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Is he underrated? I have always understood that everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever. His writing and philosophy has depth and he
by HONEST_ANNIE 8y ago
Is he underrated?
I have always understood that everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever. His writing and philosophy has depth and he understood the future would be interaction between the society and technology.
Maybe he is underrated in the sense that while he is considered a great, many of his writings are still relatively unknown.
His nonfiction is also remarkable (Golem XIV is technically sci-fi, but it's so philosophically heavy that it can be seen as philosophical work).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV
'The Philosophy of Chance' has not been translated to English.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Chance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Chance
- jagger11 8y agoMaybe what the OP meant was, that Lem's works are much less known in the West than in the old good "Eastern Block", though AFAIK he's quite well known in Germany.
- DonHopkins 8y agoPhilip K Dick underrated him. http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick http://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick Unless you consider it flattery that he told the FBI that "Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual". But the lack of respect was not mutual! Stanislaw Lem: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm
- pvg 8y agoThat's really interesting, I had no idea they'd intersected in this strange way. Although Dick was likely suffering from mental illness and Lem's critique of him seems like a writer's version of the the not-entirely-uncommon 'great ideas, terrible writing'.
- tialaramex 8y agoI would never think of Golem XIV as anything other than an SF story - sure, Golem keeps trying to lecture the humans about philosophy but I'd say the larger elements of the story were - Some Humans fear the AIs (pretty standard Frankenstein situation) and conspire against them - The conspirators are eliminated as a threat, the narrator tells us they believe Annie did this because Golem would have done something subtle to avoid alerting humans whereas Annie simply considered the conspirators a nuisance and nothing above that - IIRC we're likened to insects, swatted away and, when they persist, crushed. - With the AIs gone humans go on as if nothing happened, seemingly learning nothing from it at all All of Imaginary Magnitude and A Perfect Vacuum are awesome in my opinion (I have read them only in translation)
- mcv 8y agoPeople who know him agree that he is one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever, but he's not nearly as well known as Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein.