CHAPTER VIII

THE DECLINING PERIOD OF STANISŁAW LEM

At this place I would like to analyse in more detail Lem’s fall as a writer, the fall that began after he
published in 1987 his last science fiction novels Fiasco (Fiasco) and Peace on Earth (Pokój na
Ziemi). Only two years after the publication of these books, the Soviet (“communist’) system
collapsed in Poland, but also and definitely, Lem’s creative vein ended. His collections of essays
published after year 1990, such as Lube czasy (1995, The Pleasant Times), Tajemnica chińskiego
pokoju (1996, Secret of the Chinese Room), Sex Wars (1996), Dziury w całym (1997, Holes in the
Whole), Bomba megabitowa (1999, Megabyte Bomb), Okamgnienie (2000, The Twinkling of an
Eye), Dylematy (2003, Dilemmas), Krótkie zwarcia (2004, Short Circuits) and especially Rasa
drapieżców. Teksty ostatnie (2006, The Race of Predators. The Last Texts) are of almost
unbelievably low quality, especially compared to the generally high quality of his earlier works,
especially those written in the 1960s and 1970s.

So here I will analyse the fall of an outstanding writer, also understood as a personal tragedy of an
extraordinary man who, in his old age, was unable to find a place for himself in a rapidly changing
environment. This collapse is examined by me against the background of the tragically unsuccessful
socio-economic transformation in Poland (and generally in the former Soviet bloc) and the earlier
achievements of Stanisław Lem - an interesting but very controversial person for whom the collapse of
the Soviet system in Poland has brought no greater creativity or true freedom, but only a steady
decline in his creative talents and thus the quality of his work.

Lem's earlier para-fictional essays from the 1970s and 1980s, included in volumes such as Perfect
Vacuum and Imaginary Magnitude, are, after all, among the most original works in all literary
works, not only by Lem or by Polish writers, but also in world literature. These volumes, along with
their continuation, i.e. The Provocation and The Library of the 21st Century, constituted a
definitely successful attempt to revive the entire science fiction genre, which has been in a state of
permanent decline for quite a long time, until, one can say, arrival of Cixin Liu, mainly due to the lack
of new ideas and escape of some writers in formal experiments that are incomprehensible to the vast
majority of readers. Therefore I am making in this place a short analysis of this experimental works by
Lem, in order to be able to distinguish them clearly from his later, much worse works. Those
interested in a more detailed analysis, I refer to my monograph Visions of the Future in the Writings
of Stanisław Lem1.

1
Saarbrücken: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010, chapter 6 “Lem’s Other Theoretical Works ad
Collections of Essays”.

1
BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC OF POLAND (1989-1999)

Stanisław Lem posing in 1998 as a polyglot and a Citizen of the World

Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Wójcik

2
 Stanisław Lem in year 1990
Source: Photograph taken by Jacek Wcisło

Stanisław Lem with wife Barbara, 1990s

Source: Pavel Weigel Stanisław Lem - Životopis (Stanisław Lem - Biography) Praha: Magnet Press, 1995

In 1989, after years of economic and cultural regression in Poland, caused by the strikes organised by
the “Solidarity” at the turn of 1980 and 1981 and the long-term economic blockade on the part of the
West, there was achieved so-called The Round Table Agreement and as a consequence of this
agreement, the beginning of the implementation of the so-called The Balcerowicz Plan, i.e. the return
of Poland to market capitalism and further deterioration of the economic situation. There are also
elections to the so-called The Contract Parliament (Sejm Kontraktowy) and the return of the Polish
State to the name of Republic of Poland.

3
 General view of the Round Table Talks in Warsaw, Poland on 6th February 1989
Source: Agence France-Presse

In the years 1989-2001, Stanisław Lem re-establishes cooperation with the now pro-government
catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny. During this period, a number of Lem’s unsuccessful and
generally boring books appeared, containing his essays on various topics, generally being low-quality
reflections on the topics he had previously addressed in the Dialogues, Summa Technologiae, The
Philosophy of Chance and Fantastics and Futurology. These are mainly Lube czasy (1995, The
Pleasant Times), Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju (1996, Secret of the Chinese Room), Sex Wars
(1996), Dziury w całym (1997, Holes in the Whole), and Bomba megabitowa (1999, Megabyte
Bomb), Okamgnienie (2000, The Twinkling of an Eye).

Year 1991 marks the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. In the same year,
Stanisław Lem receives the Franz Kafka award in the field of literature and the film about Stanisław
Lem, entitled Stanisław Lem. Science and fiction directed by Adam Ustynowicz and produced by the
BBC was completed. This is, so far, the only successful biographical film about Lem and generally
one of the few successful biographical films, as the director avoids showing the so-called talking
heads, effectively and always “deadly” boring the viewers.

In 1992, asteroid No 3836, discovered in 1979 by H. S. Chernykh, an employee of the Crimean

Astrophysical Observatory, was named “Lem”. In June this year, Stanisław Lem (as the so-called
specialist of the future) received a letter from Mikhail Gorbachev inviting him to participate in the
conference “Towards the new civilization”. This was due to the fact that after the failure of glasnost
and perestroika and the collapse of the USSR that followed those failures and caused the removal of
“Gorby” from power by Yeltsin, this unfortunate first and last president of the former Soviet Union
founded, with money from his Western protectors, an international fund of his name, and this
conference was the first major event of this fund2. Lem did not fly to this conference, but sent a paper

2
Wiktor Jaźniewicz Doktor Lem. Anegdoty p. 28 at https://solaris.lem.pl/prace/WJ_Doktor_Lem_Anegdoty.pdf
(accessed on 01-07-2019). Note that the Gorbachev Foundation may be included in the list of foreign agencies in
Russia, as Georgy Fedorov, member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation asked the Russian Ministry

4
written on the basis of a fairly large “futurological” article for the Parisian Kultura, which was
published there in its May issue as “World and Poland”3 and reprinted in Sex Wars (1996) as “SEX
WARS, or the world and Poland” („SEX WARS, czyli świat i Polska”).

Censored letter from Gorbachev to Lem

Source: Wiktor Jaźniewicz Doktor Lem. Anegdoty (Doctor Lem. Anecdotes) -
https://solaris.lem.pl/prace/WJ_Doktor_Lem_Anegdoty.pdf (accessed on 01-07-2019)
МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ФОНД THE INTERNATONAL
СОЦИАЛЬНО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКИХ FOUNDATION
И ПОЛИТОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC
ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ AND POLITICAL STUDIES
(ГОРБАЧЁВ-ФОНД) (THE GORBACHEV FOUNDATION)
Leningrad Prospect 49
Moscow 125 468
Telephones 943-98 21, 943-98 29
Fax 943 95 94
Moscow, To Stanisław Lem
6 July 1992 Poland, Cracow
66 Narwik Street
Dear doctor Lem!
Thank you very much for very interesting material for our conference. (...)
I shake your hand and hope to see you as a guest of the Fund.
(signature) M. Gorbachev

of Justice to check whether the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation should be entered on the list of foreign agencies,
as “the activities of the first president of the USSR had irreversible effects, and the activities of the Gorbachev
Foundation have a destructive impact on the Russian Federation” and the office of the foundation is now located
in San Francisco - https://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-ze-swiata,2/fundacja-gorbaczowa-moze-trafic-na-liste-
zagranicznych-agentow,548735.html(accessed on 08-09-2019).
3
Kultura (Paris) No 5 pp. 3-18.

5
Tomasz Lem (on the left) and Stanisław Lem (on the right) in Lem family residence at Cracow-Kliny,
year 1992
Source: Lem.pl

From the left: Władysław Bartoszewski, Stanisław Lem and Ewa Lipska in Embassy of Poland in
Vienna, year 1992
(Bartoszewski was then the Ambassador of purely politcal nomination and Lipska was the First Secretary of the
Embassy, even if she had no qualifications at all for such a post)
Source: Lem.Pl

6
 Pożytek ze smoka i inne opowiadania - Utility of the Dragon and other stories

Cover of Pożytek ze smoka i inne opowiadania (Utility of the Dragon and Other Stories)
Warszawa: Polskie Towarzystwo Wydawców Książek, 1993
Cover artist Michał Urbański

Pożytek ze smoka i inne opowiadania (Utility of the Dragon and other stories) is a collection of
short stories by Stanisław Lem. It contains stories from other collections such as Niezwyciężony (The
Invincible), Maska (The Mask), Inwazja z Aldebarana (Invasion from the Aldebaran), Księga
robotów (Book of Robots), Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie (Tales of Pirx the Pilot) and Bezsenność
(Sleeplessness) and for the first time “Zagadka”(“The Riddle”)4 and “Pożytek ze smoka” (“Utility of
the Dragon”5.

4
Originally published in German as “Das Rätsel” in collection edited by Peter Wilfert Tor zu den Sternen
(Gate to the Stars) München: Goldmann, 1981. It was written in 1981 and published in the first Polish edition
of Playboy in January 1995. See also „Ein Weichkäse beginnt zu denken‟ (“A White Cheese Begins to Think”)
in Die Welt No 74 of 28/03/1981 (supplement Geistige Welt p. 2).
5
Originally published in German as „Vom Nutzen des Drachen‟ in Metall No 25/26 of 16 December 1983
(translated by Hanna Rottensteiner).

7
 Cover of Tor zu den Sternen (Gate to the Stars) München: Goldmann, 1981 containing „Das
Rätsel”) “Zagadka”) by Stanisław Lem
Cover artist Jürgen F. Rogner

In „Zagadka”, robotic Father Chlorian complains indignantly to other robotic Father Zinkan, Doctor
Magneticus, about the speculations of one heretical robotic scholar Marmagedonian Lapidor called
Halogenic, who wrote that life is also possible on a non-metallic basis. However, hypotheses of
Marmagedonian Lapidor were quite accurate, as three chemists from The Institute of Colloids succeed
recently in assembling from water, gelatine and something else an artificial brain called “jelly brain”
that recently checkmated the director of the Institute in chess. “Pożytek ze smoka‟ („Utility of the
Dragon‟) is rather mediocre political satire on the former USSR and trade of West with the
“communist” countries.

8
 Stanisław Lem with a dog in his house in Cracow-Kliny, year1993
Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Wójcik

Stanisław Lem with his wife in his house at Cracow-Kliny, year1993

Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Wójcik

9
Stanisław Lem at his house in Cracow-Kliny standing next to the antenna of satellite television,
year1993
Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Wójcik

10
Stanisław Lem in front of the “UFOs” (top) and with a globe (bottom) in his residence at Cracow-
Kliny, year 1993
Source: Photographs taken by Wojciech Druszcz

11
In 1994, Stanisław Lem became a member of the then reconstructed Polish Academy of Arts and
Sciences (Polska Akademia Umiejętności). However, Lem was quickly disappointed with it, because
instead of scientific activity, it dealt mainly with a guerrilla fight with the competitive, de facto
Stalinist, Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk).

In year 1995, Stanisław Lem received the Jan Parandowski PEN Club Award for lifetime
achievements and the Association of Space Explorers Award, which was presented to him in Cracow
by the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. In the same year, Stanisław Lem sued Franz Rottensteiner,
his former agent for the Western countries, for 100,000 West German marks in a civil court in Vienna
(Handelsgericht Wien) as a compensation for allegedly overdue fees, which of course meant the end of
Lem’s cooperation with Rottensteiner. Rottensteiner was then convinced that Lem was only trying to
sue him because he felt that Rottensteiner could not afford litigation and that Rottensteiner was afraid
of Lem as a result6. Earlier, Lem had sent Rottensteiner a letter written by Lem’s lawyer demanding
that he be paid around DM 70,000 (without a court sentence) if Rottensteiner insulted him in “some
form” As one can guess, this litigation was miserably lost by Lem.

It all started in year 1983, when Lem signed on 17th of April a contract, negotiated by Rottensteiner,
for the novel Fiasco (working title Pokonany i.e. Defeated) with the West German publisher
Suhrkamp and took an advance for it, but Lem did not he kept the promise, because in 1985 he signed
another contract for the same novel Fiasco - this time with the publisher S. Fischer Verlag and for
which Lem received Lem 100,000 West German Marks. This must have had caused Lem’s conflict
with Rottensteiner, because the latter did not only promoted Lem in the so-called West, he also
negotiated a contract with Lem for Suhrkamp and arranged for Lem a yearly scholarship in West
Berlin. The whole thing, of course, proves Stanisław Lem’s pettiness and even malice, and above all,
his dishonesty and amorality. People less favourable to Lem claim, that he has inherited these negative
character traits from his Jewish ancestors (“he sucked it with his mother’s milk”).

In year 1996 Stanisław Lem received the Order of the White Eagle from Aleksander Kwaśniewski,
who was then a post-communist president of the Republic of Poland7. It was in spite of Lem’s fiercely
anti-communist views at the time, and in the same year Lem received the Award of the Great Cultural
Foundation (Nagroda Wielkiej Fundacji Kultury) and the Award of the Cracow Province Voivode in
the field of culture. In the same year 1996 Stanisław Lem miserably loses in Vienna the above-
mentioned civil trial against Franz Rottensteiner.

In the summer of the same year, Lem comes in contact with his second evil spirit, after J.J.
Szczepański. Thus time it is not very successful “expert” of Polish language, one, Wojciech Zemek8,
whom Lem hired as his private secretary. This was, diplomatically speaking, not a very good idea,
because ruthless and completely immoral Zemek quickly dominated the increasingly physically and
mentally incapable Lem, to the obvious disadvantage of the latter and its readers. In the same year, one

6
Franz Rottensteiner „Der Mann, der den Schatten scheuerte“ (“The man who scrubbed the shadow“) -
www.vice.com/de/article/yve755/der-mann-der-den-schatten-scheuerte-0000298-v8n9 (accessed on 03-07-2019).
Note that Lem described earlier in Wizja lokalna (Official Hearing on the Spot) how civil lawsuits are in the
West won by wealthier or better „positioned” party, but he forgot that in Austria Rottensteiner was much better
„positioned” than him.
7
Former minister on behalf of the communist Polish United Workers’ Party in the government of the
“communist” Polish People’s Republic.
8
Who received in year 2009 the magister (roughly an equivalent of the MA) degree at the Department of Polish
Studies (really of Polish Language) of Jagiellonian University in Cracow for thesis entitled „Letters and
Literature: Stanisław Lem’s correspondence with Michael Kandel”, written under the scientific supervision of
Professor Jerzy Jarzębski.

12
Tomasz Kamiński made, in cooperation with Polish State Television Cracow Regional Centre (TVP
Kraków) a very unsuccessful documentary named “Stanisław Lem”. It featured mostly, as usual
boring the viewers, so-called talking heads, such as Stanisław Lem himself, Jan Błoński, Jerzy
Jarzębski, Czesław Miłosz and Jerzy Turowicz.

In year 1997, Stanisław Lem received an honorary doctorate from the University of Opole and the
Honorary Citizenship of the City of Krakow. In the same year, his Dziury w całym (Holes in the
Whole) appeared. It is a very unsuccessful book containing texts published by him in catholic
Tygodnik Powszechny in the years 1995-1997. Łukasz Gołębiewski, in his much too favourable
review9, noted that “recently, philosophical concepts have been making a great career, the authors of
which claim that in the modern world changes are progressing so quickly that we are unable to predict
anything anymore and that the works of Stanisław Lem have been for many years an evidence that this
is not a truth”, as Lem, according to Gołębiewski, “still amazes us, even at the end of the 20th century,
with the sharpness of his imagination”. According to Gołębiewski, “the list of contemporary
achievements in technology, medicine, electronics or engineering and the benefits and threats that Lem
predicted are long enough to not believe the words of those who claim that the future is
unpredictable”. According to Gołębiewski, “already in Summa Technologiae written in the 1950s, as
well as in numerous stories and novels, the Cracow writer warned readers about the effects of
uncontrolled progress” and that “Lem wrote in the 1950s about genetic engineering, virtual reality,
information wars, robotisation, cloning etc.”. This is of course true, but Lem was not only one who
wrote on these subjects in the 1950s, and what is more important, he did not invent those devices - he
only wrote about inventions made by other people.

To these matters Lem returned in the years 1995-1997 in the columns published in Tygodnik
Powszechny, a selection of which was published in 1997 by the Znak publishing house. So Lem wrote
in Dziury w całym about the cloning of Dolly the sheep and about his first experiences with the
Internet, noting that although he predicted many years ago several of the achievements of modern
technology, this does not mean that he had ever been enthusiastic about them: “it is one thing to sense
certain events, and another to identify with them.”. In Dziury w całym, Lem also wrote about his
literary likes and dislikes as well as about his views on politics, media, democracy and pornography.
Therefore, these are mainly texts relating to very specific events, such as the presidential elections of
that time, statements by various politicians, international conflicts, misunderstandings and agreements
of those times. Although their dimensions are generally universal, these columns have lost their
relevance long time ago, unlike Lem’s earlier works such as The Dialogues or Summa Technologiae.
Unfortunately, it was in this period, i.e. in the 1990s, that the intellectual potential of Stanisław Lem
clearly began to decline. So in Holes in the Whole Lem laments the disappearance of childhood and
reflects on the wilderness of 20th century morality, but this is no longer the same Lem, who in the
1960s and 1970s delighted us with the uniqueness of his ideas and with his unique, brilliant literary
style. One can thus say, that Lem in the 1990s was only a meagre shadow of Lem of the 1960s and
1970s and that it would be much better for him not publish such books as Dziury w całym (Holes in
the Whole).

In year 1998, Stanisław Lem received an honorary doctorate from the Jagiellonian University and the
Award of the Banking Culture Foundation of Krzysztof Kieślowski (Bankowa Fundacja Kultury im.
Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego) for promoting Polish culture in the world. In the years 1998–2005, the
Cracow Literary Publishing House (Wydawnictwo Literackie) published the collected works by Lem

9
„Forecasts and warnings” („Prognozy i przestrogi” - about Lem’s columns or feuilletons) in Rzeczpospolita 25
June 1997 (No 146) p. 30.

13
for the third time - this time it has finished the entire series as planned, but it was, unfortunately,
censored by Lem. It is consisting of 33 volumes, edited and with an afterword by Jerzy Jarzębski for
each volume.

In year 1999, Poland made a huge mistake as it has joined the NATO and in the same year Stanisław
Lem received in Cracow an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian Danylo Halytsky National Medical
University in Lvov (Львiвський Національний Медичний Унiверситет iм. Данила Галицького)
Lvov State Medical University. In the same year 1999, Lem wrote a letter to the Polish authorities in
protest against the war in Chechnya, thus taking the side of Islamic terrorists, supported this time by
the West and mainly by the modern evil empire, that is, the United States of America.

