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Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)
- ggm 2y agoI enjoy both of their writing. I'm not surprised PKD went to paranoid delusions, but I wonder if he also wrote to the Vatican about John Boyd and James Blish? Because on the same grounds their writings were anti-papacy. I'm guessing Drugs, Valis or the green laser told Dick to do it.
- defrost 2y agoDick was self aware to a degree, he lightly mocked his own conspiracy theories in characters that questioned why ten speed bikes only had seven gear wheels, two at the front and five at the back. He lived in that void along with the three missing gears.
- djaouen 2y agoEven monkeys sometimes fall from trees!
- thrance 2y ago2 years prior, in 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanisław Lem's Solaris to the big screen in the Soviet Union, which may have contributed to Dick's paranoia. Anyway, the film's a masterpiece that I highly recommend, and since it was published before 1975 it is not subject to copyright. You can find it on YouTube [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/Z8ZhQPaw4rE https://youtu.be/Z8ZhQPaw4rE
- psittacus 2y agoThere's also a great documentary on Stanislaw Lem. It's in Polish, but with English subtitles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw Lem himself talks about the movie a bit there too, around the 24th minute. He didn't seem fond of Tarkowsky's religiousness and the impact it had on the movie. Timestamped link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw&t=1434 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw&t=1434 My impression was similar — the movie seems to be a free retelling and doesn't reflect the book well.
- zorked 2y agoIt's interesting that Tarkowsky himself didn't like the movie either. Authors are a bit too involved emotionally to judge movies that are based on their books though. It reveals to them that the interpretation that readers make of their books or their interest in it may not be what the author intended.
- tialaramex 2y agoI really like Lem, but Solaris is probably my least favourite of his stories. It does have the thing I most admire in Lem's work of being about true aliens - that is, not just us again but in a Halloween costume like a Star Trek alien - but somehow Solaris doesn't "work" for me even though say, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub or Futurological Congress do.
- thrance 2y agoI haven't read the book (yet), but Tarkovsky's movie is only a loose adaptation of the source material, which you might still enjoy.
- johngossman 2y agoAre you a PKD fan too? The two you mentioned are amongst Lem's most Dick-ian stories. Also note, there is a newer English language translation of Solaris. I liked it better than the one I read years ago.
- Xelbair 2y agoI find it funny that i hated Lem for most of my life... because i was forced to read only his Robot stories in school. I still despise those moralist fables. But his other works? i love them! My favorite is The Star Diaries, despite having some robot stories in them.
- johngossman 2y agoI am fascinated by the fact those stories were assigned in school. I happen to love them. I wonder if you would have disliked them as much if they were not school assignments. Many kids grow up up hating Shakespeare and Moby Dick because they were forced to read them.
- pests 2y agoI somehow got spared and was never forced to read Moby Dick. I recently watched “In The Heart Of the Sea” which was an adaptation of a book which recounts the tragedy of the Whaleship Essex in the early 1800s, based on the written accounts of two of the surviving crew. I haven’t read the book, but the movie frames the story as an author interviewing the last remaining survivor in old age. Having not read Moby Dick, I at first thought this was a movie version as the storyline kind of seemed similar but the events didn’t seem to match to what I knew. Finally it clicked for me, and revealed at the end, that the interviewer was Herman Melville getting inspiration for his Moby Dick. The movie has increased my curiosity and desire into reading Moby Didk.
- selivanovp 2y agoThe funny story is that Lem despised this adaptation and for a good reason if you manage to read his book. He called Tarkovsky an idiot and refused to cooperate with him on the script as Tarkovsky threw pretty much all of Lem ideas from the book to shoot Crime and Punishment in space.
- krige 2y agoA common Tarkovsky move if you're familiar with his body of work.
- troupo 2y agoTarkovsky was making the movies he wanted, and stories were just pretext. Both Lem (Solaris) and Strugatsky Brothers (Roadside Picnic turned into Stalker) disliked what Tarkovsky did.
- sfjailbird 2y agoFunny how closely his own machinations resemble the (obviously comically deranged) delusions of some of his characters. He was clearly quite self-aware, as another comment noted, or could it be that the whole FBI report was a jest? It really reads exactly like a passage from his novels. The subtext of the report to the FBI, that we must suppress artistic expression in order to protect the innocent minds from dangerous ideas, remains as relevant and intriguing today as then.
- DonHopkins 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42850909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42850909 Lem and Dick are such precious peas in a pod! Too bad Dick reported to the FBI that Lem was a faceless composite communist committee out to get him and brainwash the youth of America and undermine American SF with "crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks", while Lem asymmetrically thought all science fiction writers were charlatans except for Philip K Dick. https://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick https://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a-communist-committee https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is... Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (1975) (depauw.edu) 140 points by pmoriarty on June 19, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 51 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349026 https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm >In 1973, Lem became an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, a gesture of ‘international goodwill’ on the association’s part. However, in 1976, 70 percent of the SFWA’s voted in favour of a resolution to revoke Lem’s membership. A very quick dismissal for such a prestigious author, but the reasons for his quick ejection from the organisation are clear – he didn’t seem to regard his honorary membership as any sort of honour. He considered American science fiction ‘ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms’ and ‘bad writing tacked together with wooden dialogue’, and these are just a few examples of Lem’s deprecatory attitude towards the US branch of his genre. >Lem, however, considered one science fiction author as exempt from his scathing criticisms – his denouncer, Philip K. Dick. The title of an essay Lem published about Dick is evidence enough of this high regard: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. The essay itself waxes lyrical on Dick’s many excellent qualities as a writer, and expounds upon the dire state of US sci-fi. Lem considered Dick to be the only writer exempt from his cynical view of American SF. It seems likely that Dick was unaware of Lem’s high opinion of him and that he took Lem’s disparaging comments personally, stating in his letter to the FBI: >"Lem’s creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem’s crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated)."
- indigoabstract 2y agoSeems pretty silly in hindsight and probably was back then as well. If communist committees could write like Lem, the world would be a much richer place today. What stuck with me after reading many of his works was this underlying theme in several of his novels, of the futility of trying to make contact or reason with alien entities which are so vastly different from us, no bridge of understanding is possible. On a lighter note, his electronic bard from The Cyberiad is pretty spot on, quite similar to the LLMs we have now.
- throw8494949 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kranke155 2y agoWhat blew me away from the Cyberiad was how funny it was.
- troupo 2y agoI used to know the Russian translation by heart (and all of Ijon Tichy)
- apelapan 2y agoI loved how is was mentioned in passing (as I recall it, 30 years later), that Ijon Tichy was followed by an entourage of Tichiologists.
- m-hodges 2y agoI know the title is meant to be a play on The Iliad but the stories remind me more of Don Quixote.
- stevenwoo 2y agoWhen I was reading it, it seemed a lot of bits reappeared as Futurama jokes but then got to the story with the robot named Calculon and that made it obvious.
- munchler 2y ago> This plot [about an intelligent beam of light] wouldn’t be out of place in one of Dick’s mind-bending novels. This experience was, in fact, the basis of a novel he wrote called _Valis_.
- Trasmatta 2y agoOne of my all time favorite books! The Empire never ended.
- grakasja 2y agoA grand chick saved me!
- ysofunny 2y agoone mind there is. within it, two principles contend...
- Trasmatta 2y agoI can feel the plasmate stirring within me. Time for my yearly reread.
- hx8 2y agoI haven't thought about Valis in a long time, but I do generally tend to label various people/organizations as "The Empire". I didn't realize how much that book stuck with me.
- Trasmatta 2y agoI'd recommend a re-read! There's so many layers to that story that show themselves only on subsequent readings. Much like the layered flow of PKD the author, PKD the character, and Horselover Fat.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoCan you share what you like about it? I love most of pkd works but this one I just couldn't finish, simply because it's so boring. Chapter after chapter nothing happens. The only thing that stuck with me was that "cynicism is not a viable alternative to insanity" (not an exact quote), that's an interesting idea.
- bububenrjfjtj 2y ago[flagged]
- KingOfCoders 2y agoLove Lem, especially The Futurological Congress
- andrei_says_ 2y agoTalk about mind bending. By the way, there’s a movie somewhat based on it with Harvie Cartell. Worth a watch.
- wozer 2y ago"The Congress" (2013) probably?
- andrei_says_ 2y agoI believe so.
- cubefox 2y agoI'm really not a "the book is better than the movie" guy, but here I really think the movie isn't very good in comparison. It doesn't even have much to do with the book, and it loses all the intelligent humor of the original. The book is a very light short read and hilarious. The perfect introduction to Lem.
- cubefox 2y agoBruce Sterling's take on this story is still a classic: "The Spearhead of Cognition", 1987, https://germanponte.com/txt/catscan/sterling.html#ym2 https://germanponte.com/txt/catscan/sterling.html#ym2
- pavlov 2y agoIt’s a lovely piece, but maybe goes a bit too far in trying to paint Lem as some kind of human-form planet Solaris himself, failing to communicate with ordinary people. For example: “These essays are the work of a lonely man. We can judge the fervor of Lem's attempt to reach out by a piece like ‘On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction:’ a Pole, writing in German, to an Austrian, about French semantic theory. The mind reels.” That just sounds like an ordinary letter for a 20th century European intellectual. Reading and writing in French and German was table stakes.
- skrebbel 2y agoWow this reads like the plot of a bad romcom! I can totally imagine Dick sitting angry in his study getting all worked up over how badly Lem hated US SF and how mean that is, not realizing Lem actually loved his work. All this lacks is the grand finale where the misunderstanding is revealed and they kiss & make out.
- philistine 2y agoPhilip K. Dick was vindictive, continually broke, terrible at titles, unlucky, and a wonderful writer. He never had a happy ending.
- bookofjoe 2y ago>... terrible at titles... I disagree. Here are some that retain their power all these decades later and will likely do so for the foreseeable future: Time Out of Joint The Man in the High Castle Martian Time-Slip The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Clans of the Alphane Moon The Simulacra Now Wait for Last Year Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)/Blade Runner (1982) Ubik We Can Build You Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said A Scanner Darkly The Transmigration of Timothy Archer Radio Free Albemuth
- 0_____0 2y agoThey do retain their power because of the notoriety of the stories they head. It's a matter of taste and thus hard to argue, but I do think his titles were kind of clunky. Can you imagine if Blade Runner retained the title of the work it was derived from?
- nottorp 2y ago> Can you imagine if Blade Runner retained the title of the work it was derived from? ... or even some parts of the plot ... It would have been more interesting than the shooting based thriller we got instead.
- rdtsc 2y ago> Due to the economic restrictions of Poland under the communist regime, Lem was unable to give Dick his due royalties. Surely losing out on this potential source of income, regardless of reason, would incline Dick unfavourably towards Lem If we pull aside the ideological grandstanding what we see is plain old jealousy, resentment and vindictiveness. That’s usually the case in any context. The ideological grandstanding is just a fig leaf.
- p0w3n3d 2y agoAs far as I know Stanisław Lem was not allowed to like anything from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland disallowed people to like anything that came from "the rotten west"
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoYes, and as far as I know Stanisław Lem was also genuinely contemptuous of the 1950s default style of US sci-fi: square-jawed heroes who triumph over every puzzle, right every wrong; Cowboys and Indians on a frontier planet, manifest destiny, etc. A lot of his work emphasises how this tendency fails in the face of the sheer unknowable alienness of the outer universe. e.g. Solaris, The Invincible, Fiasco. Lem liked Phil Dick though, because Dick's work was more sceptical and mind-bending: more like his own work than it was like the spaceship heroics.
- stonogo 2y agoI'm sure you know this, but for those who might not, US sci-fi was just as varied as anywhere else... except in the domain of John W. Campbell, for decades the editor of the biggest-circulation sci-fi magazine in the country, where he very much explicitly selected for that kind of story. Lots of famous authors active in the era have tales of how they edited their work to meet Campbells demands -- I recall one where the author switched the 'human' and 'alien' species because Campbell wouldn't print a story where humanity 'lost.' Truly a fascinating character, and an author in his own right, responsible for the story that John Carpenter would adapt for his film The Thing. I don't share his taste in science fiction, but he had a massive impact on the genre.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoYes, indeed. I was thinking of the pulp magazines, and also to an extent the Original Series of Star Trek. See Jeannette Ng's "2019 John W. Campbell Award" acceptance speech on the topic, and commentary that followed.
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- emtel 2y agoStanislaw Lem was far too much of a genius to believe his works were directed by any sort of committee, communist or otherwise. He is still overlooked far too much - people seem to regard Solaris as his only work of note. But he has so works, all bizarre, imaginative, and insightful. Fiasco and His Master’s Voice are two of my lesser known favorites.
- troupo 2y agoThe Invincible, Solaris, and Eden all deal with the question "what if aliens are truly alien, and we cannot find any points of contact with them?" Even his lighter work (Cyberiad, Ijon Tichy) is very insightful
- gambiting 2y agoAnd outside of Sci-Fi he was still an absolute powerhouse. "Hospital of Transfiguration" is an absolutely haunting novel that you will keep thinking about for months later if not years, and "Journals found in a bathtub" is on a different level.
- wtcactus 2y agoPhilip K. Dick should have been one of the 1st ones realizing that such a brilliant and creative work as that coming from Lem, could never have been created by a committee, much less by a communist one.
- DonHopkins 2y agoAn EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc The Congress (2013) Scan Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8 HN thread about "Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies" and The Congress discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33044479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33044479 >According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the actress is split between delusional and real mental states. Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview, Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting, namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book despite going far away from it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209861 >People who haven't used psychedelics don't tend to get or appreciate The Congress as much as those who have. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34953477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34953477 >I just watched The Congress -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and WOW, it was excellent.
- gambiting 2y agoI love Lem's work and I can't stand this film lol, it's just.....complete nonsense. And yeah, I have never done psychodelics, maybe that's why.
- DonHopkins 2y agoMakes perfect sense to me! ;) THE CONGRESS - Entering The Animation Zone - Film Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pqzaZcivh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pqzaZcivh4 THE CONGRESS clip1- Miramount Nagasaki Lobby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPGhw4nACfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPGhw4nACfk This actually explains it pretty well: The Congress - Escape from Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ1hFKDCpd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ1hFKDCpd8
- danielktdoranie 2y agoTIL Philip K. Dick was even more based than I previously thought.
- readthenotes1 2y agoDifferent take: A solid accusation of being a commie is just the cover that Lem needed to stay out of trouble back home in Poland.
- notahacker 2y agoThat might have been a more interesting hypothesis about motivation if Philip K Dick was denouncing Lem as a communist propaganda on stage at a convention rather than in a private letter to the FBI
- readthenotes1 2y agoAh, but with all the moles, perhaps PKD was thinking a private letter to the FBI was a public letter to the KGB
- derelicta 2y agoI miss the times where we had this sorta influence.
- antirez 2y agoSolaris is such a masterpiece that resisted any accusation, fortunately.
- aszantu 2y agoLems fiction was so wonderfully weird, I remember something about a double agent in a mental hospital trying to figure out wether the other patients are double, triple or quadruple agents. Very confusing, was a script for a movie, don't know if it ever got made
- cubefox 2y agoThis might be "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub". It has the possible double and triple agents, but it takes place in some sort of underground Pentagon rather than in a mental hospital. It's similar to Kafka's "The Process". There is also "Hospital of the Transfiguration", which takes place in a mental hospital, though I haven't read that one.
