Lem made his way to the launching bay


As some Polish newspaper is reporting:

Zmarł Stanisław Lem

Grzegorz Kowalczyk, PAP (aktualizacja 17:14)

W wieku 85 lat zmarł w poniedziałek w Krakowie Stanisław Lem, jeden z najpopularniejszych i najbardziej cenionych polskich pisarzy. Łączny nakład jego książek tłumaczonych na 41 języków przekroczył 27 mln egzemplarzy. Pisarz zmarł w szpitalu Collegium Medicum UJ, gdzie przebywał od kilku tygodni.

Apparently, that means Stanislaw Lem is dead. Long live Lem.



Lem is the brilliant mind behind Solaris and Hospital of the Transfiguration. I stumbled upon him my senior year in college. If I hadn't been kiting checks to get through college, I may never have known of his genius!

So, at some point in my college years, I found better uses for the money from work, what I got from my parents, and a small inheritance left after my grandmother passed than paying tuition. Instead, I would skip tuition payments for the semester, I would get a nastygram from the friendly college telling me that if I didn't pay up, I couldn't register for classes next semester. So, I would take my checkbook and shamefacedly write a check for the outstanding balance and then run across the street to register for classes before they figured out there was no money in the account. Next semester, same thing. Third semester, well, you get the picture. Thank god I didn't go to college in Texas.
Well, the only problem with this approach is you had to get into every single class you wanted in that first pass at registration. No wait lists for people whose checks were about to bounce in three days. So, my last semester, I needed three more elective hours, and to be honest, there weren't a lot of classes still open that appealed to me. I mean, sure there were some that were held before 11:00, but they were obviously out of the question. One class caught my eye, however: every Tuesday night, 7 pm - 10, Soviet and Eastern European Science Fiction and Literature of the Fantastic. Keep in mind this was in the spring of 1990, just after the University of Iowa, in all their wisdom and precognition, commenced a department of Soviet and Eastern European Studies. I jumped at it.
Everything we read in that class that semester was mind-blowingly incredible, in fact this was probably my favorite class in college. But one of the books that really stood out in my mind was Solaris. The heartache of an astronaut sent to investigate a planet that seems to manifest the deepest fears or anxieties of the people who come near it was compelling, when I was still heartbroken myself. Given how in my last few years in college I went from one failed relationship to another, I was pretty much heartbroken all the time!

One of the results of this appreciation for Lem was a stuffy. See, I have this thing for stuffed bunnies. My parents used to give me one every year on Easter, and I had a pretty big collection of them. I thought they were hilarious, and took a few of them to college with me. No plushy games, but they did wind up in odd locations and positions. Don't ask.
Most of those stuffies were named after authors. Ernest, Steinbeck. Kingston, too, because I had to name him after seeing the movie The Harder They Come, and I decided to break with tradition. Well, another one of the stuffies needed a name, so he was given the moniker, "Lem."

Rest well, Stanislaw.

Posted: Tue - March 28, 2006 at 11:26 PM        

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