Jerzy Turowicz (editor-in-chief of catholic weekly) and Stanisław Lem, after Lem received 20th
September 1996 the Order of the White Eagle
Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Karolczyk

14
Stanisław Lem on 20th September 1996 with the Order of the White Eagle
Source: Photograph taken by Krzysztof Wójcik

15
Stanisław Lem (on the left) receives on 8th December 1997 honorary doctorate from Opole University
(Uniwersytet Opolski)
In the background there is the vice-chancellor prof. Stanisław Nicieja and on the right prof. Wiesław
Łukaszewski, who officially promoted Lem to this honorary degree
Source: Author’s archive

Stanisław Lem (on the right) receives on in 1999 in Cracow honorary doctorate from Danylo Halytsky
National Medical University in Lvov (Львiвський Національний Медичний Унiверситет iм.
Данила Галицького)
Source: Agencja Gazeta

16
Stanisław Lem in library of his house in Cracow-Kliny in year 1997
Source: Photograph taken by Danuta Węgiel

17
 Stanisław Lem in year 1998 front of his second home (residence) in Kliny (suburb of Cracow)
Source: Photograph taken by Danuta Węgiel

Second house (residence) of Stanisław Lem located at 66 Narwik Street in Kliny district (suburb) of
Cracow (1990s)
Source: Pavel Weigel Stanisław Lem - Životopis (Stanisław Lem - Biography) Praha: Magnet Press, 1995

18
 Stanisław Lem in his residence in Cracow-Kliny in year 1999
Source: Photograph taken by Jagna Malejka - Postscriptum No 1(51) of 2006

Stanisław Lem in his residence in Cracow-Kliny in year 1999

Source: Photograph taken by Elżbieta Lempp

19
 Lube czasy (The Pleasant Times) and Dziury w całym (Holes in the Whole)

Covers of Stanisław Lem Dziury w całym (Holes in the Whole) and Lube czasy (The Pleasant
Times) Kraków: Znak 1997 and 1995
Cover artist Wojciech Kołyszko
These two books10 are collections of essays similar to the earlier volumes such as Wejście na orbitę
(1962, Getting Into Orbit) and Rozprawy i szkice (1975, Essays and Sketches). Contrary to Lem’s
earlier volumes of this type, Lube czasy and Dziury w całym appear as very pessimistic. Lem writes
there about things that are predictable, but in fact, Lem doesn’t want them to happen. He is simply
frightened by the aggressive tendency not only of governments, but also of ordinary “decent” people.
He is also concerned about the spread of violence on television, in, movies on the Internet and
especially in the real life.

These fears of Lem can be explained by the socio-political situation in Poland in the 1990s, i.e. after
the fall of the authoritarian regime. In the “communist” Poland, the ruling Bolshevik (Leninist type)
party and the government, at least to some extent, “terrorized” all citizens, including actual and
potential violent criminals, and therefore this nominally communist Poland was almost free from
violent crime, and was therefore generally a safe country to live in, even for political opponents of the
then ruling regime 11 . However, after the collapse of the last “communist” government of Prime
Minister Rakowski, the police faced a serious identity crisis under successive weak, strongly
corrupted, infiltrated by organised crime (i.e. the gangs) and unprofessional post-Solidarity cabinets.
This crisis, along with the relaxation of criminal law and drastically reduced funding of virtually all

10 The both volumes were edited by Tomasz Fiałkowski. As I noted before, the essays contained therein were
previously published under the common title “The World According to Lem” („Świat według Lema”) in the
nominally progressive and nominally Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny in the years 1994-1995 (The
Pleasant Times) and 1995-1997 (Holes in the Whole).
11 Among the leading dissidents of the time, only one (roman-catholic priest Popiełuszko) was murdered and it
should not be forgotten that his murder was a provocation directed against General Jaruzelski and his Minister of
the Interior, General Kiszczak, whom the hardliners, orthodox communists from the SB (state security services)
considered , somehow correctly, as being “too soft” and even “dangerous reformers”.

20
law enforcement agencies12, made Poland then a paradise for criminals - small, medium and especially
large13.

Dedication received by author of this works from Stanisław Lem on a copy of his book Dziury w
całym, which Lem sent me to Australia, when I had not yet become his adversary - at least in his
(mis)understanding

The other problems Lem touched upon throughout in Lube czasy and Dziury w całym are, as I noted
before, practically the same ones he mentioned earlier in such works as The Dialogues and Summa
Technologiae: an explosion of information, chaos in culture (in the narrow and broad sense of the
word “culture”), constantly accelerating scientific and technological progress in the face of falling real
wages, and thus lowering the standard of living of ordinary people, especially in rich Western
countries, which together constitute this “future and cultural shock”. Did Lem provide us with any
ready-made answers? All I can say is that it would be really naïve to expect such answers. What Lem
was really saying was that “there is no such catastrophe that cannot (in the long run - LK) be tolerated
by the people”. However, Lem was somewhat a kind of an optimist until the late 1990s, so these books
are not as pessimistic as they seem to be when we read them first time14, for Lem had then quite naïve
hope that people will be able to understand not only present but also future threats and that there is still
hope that we will overcome future dangers by better understanding their nature.
There is no doubt that Lube czasy and Dziury w całym are typical political works. These are the
books written entirely in Poland free from preventive censorship, so the author did not have to try to

12 These were the key elements of the Balcerowicz (or rather Sachs) plan - austerity measures imposed on Poland
by the World Bank and the IMF and overly enthusiastically accepted by the ruling elite of the “Solidarity” with
Lech Wałęsa, incidentally, an agent codename “Bolek” of the SB (secret politcal police), at the head.
13 Although Poland was even then a much safer place to live than the large cities of America or the former Soviet
Union, Poland, and especially Warsaw, was a much more dangerous place to live in the 1990s and early 2000s than
it was in the 1950s to 1970s, and even in the 1980s, which were from the pint of material living conditions so
difficult times for the inhabits of Poland.
14 The pessimistic nature of Dziury w całym was emphasized by such reviewers as, for example Jan Błoński and
Jerzy Jarzębski (see the back cover of this book).

21
outsmart the censors, so he could concentrate only on the topic itself. Unfortunately, this did not help
to create better works than his earlier political writings, because Lube czasy and Dziury w całym
were written by another, much older and much more bitter and above all less and less brilliant Lem. It
is also striking and very unusual that the Catholic weekly magazine regularly published controversial
essays written by an ardent atheist, for whom its editors deserve a lot of recognition (especially the
deceased long-time former editor-in-chief of this magazine, i.e. Jerzy Turowicz). It should also be
remembered that the better known face of the Catholic Church in Poland at the turn of the 1990s until
today (2021) is the fanatical and intolerant Radio Maryja (Radio St. Mary), pedophile priests and their
protectors: bishops, cardinals and even the late pope of Polish-Jewish Ukrainian origin15.

It is also well known that extremist and extremely intolerant political line of Redemptorist Tadeusz
Rydzyk16, the head of Radio Maryja is a source of shame even for the very conservative, if not even
backward, Polish episcopate, and especially for the Vatican. However, this is not only a typical Polish
phenomenon, as due to the general crisis of capitalism, the far-right is now more and more popular in
France (Mme Le Pen and her National Rally - Rassemblement national), Germany (Alternative for
Germany - Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), Austria (The Freedom Party of Austria - Freiheitliche
Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) and even Sweden (Swedish Democrats - Sverigedemokraterna, SD), not to
mention already about such “post-communist” countries as Latvia or Hungary, and especially Ukraine,
with its cult of the anti-Polish and strongly anti-Semitic fascist terrorist Stepan Bandera (Степан
Бандера). He was a Ukrainian radical politician and theorist of the militant wing (The Ukrainian

15
Ukrainian daily Day (День) wrote shortly after death of Karol Wojtyła i.e. Roman-Catholic pope John Paul II
that the inhabitants of Lvov “feel an almost family relationship with the pope because Karol Wojtyła’s mother
Emilia came from the Ukrainian Kaczorowski family”. Also the death certificate of Feliks Kaczorowski,
Emilia’s father and Karol Wotyła’s grandfather, who died in year 1908 in Cracow, was written in Ukrainian, not
Polish. Karol Wojtyła had also Jewish roots after his mother Emilia, as her father Feliks Kaczorowski, when he
came from the Zamość region to Galicia, married Maria Scholz, born in Biała, daughter of Jan Scholz, a
shoemaker from Biała, and Zuzanna née Rubicka. According to Milena Kindziuk (see below), in one of the latest
Italian publication on Nazism there was also an opinion that during World War II Karol Wojtyła was under the
close observation of SS, because he was, as they knew, the son of a Jewish woman who was actually called
Emilia Katz, and changed her name to Kaczorowska. Yaakov Wise, a Jewish historian based in Manchester,
claims that Pope John Paul II was of Jewish origin. Wise, Jewish researcher of history and philosophy, became
interested in the origins of Karol Wojtyła as a result of observing photos of Karol Wojtyła’s mother, Emilia
Kaczorowska. Wise showed her photos to several people, without telling whose picture it is, and every one of his
interlocutors said that the person in the photo looked Jewish. He also claims that Emilia Kaczorowska is Emily
Katz in English, and Katz is a popular surname for Eastern European Jews - Milena Kindziuk Matka papieża
(Pope’s Mother) Kraków: Znak, 2013 and of the same author “Biased media coverage of the descent of Emilia
Wojtyła, mother of John Paul II” Kultura – Media – Teologia No 32 of 2018 pp. 114–129.
16
He was born out of wedlock to his mother, the widowed Mrs. Rydzyk, and her boyfriend Bronisław
Kordaszewski and spent his childhood in Olkusz. Poland He studied at the Higher Spiritual Seminary of
Redemptorists in Tuchów, and later at the Catholic Theology Academy in Warsaw. He was ordained a priest in
1971 and taught religion in Toruń, Szczecinek and Kraków. In 1986 Rydzyk left for West Germany where he
was involved with a radio station Radio Maria International in Balderschwang, later closed by the Catholic
Church authorities for moving away from Catholic doctrine. In July 2009 Rydzyk made a racist comment
towards a black missionary, father Michał who holds Polish citizenship and speaks fluent Polish. Michał was
introduced to the stage by Rydzyk with these words ‘Dear, there is a Negro. My God, you did not bathe. Come
here brother. He did not bathe at all. Look everyone’
(https://wiadomosci.dziennik.pl/polityka/artykuly/155092,rydzyk-o-czarnoskorym-on-sie-chyba-nie-myl.html as
on 13-06-2021). In February 2011, Rydzyk was fined PLN 3500 after the local district court in Toruń found that
he broke the law by using Radio Maryja to call for donations to TV Trwam, the University of Social and Media
Culture and the geothermal drilling conducted by the Lux Veritatis Foundation (“O. Tadeusz Rydzyk ukarany za
nielegalną zbiórkę” Wirtualna Polska as on 03-06- 2011). In June 2011, while meeting members of the European
Parliament, he called Poland “an uncivilized country” and “a totalitarian regime”, and claimed that it was not
ruled by Poles. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested against these statements and sent a diplomatic
note to the Holy See, to which Catholic religious orders, including the Redemptorists, are subject
(https://www.msz.gov.pl/Nota,dyplomatyczna,w,sprawie,wypowiedzi,ojca,Rydzyka,43881.html as on 13-06-
2021). In 2006, the US-based Jewish Anti-Defamation League accused Rydzyk and his Radio Maryja radio
station of antisemitism (https://www.adl.org/blog/radio-maryja-25-years-of-anti-semitism as on 03-06- 2011).

22
Insurgent Army - Українська повстанська армія, UPA) of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN) and a leader and ideologist of Ukrainian ultranationalists known for his
involvement in terrorist activities. Together with his followers, he was responsible for the massacres of
Polish civilians in Volhynia and for the Holocaust in Ukraine (Wikipedia). Nonetheless, Ukrainian
parliament awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine - “Указ Президента Украины
№ 46/2010: О присвоении С.Бандере звания Герой Украины” (“Decree of the President of Ukraine
No 46/2010: On awarding S. Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine”) as on 22-01- 2010.

Sex Wars

Cover of Stanisław Lem Sex Wars Warszawa: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza „Nova”, 1996
Cover artist Małgorzata Śliwińska
It is a book very similar to Lube czasy and Dziury w całym. It was published between these two
books. In the introduction to Sex Wars17, Lem explains, in a rather chaotic way, the method by which

17 Also in Sex Wars - Dzieła (Works) volume XIX Warszawa: Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2009. This second
volume contains also „Rozważania sylwiczne” („Silva rerum”). The title of this book is an obvious allusion to the
program of “Star Wars” (The Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI), officially invented by not too bright US puppet
President Ronald Reagan. That program was later dumped but was partially resurrected by the Clinton
administration and by G.W. Bush. It could potentially contribute to a new arms race, especially since some of its
elements (radars and missiles) were to be located in Poland and the Czech Republic, i.e. very close to the borders of
Russia. Anyway, SDI officially ended in 1993, when the Clinton Administration redirected the efforts towards
theatre ballistic missiles and renamed the SDI agency the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO).

23
this collection was arranged, as from an early age he was interested not only in almost everything18,
but also in everything at the same time19. Since Lem’s essays in the Sex Wars volume were originally
published in the Odra monthly under the title „Rozważania sylwiczne” („Silva rerum”), one could say
that the title of Sex Wars should be Silva Rerum (The Forest of Things). Note that „Rozważania
sylwiczne” I analyse at the end of this chapter.

According to Lem, Sex Wars is, at least for the most part of this volume, a continuation of Summa
Technologiae - a book that he wrote between 1962 and 1963 and was first printed in 1964. Sex Wars
can also be considered as not very successful continuation of even earlier Dialogues (written in 1953–
1954 and first published in 1957). Since the essays collected in the Sex Wars volume were written by
a much older, and therefore more mature Lem, they are much less optimistic than the writings of the
young, enthusiastic Lem. However, they are not completely pessimistic, as Lem dreams in them of “a
different humanity”20 , that is, one that would suit him better than the real one.

The first essay in this volume is entitled “Sex wars, or the world and Poland” („Sex wars, czyli świat i
Polska”). It analyses the population explosion and its consequences for our world. Lem is, as before,
very critical when he examines the official position of the organized Church, especially the Roman
Catholic Church, which, being a slave to its medieval irrational doctrine, strongly opposes any
measures to limit population growth21. It is, of course, very irresponsible approach on behalf of the so-
called free world to population explosion, as it must lead, according to Lem, to nightmarish “sex wars”
that will become the only practical way to control this population explosion. This explosion will
quickly consume all available natural resources, and thus will result in a shortage of not only oil, coal,
gas and water, but also clean air. This is a very unfortunate situation that we can observe (so far) on a
relatively small scale in some countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America22.

The rest of this volume contains a rather cursory analysis of topics such as “who made us”,
considerations on the ethics of evil, and futurology. There is also no doubt, then, that Sex Wars is a
political book - not only because it is about wars, which are by definition a continuation and extension
of politics, but also because Lem covers here other political topics, such as mainly the consequences of
unlimited population growth, stupidity (mainly of professional politicians and clergymen) as the
engine of history, or place of Poland in the future world. What is quite original here is that Lem
considers those “sex wars” less evil than a planet divided into a Third World, dying of air, water, and
earth pollution, and well-guarded glass domes covering small “islands” - remnants of former rich First
World i.e. the so-called West23. Everything Lem writes here is generally true, but it is also true that,
Lem repeats here only what he wrote earlier in Dialogues and Summa and what he later read in
popular science magazines, such as Scientific American. It should be noted that his claims that he
could not live without scientific literature is only one of his tricks 24 , because for Lem, scientific
literature was popular science magazines such as above mentioned Scientific American.

18 Cf. Wysoki Zamek Warszawa: Wydawnictwo MON, 1966.

19 Cf. Sex wars Warszawa: Nowa, 1996 p. 5.
20 Ibid. p. 5.
21 As, for example, in the speech in Brazil in October 1997 by, intellectually rather limited, Pope John Paul II. He
reaffirmed then his strong dogmatic and completely irrational opposition to even very modest attempts to give
Brazilian women a little more control over their fertility and their bodies in general.
22 For example, fires launched in Indonesia in order to increase the acreage of agricultural land have caused air
pollution not only in Indonesia but also in neighbouring countries, such as Malaysia and Singapore. The air
pollution caused by these fires will undoubtedly have not only short-term but also very serious long-term
consequences for the entire region and even beyond, such as for example for Southeast Asia, which region is now
the fastest growing part of the world, partly because of the current economic crisis on the so-called The West,
which has been there in existence since the 1970s. The 2019 fires of the Amazon jungle were also leading to an
ecological catastrophe on a global scale.
23
As in such well known SF movies as Zardoz (1974) or Elysium (2013).
24
According to Franz Rottensteiner, although Lem’s achievements in science fiction were enormous, he wanted
to appear greater than he really was - “Der Mann, der den Schatten scheuerte” (“The man who scrubbed the

24
 Zagadka. Opowiadania - The Riddle. Stories

Covers of volume 1 and 2 of Zagadka. Opowiadania (The Riddle. Stories) Warszawa: Interart, 1996
Cover artist Roman Kirilenko
It is a collection of SF stories by Stanisław Lem. It was first published in two volumes by the Warsaw
Interart publishing house in 1996 as the 12th item in the unfinished series of “Stanisław Lem Works”
(edited by Jerzy Jarzębski). Under this tile were collected the stories that did not qualify for any of the
existing cycles (e.g. Star Diaries, The Cyberiad, Pilot Pirx etc.), with exception of socrealistic
stories, mostly from Sezam (Sesame). As earlier Pożytek ze smoka (Utility of the Dragon) it
contains stories from volumes such as Niezwyciężony (The Invincible), Maska (The Mask),
Inwazja z Aldebarana (Invasion from the Aldebaran) and Księga robotów (Book of Robots). It
also contains the title story, “Zagadka” (“The Riddle”) from slightly earlier Pożytek ze smoka (Utility
of the Dragon) and for the first time “Materac” (“The Mattress”)25.

shadow”) - www.vice.com/de/article/yve755/der-mann-der-den-schatten-scheuerte-0000298-v8n9 - (accessed on

03-07-2019).
25
“Materac” (“The Mattress”) was originally published in German (translated by Friedrich Griese) as „Die
Blaurote Luftmatratze“ (“The blue-red air mattress“) in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin No 30 of 28 July 1995.

