Are Vonnegut fans also Lem fans?
Author:macpar
Email:macpar@alaska.net
Date:1998/08/12
It seems to me that the "je ne sais quoi" that attracted me to Vonnegut's
works is nearly identical with what I like about the science fiction novels
and short stories of the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. Are there other
lurkers in a.b.k-v who are similarly enamoured of Lem's work?
George
Author:yggdrasil
Email:jpace@american.edu
Date:1998/08/13
i like the one lem novel i've read: soliaris...
i read it b/c i was fascinated by tarkovsky's film version... i tend to
prefer books over films... i was not disappointed... best of all--i do
not like tarkovsky's film any less, having read the book!
my interest in tarkovsky has not only sparked my interest in lem, but
also in eduard artemyev--an electronical music pioneer...
so now i can read lem while listening to the soliaris soundtrack (much
of it composed by artemyev... :)
and i will definitely read more lem... my interest in vonnegut is a bit
different, however... i read lem for the science
fiction/mortality/humanity aspects of his work... i read vonnegut for
his grasp on the absurd...
ygg
Author:Emil Tusen
Email:emil1000@usa.net
Date:1998/08/14
Yes, I have read several of Vonneguts novels and stories since I first
read "Slaughterhouse 5" in 1973, but it was not until 1990, when
accidentally I got "Solaris" on sale (a german translation for 2 DM in
Berlin when they where exchanging M for DM, by the way), that I read
anything by Lem.
Solaris is a great book and shortly after reading it I saw Tarkovsky's
film, which is the best science fiction film I have ever seen. I like
this film much more than Tarkovsky's "Stalker", because in the latter
he removed a lot of the science fiction elements that were present
in the original story "Roadside picnic" by the Strugatsky brothers. It
is still a good film, but not obviously a science fiction film, which
I would have liked it to be.
My favourite Vonnegut novel, by the way, is "Player piano", and my
favourite among his short stories is "The euphio question", which to
some extent has the theme in common with the story "Predatory things
of the age" (or whatever it is called in english) by the Strugatsky
brothers. For those who read swedish, there is a swedish translation
of "Predatory things" at
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Hollow/7390/tirox.html
yggdrasil jpace@american.edu writes:
> i like the one lem novel i've read: soliaris...
>
> i read it b/c i was fascinated by tarkovsky's film version... i tend to
> prefer books over films... i was not disappointed... best of all--i do
> not like tarkovsky's film any less, having read the book!
--
Erik Jonsson generaldepoten@geocities.com
Author: Jens Stark
Email:GuessMyName@eudoramail.com
Date:1998/08/13
macpar@alaska.net writes:
>It seems to me that the "je ne sais quoi" that attracted me to Vonnegut's
>works is nearly identical with what I like about the science fiction novels
>and short stories of the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem.
Absolutly not. I can't stand Lem. He's too much a sci-fi author for me.
Only KV has got the right mixture of black humor and bone-hard reality
spiced with some sci-fi.
Jens
--
To reply by e-mail replace GuessMyName with starkj
Author:macpar
Email:macpar@alaska.net
Date:1998/08/16
It seems to me that Lem has a lot of absurdity in his works as well... which
is part of why I thought perhaps Vonnegut fans would enjoy reading Lem; but
I'll grant you that it is somehow a _different_ sort of sense of the absurd.
Perhaps the difference between living on two different sides of the so-called
Cold War?
Author: macpar
Email:macpar@alaska.net
Date:1998/08/13
In article <01bdc679$c08f4840$3447aacc@default>,
"queequeg" wrote:
> macpar@alaska.net wrote in article (snip of question about Stanislaw Lem)
> never even heard of him. Please, enlighten us. I could definitely use
> something interesting to read, for a change.
Hokay...
Stanislaw Lem, Polish phsyician and science fiction author
(b.1921)
Books:
Solaris (1961, translated into english 1970)
The Invincible (1964, trans. 1973)
Memoirs found in a Bathtub (sh.sts. 1961, trans. 1973)
The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (sh.sts. 1965, trans. 1974)
The Futurological Congress (1971, Harvest/HBJ ISBN:0-15-634040-2trans. 1974
by Michael Kandel, The Continuum Publishing Corporation. )
The Investigation (1959 trans. 1974)
The Star Diaries (sh.sts. 1957 trans. 1976)
Mortal Engines (sh.sts. 1972 trans. 1977)
The Chain of Chance (1975, trans. 1978)
Tales of Pirx the Pilot (sh.sts. 1968 trans. 1979)
A Perfect Vacuum (trans. 1979)
Return from the Stars (sh.sts. 1961 trans. 1980)
The Cosmic Carnival (sh.sts. trans. 1981)
More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (sh.sts. trans. 1982)
His Master's Voice (1968, trans. 1984)
Imaginary Magnitude (1981, trans. 1984)
Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy (sh.sts.
trans. 1982)
Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction (trans. 1985 nf)
One Human Minute (trans. 1986)
Fiasco (trans. 1987)
Hospital of the Transfiguration (1982, trans. 1988 nsf)
You can look at lots of stuff about Lem on the WWW, e.g.
http://www.transparencynow.com/introlem2.htm and
http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/book-reviews/h/Lem_Reader.html
Many of his novels and stories feature the astronaut Ijon Tichy as the main
protagonist. there's a lot of absurdity and dark humor, which are probably
what remind me of Vonnegut.
The Soviet director Alexandr Tvardovski made a film of _Solaris_ that IMO
ranks right up there with _2001_ as a classic SF film adaption. But tastes
differ, clearly (I'm sure millions of people would think you and I weird for
liking Shakespeare, for example!): Jens Stark thinks I'm nuts, and Lem and
Vonnegut have nothing in common... or at least not enough to make the
comparison noteworthy.