- mentalgear 2y agoSo Dick could also be a Dick.
- lordfrito 2y agoI have immense respect for PKDs writings, he was far far ahead of his time, sad that he was such a mess mentally. His themes about the malleability of reality are just so prescient about the problems of the digital era. Neighbors no longer share the same narrative about what is actually happening in the world. I often wonder what PKD would say if he were alive today. Heck, I wonder what he'd be doing today in the digital era... Imagine if he had a YouTube channel...
- verisimi 2y agoEven if it hadn't already been banned, it's highly unlikely you'd be watching it. Mr beast tho, not that's some content, huh?
- mcv 2y agoYoutube is surprisingly good at recommending me really obscure channels that nobody else seems to be watching (often I see why, but there are some gems). And it's not recommending Mr Beast, so I must be doing something right I guess. I also get a lot of channels lately about philosophical analysis of science fiction stories, so that's pretty cool.
- int_19h 2y agoSometimes it's the small details. Remember all the microtransactions in Ubik? "insert coin to open this door" (to his own apartment!) etc.
- amiantos 2y agoIf Dick and Lem were around these days, Dick would have a very vocal online following that would all insist that Dick is correct and claim that Lem is most definitely a government psyop and anyone who says otherwise is just brainwashed by the mainstream media.
- numpad0 2y ago> Dick’s evidence for this denouncement was that ‘[Lem] writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not’. Man reads some translations, suspects it might have been written by multiple people? But that's what translation is... It's often misunderstood that translation is done by surgically deconstructing original texts and selecting accurate meanings of words to fit into grammatical structures of the new language text is to be written. That's simply not true. Rather. You just read the original text and try and say close-enough thing in the target language. Translators are like half ghostwriters. "Accurate" translations are sometimes not even understood by audiences. And then after all the changes, translations will still containe distinct signatures for each original languages. For entertainment contents like a novel, there will also be marketing elements involved. Some choices may have to be made. Not necessary to interfere with the author's intent - like choosing first person pronouns and ending for each sentences. Lem's novels being written in a language spoken in a communist country means most competent translators woild be technically a "communist", whether it's just unfortunate categorical labeling or they actually had been. So, I think, the notion that translated works of Stanisław Lem only occasionally having distinctive foreign language components, and also being not always consistent in styles with one another as if it had been written by a Communist committee with a figurehead, would be just a description of independently rediscovered process of book translation cast in unnecessarily dark light. I wouldn't find it so weird if PKD was that kind of uninformed crazy person stuck with such preconceptions, though. Sounds like just how it works.
- krige 2y agoLem is especially a difficult subject to tackle for a translator. He invented new but still meaningful words as easily as he breathed, and his less (overtly) serious works dabbled in extreme wordplay.
- smcameron 2y agoThere's an interesting book[1] by Douglas Hofstadter about translation in general and also about translating his most famous book[2] (which by its nature was particularly difficult to translate) into many different languages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
- oldgradstudent 2y agoIf a committee can produce the Cyberiad, books should always be written by committees.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThe Cyberiad is one of the best and most underrated works of science fiction there is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad
- dang 2y agoOne small previous thread: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30702522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30702522 - March 2022 (1 comment)
- NooneAtAll3 2y ago[flagged]
- FpUser 2y agoIt is generally a good idea to separate one's character from one's work. I love Dick's writings very much, same as I love ones by Lem. I do not give a rat's ass about what they're like in private life.
- cafard 2y ago""" In addition to Lem, Dick named three other sci-fi figures associated with him as in on the plot – Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson and Franz Rottensteiner (also Lem’s literary agent in the West). """ I've never heard of the other two, but Fredric Jameson was a well-known literary critic. I gather that he did write about science fiction, and certainly he was a Marxist, but was he really a "sci-fi figure"?