25
 Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju (Secret of the Chinese Room) and Bomba megabitowa (Megabyte
Bomb)

Covers of Stanisław Lem Bomba megabitowa (Megabyte Bomb) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
1999 and Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju (Secret of the Chinese Room) Kraków: Universitas, 1996
Cover artists Tomasz Lec (Bomba megabitowa) and Jacek Szczerbiński (Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju)

These are the subsequent books that Lem has published in the late 1990s. They contain essays
originally published in the (defunct for quite long ) Polish edition of PC Magazine26. Similarly to the
previously published Sex Wars (and to some extent Lube czasy and Dziury w całym), these volumes
can also be considered as a rather successful continuation of The Dialogues and Summa
Technologiae. In Secret of the Chinese Room and its continuation i.e. the Megabyte Bomb, Lem
analyses topics such as the boundaries between humans and machines, the secrets of the human brain,
the “spirit” in the machine, natural evolution, the language of the genetic code of life, and finally the
differences between the thinking of machines and thinking of natural creatures (mostly humans).

The Secret of the Chinese Room begins with an introduction by Jerzy Jarzębski, entitled “Reason of
Evolution and the Evolution of Reason” („Rozum ewolucji i ewolucja rozumu”). This title, as
Jarzębski clearly states, is his tribute to Lem, who earlier, in his better years, published an essay
entitled “The Ethics of Technology and the Technology of Ethics” in the Studia Filozoficzne
(Philosophical Studies)27. In this introduction most interesting seems to be the differences between the
Secret of the Chinese Room and Summa, which is more than thirty years older. According to
Jarzębski, the most important differences are:
1. Summa was created almost in a vacuum, while the Secret was created in a well-developed space
where there are plenty of experts and experiments, and some of Lem’s earlier ideas found (at least
according to Jarzębski) practical applications;
2. Ethics plays a much more important role in the Secret than in Summa;
3. The Secret is much less enthusiastic than the earlier Summa, because Lem was concerned that the
so-called human nature leads to the use of every invention to promote evil instead of good and
4. In the Secret, Lem was fascinated by biology and natural evolution, while in Summa he was more
fascinated by physics, astronomy and technological progress.

26
Details in w Lech Keller Visions of the Future in the Writings of Stanislaw Lem Vol. 2 „Annotated and
Cross-Referenced Primary and Secondary Bibliography of Stanislaw Lem” Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert
Academic Publishing, 2010.
27
No3 (50) of 1967.

26
 Stanisław Lem’s autograph on a copy of his book Secret of the Chinese Room (1996), which I
received from him during a visit to his home in Cracow’s Kliny in the summer of 1996

Does this mean that Lem gave up then the optimism so common in Summa Technologiae?
Jarzębski’s answer is - “not necessarily”. He points out that Lem does not blame the technology, but
the people who misuse it. So it can be said that for Jarzębski, the most important difference between
Summa and the Secret is that in the first book Lemie describes an ideal world where new
technologies are used only for the general good, while in the second, he describes a more real world
where the real people use the real technology that is available. Since the real people are far from being
the angels, the result is that no technology is safe from potential abuse, and the most likely application
of any new invention is always for military purposes and in the organs of state coercion. On the other
hand, Jarzębski notes that the overall impression after reading the Secret is not a negative despair, but
a sense of hope that people are flexible enough to survive this abuse of technology as well as
environmental degradation. This could be compared to the way in which the peoples of Central and
Eastern Europe survived two world wars, the Nazi and Communist dictatorships, and (at least
according to Jarzębski) are somehow coping with the recent transformation from one-party states and
centralized (“planned”) economies to the current (year 2021) malfunctioning market (or rather
monopolist) capitalism and faulty, representative bourgeois (“liberal”) democracy - in reality
plutocracy.

In the Megabyte Bomb, Lem wrote the following words28:

Another problem, who knows if not the worst, is the fact that the Internet opens the gates - as a land
entwined with an electronic network devoid of control and command centres - of all activity - and
therefore vicious and even criminal. Mafias, camorras, gangs, gangsters, crooks and “impostors” of all
sorts gain entry into the information arena on a par with potential Einsteins. In the same issue of Der
Spiegel, which includes my dark Internet horoscopes, there is an article about computer crime, about

28
Stanisław Lem Bomba megabitowa Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1999 p. 11 - chapter „Ryzyko
internetu” („The risk of Internet”).

27
 computer vices, from which I will only provide headlines. “Every eight and a half months, as experts
believe, the number of computer viruses doubles. New sabotage programs are defeating electronic
defence. Since the emergence of ‘macro viruses’ that exploit security flaws in modern text-processing
programs, even the exchange of digital (numerical) documents has become dangerous”. It is not “only”
about counterfeiting credit cards, about losses of the billions of dollars, and hidden by many banks
because such news can scare the ordinary customers. The point is that “macro” viruses can already
pretend to be “anything”: so - for example - a program designed to clean our computers and/or the
network of “ordinary” viruses. Although it cleans it, it introduces new viruses in place of those removed
at the same time, which, thanks to the omnipresence of network connections, dissolve “everywhere” and
can infect other computers.

One can see here how easily Lem made then some quite elementary mistakes, resulting from his almost complete
ignorance of the architecture and software of real computers. Simply putting it: a macro virus is a computer virus
that runs in the same way as regular macros in the environment of another program, usually one from the
Microsoft Office package. However, these macro viruses are much less dangerous than ordinary “micro” viruses,
as they attack not executable files (i.e. the programs), but only files containing macro definitions - usually text
files, and moreover, from the 2000 version of the Office suite, that is, from 7th June 1999, it is possible to inform
the user of the existence of macros “as such” before running them. So Lem, being in practice a complete layman
when it comes to the real computers, got easily confused by taking the “macro” viruses to be more dangerous
than pre-existing “micro” viruses, although in reality these “macro” viruses are much less harmful than the
“micro” viruses. Finally, this Lem’s adventure with macro viruses proves that even a genius can also be wrong,
especially when, like Lem, is in the decline of his intellectual powers and goes beyond the area of his
competence.

28
 Peter Swirski (ed.) A Stanislaw Lem Reader

Cover of Peter Swirski (ed.) A Stanislaw Lem Reader Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 199729
Cover artist unknown
This volume contains:
1. Introduction by Peter Swirski “Stanislaw Lem. A Stranger in a Strange Land”.
2. Interviews with Lem:
a. Personal interview conducted in June 1992: “Reflections on Literature, Philosophy and
Science”,
b. Written interview conducted in July 1994: “Lem in a Nutshell”.
3. Lem’s essay “Thirty Years Later” written in May 1991.
4. Stanislaw Lem: Bibliography.
Swirski’s introduction “Stanislaw Lem. A Stranger in a Strange Land” is strangely similar to
Ziegfeld’s introduction “The Marginal Man” to his book Stanislaw Lem30, with a main difference that
Swirski’s essay is written in a very difficult, pseudo-scientific jargon, and thus is much less readable
than the earlier introduction by Ziegfeld. In his essay Swirski starts with almost irrelevant
introduction, and then briefly reviews Lem’s works (mostly SF).
The 1992 interview is about literature in general, Jerzy Kosiński’s pornographic, racist and anti-Polish
novel Malowany ptak (The Painted Bird)31, this novels historical inaccuracies; political satire of

29
In series „Rethinking Theory“, series general editor Gary Saul Morson. Świrski has dedicated his book to
“Stanisław Lem and Paisley Livingston”.
30
New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985.
31
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. It is a novel by Jerzy Kosiński (born in Łódź, Poland in 1933 as Józef
Lewinkopf) that describes World War II as seen by a boy, considered a “Gypsy or Jewish stray” wandering
about small villages scattered around an unspecified, but very similar to Poland country in Central and Eastern

29
Huxley and the Strugatskys; sociology, game theory, Lem’s non-SF works, search for the unknown in
Lem’s SF, extraterrestrial intelligence (ET), Lem’s critics, virtual reality (VR), philosophy, religion
and Lem’s personal predilections.
The 1994 interview consists of Lem’s written responses to various questions on his thought and
writings. The discussed subjects are: relationships between fiction and real world, predictive elements
in Lem’s fiction and non-fiction, Lem’s „philosophy of the future‟, ethics, artificial intelligence (AI),
mathematics, physics, mathematics, biology and current crisis of science in Poland.
Lem’s essay “Thirty Years Later” was originally published in Polish as “Trzydzieści lat później” in
Wiedza i Życie No 6 of June 1991, translated to German by Friedrich Griese as „Dreißig Jahre später”
and published in collection Die Vergangenheit der Zukunft (The Past of the Future) 32 . It is
primarily devoted to examining the accuracy of Lem’s Summa technologiae (1964).

Europe. The story was originally described by Kosiński as autobiographical, but upon its publication by
Houghton Mifflin he announced that it was a purely fictional account. It was accused of being an anti-Polish
story that slandered the people of Kosiński’s homeland. According to John Pistelli (“Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted
Bird” - https://johnpistelli.com/2018/08/01/jerzy-kosinski-the-painted-bird, posted on 01-08-2018, accessed on
27-05-2021) “the novel’s briskly-narrated phantasmagoria indulges an aestheticization of violence to the point of
pornography. The regaining of voice at the conclusion even recalls the pornographer’s old alibi of having told a
moral tale, while Kosiński’s deeper account of individualism, in keeping with the boy’s admiration for the Nazi
officer and later for Stalin, involves the right of the strong to re-order the world at will according to their own
aesthetic designs, precisely the game Kosinski played with history when he passed this off as his
autobiography”. Kosiński eventually committed suicide on 3rd May 1991.
32
Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1992.

30
A postcard with a drawing by Daniel Mróz, published in 1999, advertising “Dzieła Zebrane”
(“Collected Works”) by Stanisław Lem

31
 LEM IN 21ST CENTURY

Stanisław Lem said in year 2001 in an interview with Stanisław Bereś that Ms Olga Tokarczuk, quite
recent (year 2018) Nobel Prize winner in Literature, offended his mind to such an extent that although
he wanted to write a polemic, but decided that the game was not worth the risk, because he would
have to read her book to the end. Twenty years later, a quote from the book by Bereś Tako rzecze…
Lem33 become a hit on social media, because of the recent anti-Polish pronouncements by the Nobel
Prize Laureate34, so I quote Lem’s words verbatim35:
Recently, I read a book by Tokarczuk about “Lalka”36. This is not only gobbledegook, but also evidence
that the author has studied psychology in the past centuries. “Lalka” is a beautiful book about love that
has so much in common with the “Hymn of the Pearl” that Izabela Łęcka (heroine of Lalka - LK)
37

could wear a string of pearls. I don’t see any other relationships. This book irritated me so much that I
have not read more than half of it. I do not exclude that there may be some wisdom in the last pages, but I
doubt it, because it is good for ten-year-old children, but not for me. Tokarczuk offended my mind to such
an extent that I wanted to write a polemic, but I decided that the game was not worth the risk, because I
would have to read her book to the end.

Stanisław Lem and Olga Tokarczuk

Source: https://niezalezna.pl/398203-cytat-ze-stanislawa-lema-hitem-internetu-wybitny-pisarz-nie-byl-
fanem-olgi-tokarczuk (accessed on 12-06-2021)

33
Thus Spake... Lem Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2002.
34
For example giving an interview in which she mentioned Poland alongside Belarus as countries that are taking
advantage of the pandemic to suppress protests. A social media campaign has thus emerged under the hashtag
#OdeślijOldzeKsiążkę (#SendABookBackToOlga) and the author has faced criticism from prominent figures,
including a deputy foreign minister. In this interview Tokarczuk also condemned the “attack on the LGBT
movement” in Poland and criticised the “slow” response of the EU to it.
35
Thus Spake... Lem op. cit. p. 454.
36
It was Tokarczuk’s “Lalka i perła” (“Doll and Pearl”) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001. This book is
about a novel Lalka (The Doll) by Bolesław Prus (1847-1912, real name Aleksander Głowacki). Lalka was
composed for periodical serialization in 1887–1889 and appeared in book form in 1890. The Doll has been
regarded by some, including Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, as the greatest Polish novel. According to Prus
biographer Zygmunt Szweykowski, it may be unique in 19 th century world literature as a comprehensive,
compelling picture of an entire society. While The Doll takes its fortuitous title from a minor episode involving a
stolen toy, readers commonly assume that it refers to the principal female character, the young aristocrat Izabela
Łęcka. Prus had originally intended to name the book Three Generations (Trzy pokolenia). The Doll has been
translated into twenty-eight languages, and has been produced in several film versions and as a television
miniseries.
37
The Hymn of the Pearl (aka Hymn of the Soul, Hymn of the Robe and Glory or Hymn of Judas Thomas
the Apostle) is a passage of the apocryphal Acts of Thomas.

32
 Stanisław Lem and Wiktor Jaźniewicz in year 2000
Courtesy of Wiktor Jaźniewicz

Ewa Lipska and Stanisław Lem at Book Fair in Cracow, year 2003
Source: Author’s archive

33
Stanisław Lem at his home in Cracow-Kliny in July 2005
Source: Photographs taken by Ayano Shibata

34
Stanisław Lem in kitchen (top) and garden (bottom) of his house in Cracow-Kliny in year 2005
Source: Photograph taken by Tomasz Lem

35
 Okamgnienie (The Twinkling of an Eye)

Cover of Stanisław Lema Okamienienie Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000

Cover artist Marek Pawłowski

It is another continuation or addition to his earlier para-scientific treatises, such as The Dialogues
(1957) and Summa Technologiae (1964). Although in the introduction to Okamgnienie Lem wrote
that his numerous references in this book to The Dialogues and Summa are not related to
boastfulness, after reading this volume one has a strong impression that the entire Okamgnienie can
be summarized in one short statement “I told you so more than forty years ago”. This is somehow an
anticlimax, because both The Dialogues and Summa were really good books, well ahead of their
time, but Okamgnienie is just a very poor repetition of them. It must not be forgotten, however, that
both The Dialogues and Summa were written by a relatively young, enthusiastic Lem, who was in
full bloom of his intellect, and that Okamgnienie is the work of a much older, bitter man, reaching the
end of his life path and with an intellect weakening day by day. Anyway, in one of his latest
interviews, Lem admitted that38:
Unfortunately, the mind gets weaker with age. Books written at the end of an author’s life are often weak
and are not reprinted.

This is, perhaps, the most important reason why this book, which the publisher described as “a
confrontation of The Dialogues and Summa with the real situation at the threshold of the 21st
century”, is only a very weak continuation of his earlier, quite innovative, para-scientific treatises.

38 „Łaciaty filozof” (”Whimsical Philosopher”) in Kaleidoscope (Polish Airlines LOT „on the board” magazine)
January 1999 p. 36 (interview by Beata Woźniak). In original: „Niestety, z wiekiem umysł słabnie. Książki pisane u
schyłku życia autora są często słabe i nie wznawia się ich”.

36
Unfortunately, the last sentence of the introduction “I am not going to pose as an omniscient sage, but
for a free writer only” 39 , stands in stark contrast to the content of the book, because the whole
Okamgnienie seems to be written from the position of an omniscient, all knowing, Besserwisser
narrator.

However, the main weakness of Okamgnienie, is not that Lem put himself there in the position of a
Besserwisser (that is, an individual who knows everything better than others), but rather that the
language used in this book is too difficult for its intended audience, especially for readers who are not
scientists, and especially for readers with no higher education in biology or medicine. Lem also
misuses terms such as genotype, genome, or cytoskeleton in this book without trying to explain them
in a simple, plain language. More than thirty years ago, when The Dialogues and Summa were
published, this could be explained by the lack of resources to hire an appropriate scientific editor to
write the suitable appendix or glossary. But now, when on the “free”" market Lem’s books like
Okamgnienie sell for the equivalent of at least about USD 10, it should not be a problem to prepare an
appropriate index, glossary and bibliography. Without a dictionary of scientific terms, Okamgnienie
is unfortunately too difficult to fully understand for a non-scientist reader, and without a proper index
and bibliography, it cannot be classified even as a popular science book.

Another problem with Okamgnienie is Lem’s abuse of Latin terms and phrases, such as, for example,
in medias res (“in the midst of things”), ex nihilo nihil fit (“nothing comes from nothing”) or mundus
vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (“the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived”). After all, one
cannot expect today that even a well-educated Pole (other than a linguist, physician or a better
educated Roman Catholic priest) can understand even a small part of these Latin terms and phrases
used by Lem in Okamgnienie. Good manners and respect for readers simply require that such terms
are followed by a translation into the language of the readers. So it seems that Lem, in his vanity and
contempt for ordinary people, simply wanted to impress the reader, but in doing so, he only showed
his ignorance of the art of writing popular science books and the aforementioned contempt for
ordinary people.

There are also other, and numerous, weaknesses of Okamgnienie. For example: Lem, who wrote
books such as Solaris and His Master’s Voice, uses in Okamgnienie an old, long-obsolete argument
that because we do not receive radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, such civilizations do not
exist. This is an obvious mistake, as Lem should know that electromagnetic waves are not the only
way to transmit information. It only happens that our civilization uses this kind of waves to
communicate over long distances, but other, more advanced civilizations may use other, more
sophisticated means. The catalogue of possibilities is practically infinite: from neutrinos (as in the His
Master’s Voice), through gravitational waves (for the time still being rather hypothetical 40 ) and
39
Okamgnienie Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000 p. 9. In original: „Nie zamierzam kreować się na
wszechwiedzącego mędrca, lecz na tylko wolnego pisarza”.
40
The first indirect evidence for the existence of gravitational waves came from the observed orbital decay of the
Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar, which matched the decay predicted by general relativity as energy is lost to
gravitational radiation. In 1993, Russell A. Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. received the Nobel Prize in
Physics for this discovery. The first direct observation of gravitational waves was not made until 2015, when a
signal generated by the merger of two black holes was received by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors in
Livingston and in Hanford. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was subsequently awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip
Thorne and Barry Barish for their role in the direct detection of gravitational waves. Despite this, there is still
some doubts if, for example, the LIGO experiment really proved the existence of gravitational waves as the
abovementioned observations give only indirect evidence for existence of gravitational waves. A more
conclusive observation would be a direct measurement of the effect of a passing gravitational wave, which could
also provide more information about the system that generated it. However, any such direct detection is
complicated by the extraordinarily small effect the waves would produce on a detector. The amplitude of a
spherical wave will fall off as the inverse of the distance from the source. Thus, even waves from extreme large
systems like merging binary black holes die out to very small amplitudes by the time they reach the Earth. As
gravitational waves are not easily detectable, because when they reach the Earth, they have a very small
amplitude, so an extremely sensitive detector is needed, also because other sources of noise can easily
overwhelm the signal - “Noise and Sensitivity” (Gravitational wave E-book, University of Birmingham_

37
ending with such theoretical possibilities as, for example, subtle changes in the changes in the values
of so-called physical constants, which are too small to be noticed by relatively young civilizations
such as ours, but can be used as information carriers by more advanced civilizations 41. Note that Cixin
Liu, who can be regarded as Lem’s successor in the subgenre of hard SF, in his Remembrance of
Earth’s Past trilogy describes use of gravitational waves to send an interstellar broadcast signal,
which serves as a central plot point in the conflict between civilizations within the galaxy.

