50s and he wrote both traditional science fiction like Solaris (which, interestingly, got past the censors more easily than realistic fiction) and allegorical tales like The Cyberiad.

Even as Lem was becoming one of the Big Names in science fiction, he was highly critical of many science fiction authors and works. In fact, the honorary membership given to Lem by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1973 was yanked in 1976 due to Lem’s contemptuous attitude. One of the only SF authors Lem respected was Philip K. Dick, about whom he wrote an essay entitled “A Visionary Among the Charlatans.” Dick, who toyed with chemically altered states of consciousness and a bit of mental illness, in turn wrote to the FBI that Lem was not actually a single person but an entire communist committee trying to infiltrate the West via science fiction. Really and truly. You can’t make this stuff up. (Well, Dick could. And did.) The FBI, who’d had a couple of interesting brushes with Dick already, ignored him.

Lem had lived in both Italy and Vienna but had returned to Krakow, Poland, by the time of his death from heart disease. He was survived by his wife and son.

May the sun eventually shine on you this fine Wednesday as you stay scrupulously honest to the data.