Stanisaw Lem

Which of his books are worth of reading?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Solaris

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    All of them.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Only good answer

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      He has some odd stuff, but anything that was translated to English is a safe bet.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Is it better to read him in English, Spanish or Russian?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          He's Polish you ninkompoop.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    His early sci-fi is crap, but only the really early years.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I've read Solaris, Fiasco,band His Master's Voice. I really enjoyed all of them. I've heard The Cyberiad is fun

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Does he cover interesting themes with the same sort of profundity that he does in Solaris, in any other work?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Hello,

      I've read Solaris, Fiasco,band His Master's Voice. I really enjoyed all of them. I've heard The Cyberiad is fun

      here.
      I think the biggest reoccurring theme with the works I've read is the red pill of fundamental incompatibility and incomprehensibility. Pretty much all other Sci Fi (even good sci Fi) assumes we'll find a way to understand other intelligences out there. Lem says "No, not necessarily", Alien means ALIEN. All of the books I listed are all about basically unavoidable communication blunders and misunderstandings.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        All of them.

        >I think the biggest reoccurring theme with the works I've read is the red pill of fundamental incompatibility and incomprehensibility.
        Quintians in Fiasco are entirely, wholly comprehensible to humans as a civilization. The communications breakdown happens not because they are aliens, but because they are aliens, but because they are their own civilization and human attempts at contact were fundamentally incapable of not fricking everything up for them, so they just adopted a policy of not responding to contact. And humans just didn't take silence for an answer.

        The doublers in Eden are also very much comprehensible and establish a productive contact with humans.
        Both Doublers and Quintians have very much human-like industrial civilizations, even.

        In general, whenever Lem's works feature humans encountering anything that can be commonly understood as an "alien civilization" - there's rarely any fundamental obstacles for mutual understanding. And when they encounter weird shit - it's usually humans' own keen disrespect towards anything that is not immediately "exploitable" that causes troubles.

        The point here is that everything that Lem says about "incomprehensible aliens" applies to regular humans as well. Fiasco is a metaphor for Cold War.

        From Lem's own interviews and commentaries, the "weird aliens" elements in his works were largely inspired by human-made disasters, from technological catastrophes to proxy wars and politicking of global superpowers. People trying to reshape the world when they don't actually understand shit, and don't even try to understand it, just seeking to use it.

        All the "incomprehensibility" elements are basically Stanislaw seething at human anti-intellectualism, and anti-intellectualists acting moronic even in the context of their own beliefs, and the utilitarianism's domination in human epistemology:
        >"Ok, yeah, you don't understand <the thing> and you don't even want to understand it, alright you precious little troglodyte caveman you, but let's look at how you act about <the thing> you don't understand. Do you leave it alone? Do you avoid it, like a sane hairless ape obeying it's functional survival instincts would? Do you at least develop some reverence for these things that don't fit in your moron brain? No, no, that would be too nice, and we can't have nice things, so no, you don't do that! You would much rather frick with <the thing>! Bite and taste <the thing>, throw it at walls, cover <the thing> in your smelly excrement, wave it around and scream! And when <the thing> finally blows up in your moron face - you cry about how unfair it is, and how everything else in the entire universe is to blame for your stupidity!"
        His Master's Voice has the most blatant metaphor for this, and Golem XIV has the titular character GoLEM literally spell this out.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Everything translated into english and probably a lot more beyond that.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The Futurological Congress

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Never read a novel that went from Airplane! to horror so quickly. Scariest thing I've read in a while.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Summa Technologiae. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. First complete English translation; translated by Joanna Zylinska.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I've read solaris, it was extremely boring. Is it the translation or just how he writes? Some of his other ones look good, like return from the stars but I'm yet to start

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    he's weird because you read Solaris and it's all serious and sad and beautiful, and then everything else is fricking hilarious

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If you aren't necessarily interested in his more humorous works like (or me) read Solaris, His Master's Voice, Summa Technologiae, The Invincible, Golem XIV

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Maybe I misinterpreted the quoted post, anyways yeah, all of the books I mentioned are great

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I found the Cyberiad boring and childish. Filtered?

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    All of them.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Tales of Pirx the Pilot is good. haven't read the second one yet

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