Taking all above under consideration, it must be said with great sadness that Lem in Okamgnienie
reminds those nineteenth-century astronomers who searched for so-called channels on Mars as
evidence of existence of a civilization on this planet. It is quite an interesting paradox: Lem, who was
usually in avant-garde and even ahead of his time, stayed at the end of his life even behind the authors
of the Star Trek TV series, so often criticized by him for the apparent “lack of imagination”42.

http://www.gwoptics.org/ebook/sensitivity_noise.php (accessed on 14-06-2021). Gravitational waves are

expected to have very low frequencies: even about 10−16 Hz, meaning wavelength of up to almost
30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km i.e. approximately 32 billion light years, while the diameter of the observable
Universe is now estimated to be 93 billion light years. Moreover, depending on accepted theory of the shape of the
Universe, the whole Universe may be at least 250 times as large as the observable Universe, but this not much
relevant in discussing the length of those, still very much hypothetical, gravitational waves. See, for example Chris
Baraniuk “It took centuries, but we now know the size of the Universe” BBC Earth 13 June 2016
(http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160610-it-took-centuries-but-we-now-know-the-size-of-the-universe accessed
on 14.06.2021).
Note that for electromagnetic waves, extremely low frequency (ELF) is defined as being from 3 to 30 Hz which
gives corresponding wavelengths of 100,000 to 10,000 kilometres, respectively. On the other hand, since
gravitational waves are a ripple in space-time, they cause the distance between two points to change ever so slightly
that LIGO must be able to measure distances as small as 10−19 meter, while the proton has a radius of about 0.85 ×
10−15 meter, or 10,000 times larger.
41 For example, the Planck’s constant “h”. It comes from the fact that energy cannot be radiated in any continuous
amounts, but only in the form of “packages” or quanta with the value hν, where “ν” is the frequency and “h” is this
constant. Other example is the speed of light in a vacuum or “c” (299 792 458 m/s).
42 The Star Trek television series uses the so-called subspace radio, which enables communication “faster than the
speed of light” by sending electromagnetic signals through subspace instead through the ordinary relativistic space -
see Okuda and Mirek Star Trek Encyclopedia New York: Pocket Books, 1994 pp. 325-326. For obvious reasons,
signals emitted through subspace cannot be detected by our current radio receivers.

38
 Dedication received from Stanisław Lem on a copy of his book Okamgnienie (2000), which Lem sent me to
Australia, when I had not yet become his adversary, at least in his understanding

Unfortunately, Okamgnienie is ultimately an even less successful book than Tajemnica chińskiego
pokoju or Bomba megabitowa, not mentioning The Dialogues or Summa. Okamgnienie was,
above all, written in rather difficult to understand language. This book has been poorly edited and
desperately needs a dictionary of scientific terms as well as an appropriate index and bibliography. In
its present form, it will be of use neither to scientists nor laymen. Okamgnienie seems too difficult to
be fully understood by average reader of Lem, and especially for the majority of them who have
finished study of biology in the high school, while for the scientists it is, for obvious reasons, too
superficial and, moreover, practically useless without a proper index and bibliography. So I am afraid
that the only reason this book has been published “as it is” and with so much publicity, is its author’s
name and past fame alone. Unfortunately, It should be said with great sadness that Okamgnienie is
definitely an anticlimax, even compared to other books that Lem wrote in his declining period.

39
 Świat na krawędzi (The World on the Edge)

Covers of Świat na krawędzi - ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Tomasz Fiałkowski (The World
on the Edge. Tomasz Fiałkowski talks with Stanisław Lem) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
2001 (left) and 2007 (right)
Cover artist Tomasz Lec (photograph by Elżbieta Lempp) - left and Marek Pawłowski (photographs by Danuta
Węgiel on the upper part and Elżbieta Lempp on the lower part) - right

This book43 contains a record of interviews with Stanisław Lem, conducted in the last years of the 20th
century by Tomasz Fiałkowski - a progressive catholic journalist from Cracow weekly Tygodnik
Powszechny. Overall, The World on the Edge seems to be more successful than Okamgnienie, but
mainly because it contains important and sometimes interesting elements of Lem’s biography. It is
surprising, however, that this book, which is over 300 pages long, does not contain anything about
Michael Kandel and Franz Rottensteiner - the true architects of Lem’s artistic and financial success in
the West, and that this book also contains nothing about how important for biography of Lem was his
dispute with Dr. Rottensteiner44. It is a pity, because The World on the Edge had a chance to become,
in a way, the second part of the High Castle. The second edition of this book from year 2007 is a bit
better, as it contains interesting photos and a list of names, but (unfortunately) it does not have the
subject index.

43
Świat na krawędzi. Ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Tomasz Fiałkowski (The World on the Edge.
Tomasz Fiałkowski talks with Stanisław Lem) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000. Second, extended
edition in year 2007.
44
Although in the second edition of this book there are photographs from a trip to the Alps that Lem made in the
1970s with Dr. Rottensteiner (e.g. photograph No 25).

40
We also have here a problem with Lem’s language, which too often becomes too colloquial for such
an eminent author in the interviews with Fiałkowski, but on the other hand, Lem uses a language
“bristling” with too many Latin terms, which, unfortunately, are not translated into the Polish
language, and which in turn make this book (like almost all of later works by Lem) accepted as rather
difficult for the majority of his readers, who, as a rule, are not classically educated 45 . There is also the
problem with the poor quality of the translation of some English terms, so perhaps it would be better
not to translate them at all, especially since most of Lem’s readers know English much better than
Latin. Obvious errors are also annoying, such as the one on page 208 of the first edition, where Lem
claims ex cathedra that every British steam locomotive had to be preceded by a person with red flag,
as if the Highway Code had jurisdiction not only over roads, but also over railroads. Elsewhere in this
book Lem makes the fallacy of homogenous future46 when he argues that because current technology
does not allow the colonization of Mars, thus Mars will never be colonized, while in Chapter 12 he
jokes about such futurologists like Herman Kahn because of very similar mistakes made by the latter.
Lem also makes a fallacy of composition 47 , when he criticizes the Internet because he thinks he
receives too many e-mails every day, but forgets that he was not an average person.. In conversations
with Fiałkowski, he often had a habit of presenting Polish reality much worse that it was and at the
same time to brighten up the reality abroad, especially in the United States of America, which he loved
at the time.

The reader of this book may also conclude that Lem does not really understand modern bourgeois
democracy. This can be explained by the fact that Lem lived almost his entire adult life under various
undemocratic, authoritarian regimes: the Sanacja regime before World War II, the Soviet, Nazi and
again Soviet regimes during World War II and the so-called people’s democracy in post-war Poland,
until 1989, with relatively short periods of stay in the so-called West, mainly in the 1980s, during
which he apparently learned nothing, as his mental powers were then in noticeable decline.

It can also be said that Lem in the late years of his life tended to idealize pre-war Poland because of his
generally very happy childhood, so well described in the High Castle, and this erroneous tendency
can also be easily found in the pages of The World on the Edge. On the other hand, Lem had towards
the end of his life a strange taste for harsh criticism not only of Marxism but also of Karl Marx as a
person, which is rather strange for someone who included in his earlier works long lines, paragraphs,
and even entire chapters uncritically praising communism and communists in its extreme, Soviet or
Bolshevik edition, such as in the Astronauts and The Magellan Nebula48. It thus follows that Lem,
posing as an eminent intellectual, was unable to distinguish between the Marxist analysis of early
capitalism, which even today has enormous scientific value, and the daily practice of political parties
that were formally communist but otherwise had very little they are in common with the democratic,
progressive and humanist ideas of Karl Marx49.

Also surprising is Lem’s much stronger criticism of Communists than of the Nazis, although under the
Bolsheviks, Lem could study medicine for free, while under the Nazis, he had to hide his Jewish origin
and work hard for the Nazis as a low-paid manual worker. I am aware of the fact that paradoxically, in
the “communist” Poland, the relatively loose censorship, such as from the late 1950s, somehow forced
Lem to achieve a very high level of formal mastery of the writer’s craft, in order to mislead the
censorship, such as in The Star Diaries and The Cyberiad. Interesting but at the same time repulsive

45
After all, the largest group of Lem’s readers always consisted of engineers and representatives of hard sciences:
physicists, chemists, astronomers, etc.
46
Pp. 189-199 of first edition.
47
It arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true for some part of the
whole. A trivial example might be: “this tire is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle of which it is a part is also
made of rubber”.
48
For example, the chapter “Communists” in The Magellan Nebula or the last two parts of Time not Lost.
49
Almost no one in today’s “free” Poland knows that Karl Marx was an active supporter of Polish independence.
See, for example, his “Preface to the Polish edition” to the Communist Manifesto in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels Selected Works (Dzieła Wybrane) Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1949 volume I pp. 20–23. This
preface was written in London on 10th of February 1892.

41
are Lem’s obvious sexual phobias, especially since he was a physician, at least because of his formal
education. It also appears from these conversations with Fiałkowski that sex was for Lem a purely
mechanical and at mostly physiological process, and that he always saw people (but not himself) as
above all the Monstroteratum Furiosum50 from “The Eighth Journey” of Ijon Tichy.

I also have a serious problem with Lem’s anti-Russian phobias, which prevented him from saying
directly that Chechen and Albanian (Kosovar) terrorists are indeed terrorists, not freedom fighters,
because of their typically terrorist methods. Lem’s strength has always been a long-term forecast and
wise reflection, and definitely not commenting on current events. As an economist, I also see that the
extremely positive assessment by Lem of reforms by Leszek Balcerowicz is based on a very poor
understanding of the functioning of the economy and the fact that Lem belonged to this small minority
of Poles who did not lose, but even benefited from these “reforms”, which basically replaced the
shortage of consumer goods with a shortage of money and jobs, and reintroduced mass
unemployment, widespread poverty and mass emigration from Poland - phenomena that were not
observed in Poland for many decades until these unfortunate “reforms” introduced by Balcerowicz on
behalf of great, Western capital. It can therefore be said that Lem, being a very wealthy man since the
1970s (especially considering the conditions in Poland at the time), was unable to fully understand the
tragedy of unemployment and the tragedy of the unemployed. Lem criticized the absurdities of so-
called real socialism very well, but unfortunately he was in his latest years of life uncritical in his
assessment of primitive real capitalism, restored in Poland in the early 1990s by Balcerowicz and his
“reforms”. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Lem was always right in defending the non-
military use of nuclear energy, which was also evident in his other books, such as The Dilemmas.

Lem also told Fiałkowski during the interviews that were the basis for The World on the Edge that in
year 1943 he stopped working for the Germans and hid for some time, in the attic of his Lvov
apartment, his Jewish colleague, who was an Odman, i.e. he served in the Jewish auxiliary police
(Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) in the Lvov ghetto. It could be thus said that Stanisław Lem was
collaborating during the war with the criminal organization named Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst 51:
It was the forty-first and forty-second year (work for the Germans in Rohstofferfassung - LK), and in the
forty-third I had to fold my sails. For a few days I was hiding a friend in the attic who worked in the
Jewish militia, the Ordnungsdienst. As he went on into the world, I decided it was better to swim from
there, because if they caught him, he might lead them to my trail, which would end rather badly for me.
Then I moved to Zielona Street.
Moreover, Lem incorrectly refers here to the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst as “the militia”. They were
Jewish police units inside ghettos, labor camps and concentration camps. They were subordinate to the
Judenrats collaborating with Nazi Germany, i.e. to the Jewish self-governments. Units and officers of
the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst were used, as I wrote elsewhere, for requisitions, round-ups, escorting
displaced persons and deportation actions, as the Germans usually did not catch their Jewish victims in
the ghetto - they only ordered these round-ups. Odmans provided contingents of their countrymen for
the so-called Umschlagplatz (transhipment yard), only from where the Germans took them to death
camps, e.g. in Oświęcim (Auschwitz-Birkenau), Majdanek, Bełżec or Treblinka.

Bottom line: The World on the Edge is an interesting book, especially for those interested in Lem’s
biography, and definitely better than the previous Okamgnienie (The Twinkling of an Eye).
Contrary to Okamgnienie, in Świat na krawędzi Lem less frequently returns to his previous
achievements, and the first chapters of this book are a real treasury of facts from Lem’s life that
constitute an excellent background for understanding his literary work. This is particularly emphasized
in the second edition by numerous photographs, unfortunately so poorly reproduced. Moreover, and
even more unfortunately, Tomasz Fiałkowski is not Stanisław Bereś, so he was not a real challenge for
Lem, so Fiałkowski was simply unable to ask Lem more interesting and difficult questions, which in
my opinion is the main disadvantage of The World on the Edge.
50
Гнусотник Беснеещ, Odporňouš zuřivák, γνωστός και ως Βρομερή Μύξα, Odurnež zmešani, Vérnősző
Barom, Ignomen Furibundeo albo the Stinking Meemy.
51
Tomasz Fiałkowski Świat na krawędzi (World on the brink) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2007 pp.
46-47.

42
 Apokryfy - Apocrypha

Front and back cover of Stanisław Lem Apokryfy (Apocrypha) Kraków: Znak, 2000
Cover artist Dymitr Szewionkow-Kismiełow
This volume collects under one cover all book reviews that owe their existence solely to the
imagination of the author of Solaris. It contains the texts already discussed in this work and previously
published in Doskonała próżnia (Perfect Vacuum), Wielkość urojona (Imaginary Magnitude),
Prowokacja (Provocation) and Biblioteka XXI wieku (One Human Minute). They are mostly, but
not only, literary games, similar to reviews of non-existent books written by Umberto Eco or Jorge L.
Borges. While “reviewing”, Lem “wrote” in his Apocrypha farsighted works about the condition of
humanity in the 21st century (Perfect Vacuum, Imaginary Magnitude) or about the place of death in
the Western culture (Provocation, One Human Minute).

43
 Dyktanda - Dictations

Cover of Stanisław Lem Dyktanda czyli... w jaki sposób wujek Staszek wówczas Michasia – dziś
Michała – uczył pisać bez błędów (Dictations or... how Uncle Staszek taught then Michaś - today
Michał - to write without errors) Kraków: Przedsięwzięcie Galicja, 2001
Cover by Grupa 99$

It is simply a short collection of quite trivial and sometimes even graphomaniac dictations by Lem,
written in 1970 and intended for his nephew Michał Zych. It is a low-quality publication intended for a
fairly small group of readers who are particularly interested in Lem as a person, so I better not go into
more detail about this book here. However, it is worth mentioning that prof. Wojciech Kajtoch from
the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, a press expert and strugackologist, made an extremely detailed
and scientific analysis of this marginal work by Stanisław Lem52 , using in his work almost all known
methods of discourse analysis: school-didactic, historical, and based on literary theory as well as other
methods known in the field of so-called corpus linguistics, As a result, this analysis probably reached a
much greater number of words than those contained in these, after all, banal and sometimes even
graphomaniac, Lem’s Dictations. More on this subject in chapter 7 - Part II “The Gierek years (1970-
1980)”, as those texts were created in the 1970s.

52
„Prolegomena do ‘Dyktand’ Stanisława Lema” (“Prolegomena to Stanisław Lem’s Dictations”) in his Osiem
szkiców o dziełach kultury popularnej, dawnych i współczesnych (Eight Sketches on the Works of Popular
Culture, Past and Contemporary) Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 2019.

44
 Stanisław Lem and Michał Zych in Lem’s house in Cracow-Kliny, year 1992
Source: Lem.pl

Stanisław Lem and Michał Zych in Empik book shop in Cracow, year unknown
Source: Author’s archive

45
In year 2002, during the Polcon (the largest nationwide rally of SF and fantasy fans) Stanisław Lem
refused to come to the Cracow building of the Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science at
the AGH University of Science and Technology53 to meet fans of his prose. The latter were told an
unusual reason for this refusal: Lem declared himself a philosopher, not a writer. Obviously, it was an
act of gross self-overestimation, a case of illusions of grandeur, one of grandiose delusions, also
known as delusions of grandeur or expansive delusions54. They are a subtype of delusion that occur in
patients suffering from a wide range of psychiatric diseases, including two-thirds of patients in manic
state of bipolar disorder, half of those with schizophrenia, patients with the grandiose subtype of
delusional disorder, and a substantial portion of those with substance abuse disorders, according to
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 55. Grandiose delusions are characterized by
fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent, wealthy, or otherwise very powerful. These
delusions are generally fantastic and typically have a religious, science fictional (sic), or supernatural
theme. Unfortunately, there is a relative lack of research into grandiose delusions, in contrast to
persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations, while about 10% of healthy people experience
grandiose thoughts but do not meet full criteria for a diagnosis of grandiose delusions56.

As I already wrote in chapter 7, Stanisław Lem despised the vast majority of his readers, considering
himself a scientist cum philosopher, even though he was only amateur philosopher and, at the end of
his life, even a somewhat boring and all too often overly know-all (Alleswisser, Besserwisser) writer57:
I would like to discuss with the Academies, and they invite me to evenings with young people from
economic and railway secondary technical colleges.

And yet, as I also wrote in chapter 7, on 18th of December 1964, a discussion on Lem’s Summa
Technologiae took place in the editorial office of Studia Filozoficzne (Philosophical Studies), in
which took part Józef Hurwic, Wacław Mejbaum, Helena Eilstein (aka Nelly Pośpieszalska), Andrzej
Bednarczyk, Władysław Krajewski and Stanisław Lem. The topic of this discussion was the
ontological, gnoseological and anthropological problems related to this book written by Lem. An
extensive record of this discussion appeared in Studia Filozoficzne No 2 (41) as „Summa technologiae.
Wprowadzenie do dyskusji” (“Summa Technologiae. Introduction to the discussion”) and No 3 (42) of
1965 as „Summa technologiae. Posłowie do dyskusji” (“Summa Technologiae. Afterword to the
discussion”). In addition, in 1972, Anna Milska, in her monograph on Polish writers from 1890-197058,
included an extensive, multi-page note about Lem, which proves that his complaints about the fact that
he was ignored by the “mainstream” literary criticism were without any foundation.

53
Proper translation would be Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, as the Polish name is Akademia Górniczo-
Hutnicza.
54
Ray Corsini The Dictionary of Psychology Milton Park (Oxfordshire): Taylor & Francis, 2016. p. 985.
55
(DSM-IV-TR) Fourth edition Text Revision, American Psychiatric Association, 2000.
56
Rebecca Knowles, Simon McCarthy-Jones and Georgina Rowse “Grandiose delusions: A review and
theoretical integration of cognitive and affective perspectives” Clinical Psychology Review No 31 (4) of 2011 pp.
684–696.
57
Lem’s letter to Mrożek of 29th October 1964 - Stanisław Lem i Sławomir Mrożek Listy (Letters) Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2011 p. 359. However, this fragment was removed without mentioning the censorship
interference by Jerzy Jarzębski and Tomasz Lem, but Wojciech Orliński in Lem. Życie nie z tej ziemi op. cit.
quotes it on page 247 - unfortunately, like always Orliński, without mentioning the source.
58
Pisarze polscy. Wybór sylwetek 1890-1970 (Polish writers 1890-1970) Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy
CRZZ, 1972 pp. 376-382.

