One of mine & Robin's favorite authors, one of the world's leading science-fiction writers Stanislaw Lem, died on Monday in his home city of Krakow at the age of 84.
Lem, whose books have sold more than 27 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages, won widespread acclaim for The Cyberiad, stories from a mechanical world ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974. Solaris, published in 1961 and set on an isolated space stations, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Sodebergh and starring George Clooney. Lem, born on September 12, 1921 in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv, studied medicine before World War Two. After the war, communist censorship blocked the publication of his earliest writing. After the fall of communism in 1989 Lem ceased writing science-fiction, instead devoting himself to reports on near-future predictions for governments and organizations. He wrote essays on computer crime, as well as technological and ethical problems posed by the expansion of the Internet.
6 quotes of Stanislaw Lem:
- A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
- Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
- Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.
- To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
- Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.
- You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.
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Comments on "Stanislaw Lem died at the age of 84"
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Robin said ... (3/28/2006 08:50:00 PM) :
post a comment*suk...*sigh....