46
 Collin Knopp-Schwyn - an artistic interpretation of grandiose delusions featuring a housecat and the
reflection of a lion
According to Kukulak59, at the turn of the millennium, Lem was not the only one Polish writer who
thought of himself in this way. Kukulak refers to the interview that Lem gave in his home in Kliny to
Grzegorz Miecugow two years later ant which was, according to Kukulak, symptomatic in this respect:
the first question (after the initial question about atheism to which Lem replied with one word)
concerned the beginning of the universe; the second - evolution with its randomness; the third - the
modest technical potential of homo sapiens, the fourth - the pace of civilization development, etc .;
literature questions - none60. This is according to Kukulak not surprising especially in light of the fact
that Lem has not been writing fiction anymore since the fall of communism, and for the last two

59
Szymon Piotr Kukulak „Operacja ‘Spinacz’. Ucieczka Stanisława Lema z domeny literatury i kto w niej
pomagał (“Operation ‘Paperclip’. Stanisław Lem’s escape from the domain of literature and who helped in it) in
Szymon Piotr Kukulak and Józef Olejniczak (ed.) Wyjść poza tekst. Literatura wobec tradycji i
rzeczywistości (Go beyond the text. Literature in the face of tradition and reality) Katowice: Wydawnictwo
Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2016 pp. 265-276. Note that when Wernher von Braun, the future creator of the
American Lunar Program “Apollo”, was shifted by the Cold War Truman administration across the Atlantic after
the war and naturalized with many other German scholars, their biographies had to be re-written, as for example
von Braun was a senior officer in the SS (SS-Sturmbannführer i.e. equivalent of Major), this operation was
codenamed Paperclip (Spinacz).
60
Grzegorz Miecugow Inny punkt widzenia. Rozmowy o świecie współczesnym (Different point of view.
Conversations about the modern world) Gliwice: Helion, 2005 pp. 197–217.

47
decades of his life he has been confining himself to essays. Surprisingly to Kukulak, Lem did not like
then to talk about literature. However, Kukulak obviously confuses here communism with the rule of,
mostly nominally, communist party i.e. Polish United Workers’ Party, as communism (from Latin
communis meaning common, universal) is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology
and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a
socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and
the absence of social classes, money, and the state. As such, communism is a specific form of
socialism61. In the orthodox Marxism-Leninism, officially obligatory in Poland in years 1944-1989,
communism was the ultimate socio-economic system, in which virtually all property is owned by the
community and in which wealth is shared by the citizens according to their need.62

Listy albo opór materii (Letters or Resistance of the Matter)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Listy albo opór materii Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2002
Cover artist Tomasz Lec63

61
Terence Ball and Richard Dagger “Communism” in Encyclopædia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism (accessed on 10-06-2020).
62
Cf. M. Rozental and P. Judin - Mark Moisevich Rosenthal (Марк Моисеевич Розенталь) and Pavel
Fyodorovich Yudin (Павел Фёдорович Юдин) Krótki słownik filozoficzny (Concise Dictionary of Philosophy)
Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1955, pp. 623-628 (original: Краткий философский словарь под ред. М.
Розенталя и П. Юдина Издание третье, переработанное и дополненное. Москва, 1952).
63
Note that instead of post stamps Tomasz Lec used labels for matchboxes, thus confusing philately with
philumenism.

48
This selection of letters, written by Stanisław Lem between February 13, 1955 and May 10, 198864 is
also of interest only to a relatively small number of readers, although this time not only for people
interested in Lem, but also in everyday life. in the so-called people’s democracies, especially in Poland
from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. The first of these letters is very trivial and is even a malicious
joke by Lem, as it concerns a small local tax on (according to Lem) a long-dead dog. The last one,
written to an “unknown addressee” concerns mainly AIDS and it contains the self-praise of Lem’s
Summa Technologiae and The Philosophy of Chance, as well as his old-age complaints about the
poor condition of world literature and life in Poland in the 1980s.

Many of these letters, like the first one, basically contain only Lem’s complaints and grumbles about
everyday life in Poland, such as the lack of spare parts for his luxury cars, which is very offensive
against ordinary Poles, taken under consideration rather low standard of living in Poland in those times
(this concerns, for example, a letter from year 1965), problems with settling foreign cheques (e.g. a
letter from year 1967) and Lem’s problems with police road patrols (e.g. a letter from year 1971). Two
of the letters contained in this book deserve special attention - I mean the letters dated 5th and 13th
January as well as 13th and 18th October 1978, in which Stanisław Lem blackmailed the Polish
authorities - the Central Committee of the then ruling Polish United Workers’ Party, i.e. the
communist (Bolshevik) party and Ministry of Culture and Art. He then demanded special privileges
from the authorities - otherwise he threatened the authorities with immediate emigration (see also
chapter 7). There are also letters to other Polish writers, such as Wiktor Woroszylski65. Overall, Lem’s
opinion of other contemporary SF writers contained in these letters is decidedly negative, with only a
few exceptions, such as, for example, the Strugatsky Brothers.

Another category of Lem’s correspondence consists of letters he wrote to scientists, such as the letter
from 1968 addressed to Władysław Kapuściński (biophysicist), in which Lem complains that although
he was then considered a scientist and philosopher in the USSR, there was not such recognition for
him in Poland. There is also a 1969 letter to Helena Eilstein (once a very orthodox Marxist and even
Stalinist philosopher of Jewish origin) in which Lem thanks her for his positive review of His
Master’s Voice66. Lem was usually very polite and even apologized to the scholars, which is in a very
stark contrast to his usual mistreatment of ordinary people. While it is understandable that when Lem
corresponded with such a truly eminent figure as, for example, Antoni Słonimski 67, his submission to
such second-class scientists as Władysław Kapuściński is quite surprising. On the other hand, when
discussing with representatives of the softer sciences, such as literary theory (as in the letters to

64
Selection of the letters and the afterword „Lem w listach” (“Lem in letters”) by Jerzy Jarzębski.
65
He was born, as Lem, in an assimilated Jewish family and commenced in 1950 as the author of journalistic
and agitating poetry. On the occasion of the communist holiday on July 22, he received the 3 rd degree State Prize
for a poem about General Karol Świerczewski. Woroszylski was a leading figure (informal leader) of the so-
called “pryszczaci” (literally “the pimpled” - it was about appearance of young Woroszylski), i.e. a group of
young Polish writers created at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. They were radical enthusiasts of subordinating
literary creativity to the requirements of the ideology of the communist (Bolshevik) party, according to the
assumptions of the socialist realism that was in force in Poland at that time. The most important representatives
of this milieu were, apart from Woroszylski, Tadeusz Borowski, Andrzej Braun, later Nobel Prize laureate
Wisława Szymborska, Tadeusz Konwicki and Witold Wirpsza. However, from year 1956, Woroszylski was
increasingly opposed to the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland.
66
It is about „’Głos Pana’ czyli Zwierciadło z Nieba” (“’His Master’s Voice’ or The Mirror from Heaven” - a
review of Stanisław Lem’s His Master’s Voice), which she published as Nelly Pośpieszalska in year 1969 in the
journal Nurt: part I in No.7 (51) pp. 34-39, part II in No 8 (52) pp. 33-38 and also, again as Nelly Pośpieszalska,
under the title “Die Stimme des Herrn” (“The Voice of the Lord”) in Werner Berthel (ed.) Stanislaw Lem. Der
dialektische Weise aus Kraków (Stanisław Lem: A Dialectical Sage from Cracow) Frankfurt am Main: Insel
Verlag, 1976 pp. 91-134.
67
(1895-1976) - one of the greatest Polish poets and novelists of the 20th century. He was also an author of two
outstanding SF novels. He was, Like Lem, of Jewish origin - the grandson of Hayyim Selig Słonimski, the
founder of “ha-Tsefirah”- the first Hebrew weekly with an emphasis on the sciences. In 1919 Słonimski co-
founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Julian Tuwim and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. Adam
Michnik, Polish ex-communist politician of Jewish origin, later editor-in-chief of pro-Western Gazeta Wyborcza,
was his private secretary.

49
Professor Lichański from year 1970), Lem was more critical as he always felt more confident on
shaky ground of the humanities than on the hard ground of mathematics and science, as about the
latters he had a very vague idea.

As for the letters addressed to Jerzy Jarzębski, Lem had (as a rule) a very high opinion of the
addressee, which, however, contradicts what he said privately about Professor Jarzębski’s well-known
ignorance in areas of hard science and mathematics. An interesting look at Lem’s difficult character
can be found in his letters addressed to some undisclosed people, such as, for example, letters written
in August 1969. In these two letters, Stanisław Lem writes, in the style of his mentor, Dr.
Choynowski, what he really thinks about their addressees. There is no doubt that the addressees of
such letters must have been offended by Lem’s extreme, sometimes very rude criticism and the fact
that Lem treated them from above and even blackmailed his correspondents, threatening them to
interrupt the exchange of letters, such as in the letters to Stanisław Remuszko, former editor and co-
founder of Gazeta Wyborcza68.

A letter written in December 1969 to one of his Russian translators is really interesting because Lem
had a very good opinion at the time about the 1970 English translation of his novel Solaris by a duo of
Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox69 - it was not done, as it should be, from the Polish language original,
but from the translation of this novel into French made in 1966 by Jean-Michel Jasiensko. While it
was in fact a rather low-quality translation made from a French translation, it took Lem, having little
knowledge of English, so many years to find out what Cox and Kilmartin actually did with his
masterpiece. In this book there are also letters from Stanisław Lem to Michael Kandel - his best
translator into English, in which Lem explains to Kandel his neologisms and hidden meanings of some
of his most difficult to translate works, such as The Cyberiad70, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub71 ,
Golem XIV72 or Robot’s Fables73. There is no doubt, therefore, that without this help from Lem,
Kandel would not be able to translate most of Stanisław Lem’s works on his own. These translations
should therefore be described as “translated from Polish by Michael Kandel with the assistance of
Stanisław Lem”. Perhaps the most interesting in this book is the letter written by Lem in June 1971 to
his favourite illustrator - Daniel Mróz. In this really funny letter, Lem writes about his novella The
Mask (Maska) and short story “Digifrank’s Education” ( „ Edukacja Cyfrania”) 74 . Similar are
Stanisław Lem's letters to another famous illustrator of his works - Szymon Kobyliński, for example,
letters written in March and May 1974.

68
See Lem-Remuszko (korespondencja 1988-1993) - Lem-Remuszko (correspondence 1988-1993)
Warszawa: Oficyna „Rękodzieło”, 2019.
69
New York & Berkley: Faber & Faber Ltd and Walker & Company, 1970.
70
Letters written in May and September 1972.
71
Letter written in June 1972.
72
Letter written in April 1973.
73
Letter written in April 1978.
74
Both from collection Maska Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1976.

50
On 13th November 2003 Stanisław Lem received honorary doctorate (Dr. rer. nat. h.c.) from the
Faculty of Technology (Technische Fakultät) of Bielefeld University (Universität Bielefeld). The
ceremony was held at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow in order to spare the sick 82 year old
writer a tedious journey, and it was simultaneously transmitted to Bielefeld via video conference. This
honorary title has been proposed for Lem by the computer scientists of the Bielefeld Faculty of
Technology.

Stanisław Lem receives on 13th of November 2003 honorary doctorate from Bielefeld University
(Universität Bielefeld)
Source: PAP

Ewa Lipska and Stanisław Lem at the Book Fair in Cracow in year 2003
Source: The Reporter Agency

51
In the same year 2003 it took place the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. It was a fatal incident in the
United States space program that occurred on 1st of February 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia
(OV-102) disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. The disaster
was the second fatal accident in the Space Shuttle program, after the 1986 breakup of Challenger soon
after lift-off.

A close-up camera view shows Space Shuttle Columbia as it lifts off from launch pad on 16th of
January 2003
Source: NASA

Debris from the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia streaks over Tyler, Texas, on 1st February
2003
Source: Photograph taken by Scott Lieberman (Associated Press)

52
In the same year China managed to send its taikonaut Yang Liwei into the space, when first Chinese
manned spacecraft Shenzhou 5 lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China’s Gansu
Province on 15th October 2003. This way China became the third country to send an astronaut toward orbit,
four decades after the Soviet Union and the United Sates.

Lift off of Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 5 on 15th October 2003

Source: AP Photo/Xinhua, photograph taken by Li Gang

53
First Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei waves as the capsule door was opened after landing on the Inner
Mongolian grasslands of northern China on 16th October 2003
Source: Xinhua Agency

54
 Dylematy (The Dilemmas)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Dylematy Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003

Cover artist Marek Pawłowski
This book contains another selection of essays published by Lem in various magazines, including the
“Rozważania sylwiczne” (“Silva Rerum”75) series published by him earlier in the Wrocław monthly
Odra. This series, examined by me at the end of this subsection76, is an unsuccessful continuation of
Lem’s earlier non-fiction books, especially The Dialogues and Summa Technologiae, and is divided
into:
- Political castlings;
- In a deluge of words;
- Such times;
- Out the window and
- New fronts.

As I have already mentioned, a large part of this book contains essays originally published in the
Wrocław monthly Odra in the series “Silva Rerum” and, what is worse, some of the essays contained
in this book have already been printed in other books by Lem - for example, “Delights of
postmodernism” („Rozkosze postmodernizmu”) in Sex Wars, “Cave Internetum” and “Paradise
cannot be seen” („Raju nie widać”) in Holes in the Whole, while “Immortality” („Nieśmiertelność”)
is basically a repetition of the “Controversy over Immortality” („Spór o nieśmiertelność”) from The
Twinkling of an Eye. The main problem with Dilemmas, however, is not the lack of consistency or
repetition, but the generally poor quality of these essays, especially since we know who wrote them.
75
“Silva Rerum” or “Forest of Things”.
76
See my critical analysis of Sex Wars (2009 edition).

55
Even Jerzy Jarzębski in his afterword had to admit that what was wonderful in the earlier Summa and
Dialogues, namely the ambition to find answers to the most fundamental questions and their futuristic
orientation, was lost in Dilemmas among too many, often irrelevant, details and concentration on the
current reality. Lem of Dilemmas is therefore a completely different Lem than the author of Summa
or Dialogues: a grouchy, always complaining and often even sadistically malicious old man, in his
own opinion all-knowing (Besserwisser) , despite his obvious intellectual limitations, so it cannot be a
pleasant book to read.

What is evens worse, Lem made too many, often even obvious, mistakes in Dilemmas. For example,
his criticism of President Putin’s politics and person is very naïve, based on very limited knowledge
and incorrect drawing conclusions from his incomplete information from clearly biased, anti-Russian
sources. The same can also be said of most of his political considerations. On the other hand, Lem was
right in his criticism of “star wars”, some of which (namely the “shield” protecting the US against the
ballistic missiles of the so many enemies of this modern “evil empire”) were then to be installed in
Poland by the centre-right, which has been in power in Poland since 1989, and contrary to the opinion
of the vast majority of Poles as to the presence of foreign military installations in Poland. Lem was
also right in his support for nuclear power plants (when he wrote about Austria’s insane, irrational
resistance to the Czech nuclear power plant in Temelin) and in his criticism of the commercialization
and trivialization of the Internet (essay “Cave Internetum”). However, he was unable to understand at
the time, in his intellectually senile limitation and stubbornness, that in the real capitalism the Internet
had to be commercialized, because this is the logic of this system, so enthusiastically supported by him
at that time.

56
 Mój pogląd na literaturę - My View of Literature

Cover of Stanisław Lem Mój pogląd na literaturę. Rozprawy i szkice (My View of Literature.
Essays and Sketches) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003
Cover artist Tomasz Lec
Mój pogląd na literaturę. Rozprawy i szkice (My View of Literature. Essays and Sketches)77 is a
collection of essays and literary journalism by Stanisław Lem. It was first published by Wydawnictwo
Literackie in 2003 as the 24th volume of the author’s collected works with the afterword by Jerzy
Jarzębski. This work is divided into three parts, similarly to its original Rozprawy i Szkice (1975),
where most of the works are from. The first part contains literary essays, the second - discusses on the
subject of selected items of literature, including from the publishing series “Stanisław Lem
recommends” („Stanisław Lem poleca”) of Wydawnictwo Literackie, and the third - articles on
science and technology, including „Summa technologiae. Posłowie do dyskusji” (“Summa
Technologiæ. An Afterword to Discussion”) from Studia Filozoficzne No 3 (42) of 196578.

77
Alternative translations of the title are Dissertations and Sketches and Discourses and Sketches. The same
book was reprinted in 2009 by Agora under the same title as Lem’s „Dzieła” (“Works”) volume XXI.
78
Their subjects are ontological, gnoseological and anthropological problems relating to Lem’s book Summa
Technologiæ (1964). The discussion was held in the editorial office of Studia Filozoficzne on 18 December
1964. The papers were presented by Józef Hurwic, Wacław Mejbaum, Helena Eilstein, Andrzej Bednarczyk,
Władysław Krajewski and Stanisław Lem.

57
 Krótkie zwarcia (Short Circuits)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Krótkie zwarcia Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004

Cover artist Tomasz Lec
It is a large selection of essays previously published by Lem in the Cracow Catholic Tygodnik
Powszechny in 1994–2004. Most of these essays have been reprinted in the volumes The Pleasant
Times (1995), Holes in the Whole (1997) and Dilemmas (2003), so I will only deal here with those
essays that have not been published in other books by Lem. The essays assembled in Short Circuits
were supposed to be a continuation of Lem’s earlier non-fictional works, such as, above all, Summa
Technologiae (1964) and The Dialogues (1957). However, the quality of these senile essays by Lem
is, unfortunately, much lower in quality than almost everything he has previously written in Summa
and Dialogues.

Short circuits consist of nine parts:

1. Behind the ridge of the century;
2. Perspectives;
3. News from the lab;
4. Stormy weather;
5. Pleasant times;
6. Repetition from history;
7. Recalling;
8. In the element of the word and
9. Brawls.

58
The essay “The World without Edge” („Świat bez krawędzi”, written in December 1998) included in
this volume is a typical late essay by Lem. It is a typical cicer cum caule79, because Lem writes there
about almost everything: AIDS, pornography, economy, railways, coal mining, shipbuilding, foreign
direct investments (FDI) in Poland, meteorology, Russia, Ukraine, Stalin, Monica Levinsky, nuclear
energy, nanotechnology and literature, mentioning only the most important topics, how very
superficially covered in this essay by Lem. It can therefore be said that Lem writes there basically
about everything and nothing, because even for a genius, whom Lem was no longer at that time, it is
impossible to properly analyse so many extremely different topics in such a short essay. The following
essays from the first part of this volume are also very similar: “A look from the threshold”
(„Spojrzenie z progu”), “Repetition” („Repetycja”), “New Year’s panorama” („Noworoczna
panorama”) and “Horizon behind the fog” („Horyzont za mgłą”).

Of course, I will not analyse in this place every essay from this volume, but will only mention the
most important ones. One of them is “Information War” („Informacyjna wojna”), in which case the
title says almost everything. In this volume, Lem also writes about global warming (in “Climate
Roulette” - „Klimatyczna ruletka”), interplanetary travel (“Between Venus and Mars” - „Między
Wenerą a Marsem” and “To Mars?” - „Na Marsa?”), Cosmology and cosmogony (“Holocaust and
creation” - „Zagłada i kreacja”), futurology (“Questions and Forecasts” - „Pytania i prognozy”),
demographics (“Man and Herd” - „Człowiek i stado”) and about the arms race (“Scene and backstage”
- „Scena i kulisy”), but too superficially to convey something new, as he did, for example, in his
earlier Summa.

Somewhat better is the essay “Will We Become Immortal?” („Czy staniemy się nieśmiertelni?”),
because it is monothematic and concerns only biology and medicine, in which Lem has (or rather had)
some qualifications in his youth, as he was almost a physician. But the “Confessions of an Optisemite”
(„Wyznania optysemity”) is a total catastrophe, as Lem wrote in this essay that the American economy
is the only one that works properly, and the German economy is no longer competitive because he did
not know (or did not want to know) that when he wrote these words, it was Germany that was a much
more effective exporter than the US of A. Lem made the greatest mistakes in this volume probably in
the essays “In the caldron” („W kotle”) and “The End of the Age” („Koniec wieku”), in which he
supported the attacks on the civilian population of Serbia made by the criminals from the NATO. It
was also contrary to his opposition to the “Star Wars” and the “Anti-missile Shield”, included in the
essay" Seen from the paradise” (“Widziane z paradyzu”)80. Lem wrote quite extensively in this volume
about terrorism (“Anthrax ante portas” and “Terror, hypocrisy and what next?” - „Terror, hipokryzja i
co dalej?”), but he was not able to convey to the readers anything new on this, after all, very important
topic.

At that time, Lem supported not only the aggression of NATO (in realty the USA) against Serbia, but
also the aggression of the USA against Iraq (in the essays “Iraq Operation Iraq” - „Operacja Iracka”
and “Acceleration” - „Przyspieszenie”) and also against Afghanistan (essay “Drama and farce” -
„Dramat i farsa”); naïvely assuming that everything American must by definition be good and right.
Fortunately, even in the Short Circuits the reader can sometimes find something a bit better and
interesting, for example the essays “Life in a Void” („Życie w próżni”) and “Sympathetic Nightmare”
(„Sympatyczny koszmar”), in which Lem describes the fall of Poland in September 1939 and Lvov
under Soviet and German occupation81.

79
Literally “cabbage with peas” meaning hodgepodge, a mixture of things not belonging together. The Latin
translation of the saying was coined by the Polish poet Julian Tuwim as a title for his essay series.
80
The gods (UK English), or sometimes paradise, is a theatrical term, referring to the highest areas of a theatre
such as the upper balconies. These are generally the cheapest seats. One reason for naming the cheapest seats
“the gods” or “paradise” is because the old theatres have beautifully painted ceilings, often covering
mythological themes, so the cheapest seats are up near the gods. Another is that those seated in “the gods” or in
the “paradise’ look down upon both the performers and the occupants of more expensive seats, like the
Olympian Gods looking down from Mount Olympus upon the lives of ordinary, mortal people.
81
As in the High Castle (1966), but some details could not be published at the time due to the censorship.

59
The last essays I analyse here concern three important people who had a lasting influence on Stanisław
Lem. The first essay is entitled “Remembrance about Mieczysław Choynowski” („Wspomnienie o
Mieczysławie Choynowskim”) and deals with the doctor Mieczysław Choynowski (1909-2001)82, - a
pioneer of Polish psychometrics and Lem’s first mentor, who dominated and even intimidated (he
mobbed, using today’s terminology) the young Lem83. However, Lem (for rather unknown reasons)
always had a very good opinion of Choynowski. The second (“Navigation” - „Żegluga”) concerns
Jerzy Turowicz (1912–1999)84 - the first and most significant editor-in-chief of the Catholic Tygodnik
Powszechny85 , where Lem published his first youthful poems and several early stories in the late
1940s, while the last one (“The Steadfast Prince” - „Książę niezłomny”) concerns the late “operetta”
prince Jerzy Giedroyc (1906-2000)86 , who was in the years 1947-2000 editor-in-chief of the émigré
Kultura - in his best years a rather high-quality political and literary monthly, published initially in
Rome and from 1948 in Paris and financed, as well as intended for a wider audience Radio Free
Europe, from the CIA funds87.

As in the case of other collections of Lem’s essays published after 1988, it can be said that Short
Circuits suffer from their chaotic structure or lack of any structure at all, and generally, with very few
exceptions, due to the grossly low quality of the texts contained in this volume. So this book definitely
disappoints and it would be much better for Lem’s reputation if he ended his writing career in year
1987 with the publication of Fiasco and Peace on Earth. He would then and to this day be
remembered as an outstanding writer, not only of science fiction, and not as an old and boring
curmudgeon, blaming everyone for everything, especially for not being announced during his lifetime
to the whole Universe as a brilliant philosopher and an outstanding scientist.

82
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_Choynowski (accessed on 16-06-2021).
83
See also Maria Manturzewska „Mieczysław Choynowski – twórca polskiej psychometrii” („Mieczysław
Choynowski - the founder of Polish psychometrics”) in Przegląd Psychologiczny vol. 45 No 3 of 2002.
84
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Turowicz (accessed on 16-06-2021).
85
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tygodnik_Powszechny (access on 16-06-2021).
86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Giedroyc (accessed on 16-06-2021).
87
Not directly, of course, but through “private” and “independent: founds, as well as “Radio Free Europe” and
“Radio Liberty” (“Radio Swoboda”) - http: //wiadomosci.polska .pl / calendar / kalendarium / article.htm? id =
70826 and http://www.wolnaeuropa.pl/jnj- 1997.html (accessed on 12-02-2008), especially Dziennik 1954 (The
1954 Diary) by Leopold Tyrmand (Warszawa: Res Publica, 1989).

60
 Lata czterdzieste. Dyktanda (The 1940s. Dictations)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Lata czterdzieste. Dyktanda (The 1940s. Dictations) Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2005
Cover artist Tomasz Lec
This is a collection of short stories by Stanisław Lem, first published by Wydawnictwo Literackie in
2005 as the 33rd and last volume of the author’s “Collected Works” (“Dzieła Zebrane”) edited by Jerzy
Jarzębski. This anthology contains mostly unpublished short stories written in the 1940s and printed
mostly in the magazines with exception of “Operation Reinhardt” from socrealistic trilogy Czas
nieutracony (Time not Lost) vol. II Wśród umarłych (Among the Dead) and “Dyżur doktora
Trzynieckiego” (“Doctor Trzyniecki’s Turn of Duty”) from vol. III Powrót (Return) of the same
trilogy. It also contains dictations invented by Lem for Michał Zych, nephew of the writer’s wife
(from 2001 volume Dyktanda) and Lem poems written in his youth from 1975 volume Wysoki
Zamek. Wiersze młodzieńcze (High Castle. Youthful Poems).

In a later edition of “Dzieła” by Agora publishing house, youthful stories (including the short story
called “Siostra Barbara” (“Sister Barbara”), missing from Wydawnictwo Literackie edition and poems
were included in the Człowiek z Marsa. Opowiadania młodzieńcze. Wiersze (A Man from Mars.
Youthful stories. Poems), while dictations in the volume Sknocony kryminał (Bungled Crime
Story).

61
 Rasa drapieżców. Teksty ostatnie (The Race of Predators. The Last Texts)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Rasa drapieżców. Teksty ostatnie Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006
Cover artist Przemysław Dębowski
It is the last book written, or rather dictated by Lem. It contains a selection of essays published by him
in the Catholic, then somehow progressive, Tygodnik Powszechny, between the end of May 2004 and
9th of February 2006. Just a day after finishing dictating the last essay, “Voices from the Net” („Głosy
z sieci”), Stanisław Lem was admitted to the hospital again, but for the first time he had not returned
home alive. This book is therefore an interesting record of his last days, but unfortunately only
interesting for those interested in the biography of Stanisław Lem. The decline of his intellectual
powers can be seen all too easily in The Race of Predators, especially compared to Lem at the peak
of his creative powers, that is, to Lem in the 1960s and to a slightly lesser extent from the 1970s.

Worse still, Lem is constantly repeating itself in The Race of Predators. For example: on Piłsudski's
(mis)understanding of the idea of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (pages 10 and 54), the
knowledge of French as a handicap of John Kerry 88 (pages 16 and 53), taking by G.W. Bush
(questionable, by the way) successes of Ronald Reagan for his own (pp. 15-16 and 22) or on the
demographic crisis and the AIDS epidemic in Russia 89 (pp. 121 and 147). There is also lack of
consequence: for example on pages 55, 161 and 189 he criticizes strongly Frau Angela Merkel, but
later (on pages 216, 222, 228-30, 246 and 267), after she won the elections and became chancellor of
Germany, Lem pretended that he had always been a supporter of her and had only very nice words of
full support for her since then, despite, and perhaps because she always pursued a clearly anti-Polish

88
2004 US presidential candidate.
89
“Overdue politics, but fortunately wisdom is eternal” („Polityka przeterminowana, mądrość na szczęście
wieczna”) - review of this book by“ dot59 ”on 14 September 2006 - http://biblionetka.pl/ks.asp?id=62749
(accessed on 12-02-2008).

62
policy, up to the open support of the so-called Federation of Expellees (Vertriebenenverband), i.e.
anti-Polish revisionist organizations founded after World War II by the Germans displaced by the
Allies from the present western borderlands of the Republic of Poland90.

Moreover, Lem did not understand (or did not want to understand) the dynamics of free market
capitalism, which naturally discriminates against the so-called higher culture as not bringing quick
financial profits. When he was a beneficiary of market capitalism (roughly from the 1960s to the late
1990s), i.e. when he received a lot of money from his publishers in the West, mainly in West
Germany, he did not mind that Popular culture in the West was not only dominant there, but also of
very low quality. However, when the same cheap and cheesy mass Western culture began to dominate
in Poland, he became surprised and irritated by this fact, even if he got to know this cheesy Western

90
See “The Charter of the German Expellees (“Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen”) of 5th August 1950,
announcing their belief in requiring that “the right to the homeland is recognized and carried out as one of the
fundamental rights of mankind given by God”, while renouncing revenge and retaliation in the face of the
“unending suffering” (unendliche Leid) of the previous decade, and supporting the unified effort to rebuild
Germany and Europe. However, the charter has been criticised for avoiding mentioning Nazi atrocities of
Second World War and Germans who were forced to emigrate due to Nazi repressions. Critics argue that the
Charter presents the history of German people as starting from the expulsions, while ignoring events like the
Holocaust. Professor Micha Brumlik of the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany pointed out that
one third of signatories were former devoted Nazis and many actively helped in realisation of Hitler’s goals
(Beata Ociepka “Związek Wypędzonych w systemie politycznym RFN i jego wpływ na stosunki polsko-
niemieckie 1982–1992” - “The Association of Expellees in the political system of the Federal Republic of
Germany and its influence on Polish-German relations 1982–1992” Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu
Wrocławskiego, 1997).
In February 2009, the Polish newspaper Polska wrote that over one third of the Federation top officials were
former Nazi activists, and based this on an article published by the German magazine Der Spiegel (Stefan
Dietrich “Erika Steinbach, Polnisches Feindbild” - “Erika Steinbach, Enemy of Poland“ Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung of 16 March 2009). a German conservative politician. She previously served as a member of the
Bundestag from 1990 until 2017.Erika Steinbach is a German conservative politician. She previously served as a
member of the Bundestag from 1990 until 2017. Steinbach’s public pronouncements have been criticized by late
President of Poland Lech Kaczyński for causing a deterioration in German-Polish relations. Steinbach has a
negative reputation in Poland. One example of this was a 2003 cover montage of Polish news magazine Wprost
that depicted her riding Chancellor Gerhard Schröder while wearing an SS uniform. In 2007 Adam Michnik’s
Gazeta Wyborcza, reproduced a leaflet presenting Steinbach in the succession of the Teutonic Knights and the
Nazis, and repeated claims of the full compensations never paid to Poland for losses caused by Nazi Germany.
At the time the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, privately warned Berlin that allowing Mrs
Steinbach’s appointment would shake German-Polish relations “to their foundations”. Sikorski said in Brussels
on 23rd February 2009, referring to Steinbach’s father having moved to German-occupied Poland during the war
and asked ”do people whose families lived there for generations want to be identified with a person like Mrs.
Steinbach, who came to our country with Hitler and had to leave it with Hitler too?”. The fact that Steinbach
represents a person born to a German officer stationed in occupied Poland has been described as one of the
essential issues for Poles (Piotr Semka “Polska – Niemcy. Czas niezrozumienia” - Poland - Germany. A time of
Misunderstanding” Rzeczpospolita 27 February 2009).
Ralph Giordano wrote in Hamburger Abendblatt that “the Charter does not contain a word about Hitler,
Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Not to mention any sign of apologies for the suffering of the murdered people”,
“avoids mentioning the reasons for expulsions” and called the document “example of German art of crowding
out the truth (...) The fact that the charter completely ignores the reasons for the expulsions deprives it of any
value”. The refugees’ claims were unanimously rejected by the affected countries and became a source of
mistrust between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. These governments argue that the expulsion of
Germans and related border changes were not enacted by the Polish or Czech governments, but rather were
ordered by the Potsdam Conference. Furthermore, the nationalization of private property by Poland’s former
communist government did not apply only to Germans but was enforced on all people, regardless of their ethnic
background. A further complication is that many of the current Polish population in historical eastern Germany
are themselves expellees (or descendants of expellees) who were driven from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet
Union and were forced to leave their homes and property behind as well. Also some Germans had settled in
Poland after 1939, and treating these ex-colonists as expellees, Erika Steinbach included, under German law of
these ex-colonists as expellees, adds to the controversy.

63
pop culture well after his numerous visits to the so-called West and when he lived in exile in Germany
and Austria at the end of the 20th century.

Very sad is also Lem’s uncritical support for the death penalty, even if it is reserved only for the worst
crimes, because it is up to legislators and courts to decide which crimes are defined as “the worst” at
any given time and judges often get it wrong, by issuing such sentences. The same can also be said
about his simply stupid and thoughtless words of praise for Josef Piłsudski, who not only had almost
wrecked the newly gained independence by Poland, attacking Soviet Ukraine just after the end of
World War I in the narrow class interest of the Polish borderland magnates. He also poisoned Polish-
Russian relations for a very long time, and was also a brutal, fascist dictator, Adolf Hitler’s ally, who
came to power illegally (through a bloody coup d’état) and created the concentration camp in Bereza
Kartuska, where were imprisoned many outstanding Polish patriots and statesmen. Examples are
Wincenty Witos, who was a Christian democrat of the “old school”, the first Polish prime minister of
peasant origin and Wojciech Korfanty, also a Christian democrat of the “old school” and the leader of
Poles in Upper Silesia, thanks to whom Poland regained at least part of this very rich and very
important geopolitically important region91. Even Stanisław “Cat” Mackiewicz - a conservative Polish
writer, journalist and monarchist, former supporter of Piłsudski, who in 1928–35 served as a deputy to
the Sejm (Poland’s parliament), representing the Piłsudski’s Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with
the Government (Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem), was imprisoned in year 1939 for 17 days
at the Bereza Kartuska camp for criticizing the ruling elite of Sanacja Poland92.

Of course, Lem was right when he wrote that G.W. Bush was like Winnie the Pooh (as they both had
very small brains) or when he criticized the Polish religious extremes (e.g. Radio “Mary”), but it is so
obvious that Lem’s help is of no need to reach such conclusions. Therefore, this book as a whole is
very disappointing, and again it can only be reiterated that it would have been much better for Lem if
it had not been published at all. As Lem died in Kraków on 27th March, 2006, “Voices from the Net” is
his last original text. Unfortunately, it is of much lower quality than everything he wrote from the late
1950s to the late 1980s, and especially what he wrote in the 1960s, which, as is well known, was the
best period not only for Lem, but most likely for all Polish science fiction, which, unfortunately, never
again was able to regain this level, which was then exceptionally high, reaching the highest world
standards, not only for science fiction, but also generally for all literature93.

91
The loos by Germany's of Upper Silesia at the end of World War II was, in fact, the end of the Third Reich,
because together with Upper Silesia, Nazi Germany lost so much mining and industrial capacity that the Nazis
were no longer able to produce enough new weapons to replace its front losses.
92
Mackiewicz served later as prime minister of the Polish so-called government-in-exile (”London
government”) in 1954–55, but in year 1956, after collapse of Stalinism in Poland, he has returned to Poland,
where he continued writing under the pseudonym of Gaston de Cerizay.
93
It was not only Lem, who was active in Poland in the area of SF genre in this period, but also such outstanding
writers as Konrad Fiałkowski, Janusz A. Zajdel, Krzysztof Boruń and Andrzej Trepka, and slightly later Adam
Wiśniewski-Snerg.

64
 POSTHUMOUS EDITIONS

Tomasz Lem „Awantury na tle powszechnego ciążenia” (”Tantrums on the Background of the
Universal Gravity”)

Cover of Tomasz Lem Awantury na tle powszechnego ciążenia (Tantrums on the Background of
the Universal Gravity) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2009
Cover artist Marek Pawłowski
Stanisław Lem was married to Barbara Lem née Leśniak. Their only son, Tomasz, was born in 1968.
He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, and graduated with a degree in
physics from Princeton University. Tomasz wrote a memoir about his father titled Awantury na tle
powszechnego ciążenia (Tantrums on the Background of the Universal Gravity), which contain
numerous personal details about his father Stanisław Lem and grandfather Samuel Le(h)m.
Unfortunately, Lem’s junior reminiscences were strongly censored and thus of limited value for
purpose of serious research.
According to Jarzębski94:
Tomasz Lem was a late child of Stanisław Lem, so he has no memory of his father as a young man.
“Gravity-Related Tantrums” is his portrait of his famous parent (...) From this the story of Lem the man
emerges: his wartime adventures are described in brief, as are the various flats and houses where he lived,
his foreign travels and longer visits to West Berlin and Vienna, the accounts of his friends and intellectual
partners, and also his private passions and weaknesses, mainly a disastrous passion for sweets.
Accompanying the writer, always in his shadow, but as an extremely important person, is his wife
Barbara – his partner and carer through all the years of their marriage.
More interestingly, from a wider
perspective than the family one, this is the portrait of a unique personality in the days when the
totalitarian regime was in power, which was also an era when the world was divided, information was

94
Review of Tomasz Lem Awantury na tle powszechnego ciążenia - https://english.lem.pl/arround-
lem/books/191-introduction-gravity-related-tantrums (accessed on 27-05-2021).

65
 rationed, goods were generally in short supply and services were inefficient in the socialist camp. The
struggles with these inconveniences of such a stubborn man as Stanisław Lem, his moments of defiance,
despair and discouragement are on the one hand an excuse to show the gloomy truth about communism,
and on the other a topic for endless satirical anecdotes.
Unfortunately, this was a very biased review, full of factual inaccuracies, especially as to the
conditions in so-called communist countries and long-time collaboration of Stanisław Lem and his
father with the communist authorities.

As Jan Strzałka wrote95:

Having a famous father - admits the author at the end of Tantrums on the Background of the Universal
Gravity - is probably neither a special curse nor a blessing. He does not hide that his father was difficult
to count as an easy-going man, adding with relief that “compared to the family of , for example, Thomas
Mann, my mother and I had just perfect relations with my father”.
It is true, the author of The Cyberiad was not easy to get along with. He had always known everything
best, though he was sometimes naïve and in the 1950s he believed that the imperialists spread on Poland
the Colorado potato beetle. He has mastered the art of irritating his loved ones, usually not listening to
them; for if he had the gift of reading the minds of his wife and son, why would he waste his time in
empty talk? He did not pay attention to his appearance, and it happened that he wore suits stained with
beetroot, he was also ready to give up his soul for a piece of marzipan bread or halva. He was willing to
commit a faux pas. For example, while offering Wisława Szymborska and Ewa Lipska cakes from the
Cracovia luxury hotel, he did not fail to pay attention to the “honourable ladies”, how much it costed him.
Driving a P-70, a Wartburg or a Mercedes, he committed insane deeds, for example, safety when
overtaking was not a priority for him. He often rampaged, especially on critics, translators and journalists,
often sending them “divorce letters”. On the occasion of the film adaptation of Solaris, he called Andrei
Tarkovsky a “dork” (дурак). He adored King Kong, James Bond and Buñuel, but he endorsed negatively
most of the film production by saying that today’s movie heroines are usually beautiful murderers -
without rules and without underwear panties.

95
„Lem o Lemie“ („Lem about Lem“) Tygodnik Powszechny 29 September 2009.

66
 Sex Wars (2009 edition)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Sex Wars Warszawa: Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2009 (Dzieła - Works
vol. XIX)
Cover artist Krystian Rosiński
It contains the essays from the series „Rozważania sylwiczne” (“Silva rerum”) that were first
published in the Wroclaw Odra monthly in 1993-2003 and only later reprinted in the volume Sex
Wars (1996)96 and later in this volume. First of Stanisław Lem’s essays from the series „Rozważania
sylwiczne” is a response to Stanisław Bereś’s “Socrealistic cases of Stanisław Lem” („Socrealistyczne
przypadki Stanisława Lema”) published in the irregular literary quarterly PULS No 45 of 1990. Bereś’s
answer can be found in “Stanisław Lem’s Fiction” („Fikcje Stanisława Lema”) in Odra No 10 of
1992 97 . This first essay in this series was written by Lem in February 1992 and was originally
unnumbered98.

Of these essays, “Rozważania sylwiczne XXI” is particularly noteworthy, as t contains “The Culture
of Blood and Murder” („Kultura krwi i mordu”) 99 . It is basically an essay on “deconstruction of

96
Warszawa: Nova, 1996.
97
Reprinted in 1998 in German in Quarber Merkur No 87 as “Fälle von sozialistischem Realismus bei Stanislaw
Lem” See also “Intelligent in a madhouse - (soc)realistic trilogy by Stanisław Lem” in Lech Keller (ed.) Acta
Lemiana Monashiensis vol. 2 no. 2 of 2003 pp. 61-91.
98
The subsequent numbers of Lem’s essays from this series are often incorrect and, according to Lem himself,
“The numbering of my silvic considerations should not be taken seriously. Anyway, the title is not accurate: it
should rather be called ‘GRUMBLONGS’” - “Rozważania sylwiczne XLIX” Odra No 10 of 1996.
99
C.f. “The Ethics of the Evil” („Etyka zła”) in Sex Wars Kraków: Universitas, 1996.

67
deconstruction”100. Another interesting essay from this series is „Rozważania Sylwiczne XXXI” titled
“Pitavals of the 21st century” („Pitavale XXI wieku”)101. It is simply a piece of good, old-fashioned
science fiction102 - a story in which Lem describes possible crimes committed in the second half of the
21st century 103 . The “Pitavals” and “The Last Journey of Ijon Tichy” („Ostatnia podróż Ijona
Tichego”) from 1996/1999) 104 undoubtedly belong to science fiction, despite the author’s earlier
express assurances that “he will never ever write science fiction”105.

With true sadness should be read what Lem wrote about Mrs. J.K. Rowling (author of a series of
books about the young wizard Harry Potter) in “Rozważania sylwiczne” XCIV, C and CI106. For some,
rather incomprehensible reasons, Lem was very jealous of the popularity of Mrs. Rowling’s books,
and especially of her financial success. It would be quite understandable for a niche writer who must,
say, work as a labourer in a factory in order to survive, but it was very strange for Lem - a writer not
only well known to readers in Europe, Asia, America and Oceania , but also one that was undoubtedly
successful also from a purely financial point of view. This case shows that an outstanding artist such
as Stanisław Lem can also be very, very jealous and very malicious person - that is, be at the same
time a great writer but morally a very small person.

Since Lem’s life was significantly influenced by political events, such as World War II and two of the
major economic and political transformations in post-war Poland, he wrote in „Rozważania sylwiczne
LXXI”107:
I, who learned about the alternation and fragility of successive social systems (from poor pre-war Poland,
through the phases of Soviet, German and again Soviet occupation, to the People’s Republic of Poland
and its exit from the Soviet protectorate), disregarded exploring individual psychology and tried to
concentrate on this, what as technologicus genius temporis108, shapes or appropriates human fate.
Lem ends this “Silva” with the words engraved on his tombstone: “Feci, quod potui, faciant meliora
potentes”109. It is thus a pity that he did not end his writing activity in 1987, because then we would
read these words in a completely different context.

100
Which is, basically, a further development of the topic previously analysed by Lem in “Todorov’s Fantastic
Theory of Literature” in Microworlds San Diego, NY & London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1984 pp. 209-232
(originally as „Tzvetana Todorova fantastyczna theory of literature” Teksty No 5 of 1973).
101
A Pitaval is a collection of causes célèbres (issues or incidents arousing widespread controversy, outside
campaigning, and heated public debate). The name was derived from the French advocate François Gayot de
Pitaval (1673–1743), who published several volumes of Causes célèbres et intéressantes between 1734 and
1743. Early works were mainly written for legal professionals but later Pitavals also became popular amongst
other readers, especially as they referred to crime. In the 19th and early 20th century the idea of publishing
criminal cases quickly spread in Europe. Pitavals became a well-known literary genre, which was often imitated
- Todd Herzog: Crime Stories: Criminalistic Fantasy and the Culture of Crisis in Weimar Germany
Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009, p. 37.
102
If any work by Lem written after The Magellan Nebula can be described that way.
103
More precisely in years 2056, 2057 i 2068.
104
It was written for the German edition of Playboy and printed there in October 1996 and later reprinted in
Polish as „Ostatnia Podróż Ijona Tichego” (“The Last Journey of Ijon Tichy”) in the Polish edition of Playboy
No 5 (78) of May 1999.
105
Part of the explanation for this is that both of these stories were written for very high fees for German publishers
and, as we know, pecunia non olet and human memory can be very unreliable.
106
All reprinted in volume Dylematy Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003.
107
Written in Cracow on 3rd of July 1998 roku and reprinted in this edition of Sex Wars (Dzieła tom XIX
Warszawa: Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2009 p. 344).
108
Technological genius of time.
109
„I have done what I could; let those who can, do better“, “I did what I could, let others who can, do it better”
or “I did everything I could; the better ones will do it better”.

68
 Sknocony Kryminał (Bungled Detective Novel)

Cover of Stanisław Lem Sknocony kryminał (Bungled Detective Novel) Warszawa: Agora, 2009
Cover artist Krystian Rosiński using drawing „Szkielet Procyty” (“Skeleton of Procyte”) by Stanisław Lem
This volume consists of Sknocony kryminał (Bungled Detective Novel)110 - an unfinished crime
novel by Stanisław Lem, written at the end of the 1950s and first published in print on 28 th January
2009 in this (16th) volume of Dzieła Wybrane (Selected Works) together with a satirical play on the
subject of Stalinism named „Korzenie. Drrama wieloaktowe” („Humility. Multi-act Drama”),
„Dyktanda” (“Dictations”). It also contains an interview with one Władysław Bartoszewski - old
friend of Lem and Lech Wałęsa (collaborator of the communist politcal police and later president of
Poland), who was during the World War Two mysteriously released from Auschwitz, and later
became “Solidarity” apparatchik, foreign minister of Poland and chairman of LOT Polish Airlines,
despite having no higher education and totally lacking experience in foreign affairs, business and air
transport.

Note that in English language Wikipedia 111 word “korzenie” is translated as “roots”, while Lem
obviously had in mind “showing humility” and “bowing before” Joseph Stalin, who in this, very
mediocre play, was described by Lem as “superhumanly brilliant and inhumanly smiling” („nadludzko
genialny i nieludzko uśmiechnięty”)112.

110
In series Dzieła (Works) vol.16.
111
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korzenie (accessed on 25-05-2021).
112
Świat na krawędzi. Ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Tomasz Fiałkowski (World on the Edge. Tomasz
Fiałkowski talks to Stanisław Lem) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000 p. 72.

69
 Lem Google doodle

Google doodle that marks 60th anniversary of publication of Stanislaw Lem’s first book Astronauci
(The Astronauts) on 23 November 1951
Source: Google Corporation
rd
On 23 November 2011, in 17 European countries, the standard Google logo was replaced with an
animation commemorating the publication of Stanisław Lem’s first book - socrealistic SF novel
Astronauci (The Astronauts) on 23 November 1951. This animation was created by Marcin
Wichary, Sophia Foster-Dimino and the Google Team using art of Daniel Mróz.

70
 Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek Listy (Letters)

Cover of Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek Listy (Letters) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
2011
Cover artist Marek Pawłowski, drawings by Lem and Mrożek

It is a selection of correspondence between Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek from years 1956–
1978, published by Wydawnictwo Literackie in 2011. A similar item are Listy albo opór materii
(Letters or the Resistance of Matter, 2002) - a collection of letters written by Lem to various
institutions and people, as well as Sława i Fortuna (Fame and Fortune, 2013) a collection of letters
sent by Stanisław Lem to Michael Kandel in years 1972-1987.

71
 Sławomir Mrożek and Stanisław Lem in Lem’s house at Cracow-Kliny, year 1992
Source: Lem.pl

Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek in Lem’s house at Cracow-Kliny, year unknown
Source: Author’s archive

72
 Stanisław Lem and Michael Kandel Sława i Fortuna (Fame and Fortune)

Cover of Stanisław Lem and Michael Kandel Sława i Fortuna (Fame and Fortune) Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2013
Cover artist Marek Pawłowski

It is a selection of Stanisław Lem’s letters to his translator Michael Kandel from years 1972–1987,
published by Wydawnictwo Literackie in 2013. A similar item are Listy albo opór materii (Letters
or the Resistance of Matter, 2002) - a collection of letters written by Lem to various institutions and
people, and Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek Listy (Letters, 2011).

Lem’s translators (from the left): Mitsuyoishi Numano (Japanese), Pavel Weigel (Czech), Wiktor
Jaźniewicz (Belorussian and Russian), Michael Kandel (English) and Lisetta Stembor (Dutch) at the
Lemological Congress in Cracow, 12th-14th May 2005
Source: Photograph taken by Przemysław Sieraczyński

73
 Selected Letters to Michael Kandel

Cover of Selected Letters to Michael Kandel Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014
It contains Peter Swirski’s selected, edited and annotated translation of some of Lem’s fifteen-year
correspondence with Michael Kandel, mostly duplicating what was already published a year earlier in
Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie in Cracow.

Michael Kandel in most likely New York City in approximately year 2020
Source: Courtesy of Restless Books

74
 Peter Świrski Świat według Lema (World according to Lem)

Cover of Peter Świrski Świat według Lema (World according to Lem) Katowice: Stowarzyszenie
Inicjatyw Wydawniczych, 2016
Cover by Kopaniszyn Studio

Świat według Lema. Ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Peter Swirski (The World According to
Lem. Peter Swirski talks to Stanisław Lem) by Peter Świrski is a collection of interviews with
Stanisław Lem conducted by Peter Świrski from Canada. The interviews in English had previously
been published as part of the book A Stanislaw Lem Reader, edited by Świrski. Note that Stanisław
Lem previously published in Tygodnik Powszechny columns under the headline „Świat według Lema”
(“World according to Lem”).

Świrski is a Canadian scientist and literary critic. As a specialist in American literature and American
studies, he is the author of seventeen books and a study of American popular culture From Lowbrow
to Nobrow (2005). His other studies include American Utopia and Social Engineering (2011),
American Political Fictions (2015) and From Literature to Biterature (2013). He also committed a
number of mostly flawed studies on Stanisław Lem. As I mentioned in my Introduction to
Lemology113, the books Świrski, such as, for example, A Stanislaw Lem Reader114, are written with a
very poor understanding Lem’s phenomenon and, in addition are written in pseudoscientific jargon,

113
Wstęp do Lemologii - Acta Polonica Monashiensis (Monash University: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)
volume 3 No 1, R&S Press, Melbourne, Vic. 2019 pp. 235-238.
114
Evanston (Illinois), Northwestern University Press, 1997.

75
reminiscent of the pompous style of Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. Worse, they generally present Lem’s
work in a way that can only discourage potential readers from his works.

So when it comes to A Stanislaw Lem Reader, the reader has very ambivalent feelings here.
Undoubtedly, it was useful to provide the English-speaking readers with very useful information about
Lem - one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th century, and the bibliography
included in this book is also useful. Nevertheless, the entire book consists of only two interviews with
Lem, conducted by Swirski in 1992 and 1994, one essay by Lem “Thirty Years Later” („Trzydzieści
lat później”)115 and an introduction written by Swirski and entitled “A Stranger in a Strange Land”.
According to many reviewers116, these interviews pale in comparison to the much earlier (1987) book
by Stanisław Bereś Rozmowy ze Stanisławem Lemem (Conversations with Stanisław Lem 117 ),
because Swirski may have a lot of knowledge about Lem and knows the Polish language, but he
clearly is boring the reader118, hence, he is not the right man to perform such a task, especially after the
publication of the excellent (if not even brilliant) Bereś’s Conversations (Rozmowy) in 1987.

Swirski’s critical introduction is undoubtedly quite a useful review of Lem’s work for the English-
speaking reader, but Swirski does not present Lem adequately enough here. On the other hand, Lem’s
essay, written about 30 years after the publication of Summa Technologiae, is also a rather
questionable choice - certainly interesting, but not in line with the rest of Swirski’s book. Only in the
absence of other better introductions to Lem in English, can anyone recommend Swirski’s book, and
certainly a better choice of publishers, i.e. Northwestern University Press, would be, for example, to
translate and publish the abovementioned book by Bereś.

The book by Peter Swirski includes an interview entitled “The World According to Lem” („Świat
według Lema”), which Swirski conducted with Stanisław Lem in June 1992119 . It was previously
published as “Reflections on Literature, Philosophy, and Science”120 in the volume edited by Swirski
A Stanislaw Lem Reader121, while Lem had previously published in years 1991-2006 in Tygodnik
Powszechny columns under the headline “The World According to Lem”122 and the introduction “Lem
from the past. Instead of an introduction” („Lem z przeszłości. Zamiast wstępu”) by Wacław M.
Osadnik and Peter Swirski. This introduction, however, is a very bad introduction to Lem, as it
contains such obvious errors as, for example, on page 14, the authors authoritatively claim that “the
command of the Polish army” (they probably mean the Ministry of National Defense) did not agree to
the second edition of the novel Solaris, but the facts are that the Publishing House of the Ministry of
National Defense (Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej), after the first edition of this novel
in 1961, hastened to the next edition in 1962, while in 1963 it was published by the same publisher in

115
For the first time printed in Wiedza i Życie No 6 of June 1991. The subject of this essay is the analysis of the
accuracy of Lem’s predictions contained in his Summa Technologiae (1964), especially in the field of VR -
virtual reality (phantomatics using Lem’s terminology), peripheral and central phantoms, political consequences
of VR, limitations of AI i.e. artificial intelligence (intellectronics using Lem’s terminology), “sex with a
computer”, general considerations on futurology, the philosophy of Berkeley and Russell as well as Lem’s old
quarrel with Kołakowski.
116
For example, Publishers Weekly on 25th August 1997, concisely summarized Swirski’s book as „containing
useful passages, but not doing justice to a man worth much more interest”.
117
Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987.
118
“Swirski is content to elucidate rather than evaluate Lem’s ideas, which are often fascinating, even when
presented in a somewhat Olympian manner” - Publishers Weekly 25 August 1997.
119
„Świat według Lema - o literaturze, filozofii i nauce - ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Peter Swirski” (“The
World According to Lem - Peter Swirski talks to Stanisław Lem about literature, philosophy and science”).
120
„Reflections on Literature, Philosophy, and Science - Personal Interview with Stanislaw Lem, June 1992”.
121
Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1997.
122
From 1998 without this headline.

76
the Biblioteka Powszechna (Common Library) series. In turn, on page 22 he claims with equal
certainty that “in the 1970s Lem sometimes met and had fierce theological discussions with Cardinal
Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II”, but nowhere could I find confirmation of this notions. For
example, Orliński writes only on page 236 123 that Lem tried to arrange for his friend (a certain
Leśnicki, a Lvov Jew) psychiatric treatment by his fellow psychiatrists, including Wanda Półtawska,
better known as a close female friend of Karol Wojtyła, and on page 249 that Lem knew Wojtyła
personally, but that:
It was not as close as in the case of Szczepański124, but they met in the editorial office of Tygodnik
Powszechny and several times at home at social meetings.

Contrary to faulty claims by Swirski, Lem wrote on 6th of April 2005 125:
I met Karol Wojtyła 50 years ago in the apartment of my friend Jan Józef Szczepański. He then visited
him as an ordinary chaplain after the Christmas Carol, because he had not yet held any higher priesthood.
It was an accidental contact and did not say much about the figure of the priest. Later, when I started to
deal with prognostics, Wojtyła, already as a bishop, invited me to the palace to give a lecture on the
consequences of the embargo introduced by oil producers. No matter what I said to the group of priests
gathered, it is not about my opinions from that time that I am talking about here. However, it is
characteristic that Wojtyła was then keenly interested in the fate of world civilization. I admit that I was
invited again, but unfortunately I do not remember what the topic of my next oration was. When I stayed
at the bishop’s palace after the lecture, Wojtyła showed me in a separate room a model of a church that
was to be built in Nowa Huta. At that time, obviously, I had no idea that I was talking to the future Pope
(capital letter by Lem - LK), John Paul II. I was also a sporadic guest at the editorial office of Tygodnik
Powszechny and I know that Wojtyła assessed the work of Turowicz’s journal very positively. Later our
paths diverged: the well-known His (capital letter again by Lem - LK) pastoral work concentrated in the
Vatican, radiating from there to the whole world. However, the fact that he was a man with an absorbent
and open mind of a large measure was already noticeable at that time, if only on the basis of a wide range
of His (again capital letter by Lem - LK) interests. Since practically all the press bodies now write about
His (again capital letter by Lem - LK) merits for people and the Church, I thought that it would not be
completely wrong if I also referred to my memories related to His (again capital letter by Lem - LK )
person. I remember that in the media echoes of the early phase of pontificate of John Paul II there was a
certain distrust of a man coming from a country ruled by communists, but He (again capital letter by Lem
- LK) was able to overcome all such doubts and resistances very quickly. Nothing can be added to His
(again capital letter by Lem - LK) size. He remained the Pope (again capital letter by Lem - LK) capable
of constantly developing His (again capital letter by Lem - LK) extraordinary talents and it is absolutely
certain that His achievements (again capital letter by Lem - LK) will not be forgotten.

123
Lem. Życie nie z tej ziemi (Lem. Life out of this World) Wołowiec i Warszawa: Czarne i Agora, 2017.
124
It is about one Jan Józef Szczepański (1919-2003), writer, translator and screenwriter, associated with
Tygodnik Powszechny, co-author (together with Lem) of unrealized film scripts based on the novels of Lem:
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and Chain of Chance.
125
„Jan Paweł II” (“John Paul II“) Przegląd 17 April 2005.

77
So many of these alleged fierce theological discussions of Stanisław Lem with Cardinal Karol Wojtyła,
later Pope John Paul II. Instead, we have writing on the knees by Lem about Wojtyła126. Nothing about
sex abuse by roman catholic priests, Opus Dei controversies, Banco Ambrosiano scandal, AIDS,
Wojtyła’s support for right wing dictatorships in Latin America etc. etc.127.

Furthermore, some Roman Catholic theologians disagreed with the call for the beatification of John
Paul II. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor José María Castillo and Italian
theologian Giovanni Franzoni, said that his stance against contraception and the ordination of women
as well as the Church scandals during his pontificate presented “facts which according to their
consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification”128. Some traditionalist Catholics
opposed his beatification and canonisation for his views on liturgy and participation in prayer with
enemies of the Church, heretics and non-Christians129. After the 2020 report about the handling of the
sexual misconduct complaints against Theodore McCarrick, some called for the sainthood of John
Paul II to be revoked130.

126
Jan Styka (1858-1925) was an excellent artist, but who knows if he might not be an even better actor. To
paint the panorama (we are talking about the “Golgotha” panorama) he rented a huge one-story studio in Lvov,
next to the building of the Polytechnic (Technical University). There, usually by the windows open to the floor,
kneeling in the middle, he prayed and called God for creative inspiration with a loud voice. Naturally, such jokes
were calculated for the effect on the street, because usually in such times crowds of people, eager for sensation,
would gather in front of the studio windows. Once in the company, carried away by fantasy, he began to tell how
Christ had spoken to him at the time of painting. And seeing that they did not believe him, he turned to
Axentowicz: “Well, Theodore ... You were at it, tell me what the Lord Jesus said”. Axentowicz, with a slight
sarcastic smile, confirmed the truth of Styka’s words, saying: “Yes, it's true - Jesus said: ‘Jan Styka, do not paint
me on your knees, you paint me well’” - Piotr Kopszak Teodor Axentowicz: (1859–1938), Warszawa:
Edipresse, 2007. Note that Teodor Axentowicz (1859-1938) was a Polish-Armenian painter and university
professor. He was a renowned artist of his times, and was also the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow.
As an artist, Axentowicz was famous for his portraits and subtle scenes of the Hutsul (Ukrainian mountain tribe)
life, set in the Carpathians. In 1893 in Chelsea, London, he married Iza Henrietta Gielgud, aunt of Val Gielgud
and John Gielgud of the theatrical dynasty.
127
More in Wikipedia “Pope John Paul II” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II (accessed on 18-
06-2921).
128
„Dissident theologians participate in the canonization process of Pope John Paul II“.
catholicnewsagency.com. CNA (as on 4 March 2020.
129
Michael J. Matt “A Statement of Reservations Concerning the Impending Beatification of Pope John Paul II”
The Remnant 21 March 2011.
130
“’The Halo Is Hopelessly Tarnished’: Why The Sainthood of John Paul II Should be Rescinded -
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/11/12/pope-francis-theodore-mccarrick-clergy-sex-abuse-eileen-
mcnamara (accessed on 18-96-20121).

78
 Ogród ciemności i inne opowiadania (The Garden of Darkness and Other Stories)

Cover of Ogród ciemności i inne opowiadania - The Garden of Darkness and Other Stories
Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2017
Cover artist Marek Pawłowski

In year 1947, Stanisław Lem published in Tygodnik Powszechny short story „Ogród ciemności”
(„Garden of Darkness”). I was reprinted in this collection 131 together with other short stories by
Stanisław Lem. For the first time in Polish it was printed here short story „Czarne i białe” (“Black and
White”)132. As Tomasz Lem explained in a letter to Wydawnictwo Literackie133:
Without the “Garden of Darkness”, my future mother would not be interested in Stanisław Lem as a
future candidate for a husband, and I would not be able to write these few words. “Black and White”, on
the other hand, is a description of an allegorical dream that my father had in Vienna when he had already
said goodbye to fiction - surprisingly distant from his literary emploi. Between these two poles there are
stories of both the youthful and mature Lem. This is, of course, a subjective assessment, but I have the
impression that in this comparison even works known to the reader show their new, surprising face.

131
Edited by Tomasz Lem, afterword by Jerzy Jarzębski.
132
It was written in year 1983 and published as „Schwarz und Weiss“ in German (translated by Edda Werfel) in
collection edited by Horst Heidtmann titled Willkommen im Affenhaus (Welcome to the Ape House)
Weinheim and Basel: Beltz & Gelberg Verlag, 1984 pp. 229-236.
133
Wydawnictwo Literackie „Opowiadania Stanisława Lema w subiektywnym wyborze Tomasza Lema, syna
pisarza“ („Stories by Stanisław Lem in the subjective choice of Tomasz Lem, the writer’s son“) -
https://www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/produkt/3269/ogrod-ciemnosci-i-inne-opowiadania (accessed on 27-05-
2021).

79
 Ewa Lipska and Tomasz Lem Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję... Listy i rozmowy (It Only Hurts,
When I Laugh... Letters and Conversations)

Cover of Ewa Lipska and Tomasz Lem Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję... Listy i rozmowy (It Only Hurts,
When I Laugh... Letters and Conversations) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2018
Cover artist Marek Pawłowski

Ewa Lipska is a columnist, political activist and female poet, most likely of Jewish origin134. She
writes in Polish and belongs to the so-called Generation of New Wave. In the years 1970–1980 she
was the editor of the poetry section of the Wydawnictwo Literackie (Publishing House) in Cracow,
Poland. She received a number of prizes for her literary work, including in year 1973 the Prize of the
Geneva-based Kościelski Foundation, and also the City of Gdynia Literary Award for the volume
Pogłos (Reverberation) In the years 1991–1997, as a reward for his activities in the so-called
democratic (i.e. anti-communist) opposition in the times of the Polish People’s Republic, she received
from the pro-Western government of Poland a sinecure in the form of successively second secretary,
first secretary (from 1992) and counsellor (from 1995) of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in

134
“After the baptism, neophytes (i.e. Jewish converts) took surnames, created, among others, from the names of
the months, days of the week, places in which they stayed, the names of godparents, from the sign in the coat of
arms, especially if there was a cross there, as well as from the fact of the ‘good will’ baptism” - Anna
Gawryszczak „Neofici żydowscy w Łodzi w XIX wieku” (“Jewish Neophytes in Łódź of the Nineteenth
Century”) Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Historica No 93 of 2014, p. 36. Surnames coming from large cities
were also popular among neophytes (converts), such as Poznański, Warszawski or Białostocki.

80
Vienna, despite her very poor knowledge of German language and lack of other qualifications for
those posts (she has only studied, without success, at the Academy of Fine Arts). At the same time, in
1991 she took up the position of deputy director, and in 1995 director of the Polish Institute in Vienna.
She is a member of the Polish and Austrian PEN Club, a founding member of the Polish Writers’
Association (1989) and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning.

Lipska attended Bolesław Bierut in High School in Cracow and then tried do study painting at the
Academy of Fine Arts, but was unable to complete these studies. From 1964, she published poetry in
Życie Literackie and Dziennik Polski, and in 1967 she has published in the Polish People’s Republic a
volume of poetry tiled Wiersze (Poems). She is also the author of song lyrics for the Skaldowie
(Polish rock band) and Marek Grechuta (famous Polish singer), columnist and co-founder, editor and
collaborator of several magazines, such as the monthlies Pismo and Kraków. From 1968 until its
dissolution in 1983 she was a member of the Polish Writers’ Union.

During the communist rule in Poland, at the turn of 1975 and 1976 she was on a six-month scholarship
(“International Writing Program”) in Iowa City, USA, and in 1983, just after martial law period, she
was in West Berlin on a scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German
Academic Exchange Service), despite not having tertiary education. In the years 1990-1992 she
worked in the editorial team of Dekada Literacka journal. She was known in the literary (and not only
literary) circles of the city of Krakow as a not too prudish person, with particular attention to wealthy
and influential elderly gentlemen. She was also a de facto wife of one Adam Włodek (1922-1986),
Polish poet, editor and translator, best known as a first husband of Nobel Prize laureate Wisława
Szymborska. The latter was in the 1950s a socrealistic poet and enthusiastic Stalinist. Adam Włodek
was also a collaborator of the UB (secret politcal police) and reported on the fellow writers, such as
Maciej Słomczyński (1920-1998) - Polish translator and writer, who used the pen names such as Joe
Alex and Kazimierz Kwaśniewski for his detective stories135.

In year 2018, there was published volume Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję… Listy i rozmowy136 containing
a heavily censored selection of letters exchanged between Ewa Lipska, Stanisław Lem and his son
Tomasz, as well as Lipska’s conversations with Lem senior, only one of which is interesting, namely
the one from 2004 about Stanisław Lem’s automotive passion. The 2003 conversation about the
dreams is just pseudo-intellectual gibberish, as is the another one - about garlic and eternity (from the
same year). Unfortunately, Stanisław Lem himself excels here in this pseudo-intellectual drivel. This
book contains also hitherto unknown letters written by Stanisław Lem and Ewa Lipska. The authors of
these letters were more than twenty years apart, but they shared a passion for literature. Their
correspondence from years 1983-1991 is also a highly subjective portrait of the contemporary Polish
literary world, and especially of Cracow writers, poets and playwrights. The book also contains
records of conversations that the poet and writer had at the beginning of the 21st century and letters
that Ewa Lipska exchanged with Tomasz Lem - son of Stanisław Lem, who was then studying in the
USA. This volume also includes three interviews that Lipska conducted with Lem. The title of the
book comes from the fact that when Lem was in Vienna, very exhausted and still in pain, after another
operation, his doctor (probably as part of the so-called psychotherapy) told him the following
anecdote: “a man was lying in a ditch with a knife stuck in his back and a passer-by asks him if it
doesn’t hurt him, and he tells him that ‘nur wenn ich lache’ (‘only when I’m laughing’)”.

135
Krzysztof Masłoń „Jeśli nie chce się w coś wierzyć, to się nie wierzy“ („If you don’t want to believe in
something, you don’t believe in it“) Do Rzeczy No 1 of 2013.
136
Stanisław Lem, Ewa Lipska i Tomasz Lem Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję... Listy i rozmowy (It Only Hurts,
When I Laugh... Letters and Conversations) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2018.

81
In earlier Listy albo opór materii, Lem appeared as a citizen of a totalitarian state confronted with the
everyday bureaucratic reality and as an acquaintance of many prominent writers and scientists. The
letters exchanged with Stanisław Mrożek are a meeting of two outstanding authors, while Sława i
fortuna contain a rich record of Lem’s cooperation with his best translator to English - Michael
Kandel, where Lem helps his translator understand the hidden, especially from foreigners, layers of his
works. In stark contrast, Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję shows us the image of Lem-emigrant, a person at
the end of his life, an elderly writer at the period of final decline of his creative abilities.

In Vienna, Lem was practically sick all the time - if not physically (cancer, etc.), he was mentally ill
(severe depression, including thoughts of suicide)137. This atmosphere of illness was then an important
component of his creative process. Although Lem was only 64 at the time of writing Fiasko, his last
good book, it is hard not to feel in this novel, strongly emphasized on many levels, the announcement
of the ending - cognitive and existential pessimism. In this novel, the crew of the spacecraft
“Eurydice” sets off on a flight to another solar system to establish contact with the Quintan
civilization. At the end it turns out that the Quintans, for political and military reasons, wanting to
keep their technological achievements secret, do not want to talk to the Earthlings and attack
“Hermes” - the second Earth ship used for shorter journeys. The situation on the Quinta is
misinterpreted by the crew of “Eurydice” as a kind of Cold War, so they resort to violence that is not
meant to come to the aid of one side of the conflict, as was the case of, for example, Eden, for
example, but to force the Quintan into dialogue with the Earthlings.

137
"Recently, i.e. since Fiasco, I have not written anything, I do not count articles and I think that what you
wrote about Fiasco was, unfortunately, a bull’s eye, because I had a deaf feeling that it was my swan song, and
maybe that is why, because in three years I was operated on 3 times, half of my insides were cut and I wrote
between hospital beds, so not in a great mood” - Stanisław Lem Sława i fortuna. Listy do Michaela Kandla
1972–1987 Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2013 p. 718 “Oh, I'm sorry, I’m sorry, not only in spirit, but also
below; and I am still being tested in various ways. To be the so-called “mystery of medicine” is the Sweetness of
Life itself (because from the point of view of X-rays, etc., I should be fit as a fiddle). I am writing a novel about
the XXII century entitled Fiasco, the content corresponds to the title” - Stanisław Lem, Tomasz Lem i Ewa
Lipska Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie 2018 p. 81. „Father could not find himself
in Vienna. He was unable to write. It happened that for several days he did not leave the house, he did not have
the strength or the desire to get dressed. When, for economic reasons, he had to finally write a book for which he
signed a contract and took an advance payment, he was experiencing torments. He was not able to accelerate his
writing, he used excerpts from his own socialist realist volume Sezam”- Katarzyna Janowska “Rozmowa z
Tomaszem Lemem” (“Conversation with Tomasz Lem” Polityka of 22 September 2009.

82
On the pages of Fiasco one can find numerous auto-intertextual allusions and motifs that have become
canonical for Lem over the years of his literary activity, e.g. his belief in the superiority of human
intelligence over artificial intelligence (reference to “Rozprawa” from the Pirx series), bringing on
board of the spacecraft an envoy of Vatican - - Father Arago, the Dominican (i.e. inquisitor) - earlier
the figure of a monk appeared in the Hospital of the Transfiguration, the main character’s dream
about Naples (the city where the plot of Chain of Chance takes place) or, above all, the use of
fragments of the youthful short story „Kryształowa kula” (“Crystal Ball”) from his early socrealist
collection Sesame and Other Stories (1954). The fact that Tempe, or Parvis-Pirx138, is killed in the
finale of Fiasco, also turns out to be the fiasco from the title of the novel. Thus, the very fact that Lem
kills Pirx in Fiasco proves that Lem finally reached then the end of his creative possibilities, living in
a self-imposed exile in Austria.

So Orliński is not right when he says that:

Lem wanted to finish undefeated, like a boxing champion who no longer stands for the last fight to defend
the title - he simply quits his career. And he succeeded. [...] It is not even offensive that references to
Lem’s earlier works can be seen every now and then. Each time these earlier ideas […] are better played
out. Sticking to the boxing metaphor: the champion summoned his former rivals to the ring, he knocked
out each of them, and then he put on a silk bathrobe and walked away into the darkness 139.
because the writer did not end up in Fiasco, but after this novel he has published, at least, nomen
omen, 13 new books, usually each next one being clearly weaker than its predecessor.

Lem’s correspondence with Lipska allows us to enrich and broaden in some way our knowledge of his
works. It shows the development and evolution of friendship between him and Lipska - the letters
begin with official phrases such as “Dear Mrs. Ewa”, “Dear Mr. Stanisław”, and only since 1987
appear in more private terms, suggesting friendship, for example, “Dear Ewa” or “Constantly Beloved
Basia and Staszek”. These letters also show the differences between the life in the West and in Poland,
which was then behind the so-called Iron Curtain. Lem describes in them, for example, the difficulties
associated with assembling furniture purchased in Ikea, and while appreciating the level of material
civilization of the West, he is longing for Poland, especially, when he writes, as befits a pure breed
xenophobe, that “Austrian life with Austrian talking around makes me intellectually sterile”140.

An interesting supplement to this book is the correspondence between Ewa Lipska and Stanisław
Lem’s son - Tomasz Lem. Letters from Tomasz are sent from the USA and mainly concern his student
adventures during his studies at Princeton University and the political transformation taking place in
Poland at that time. Wojciech Orliński writes in his para-biography of Lem that the author of Solaris,
choosing to study in the USA for his son, wanted to repeat his own biography, and at the same time -
improve it. Orliński thinks that Stanisław Lem felt sorry for his father that in 1939, sensing the
instability of the political situation in Europe, he did not decide to emigrate overseas. According to
Orliński, the choice of Princeton University and the subject of his son’s studies (i.e. physics) would be

138
One of the main characters of Fiasco is Marek Tempe, created (reconstructed?) from the preserved fragments
of the bodies of the cosmonaut Angus Parvis and the Pilot Pirx - one of the pleasantest characters of Lem’s
fiction.
139
Lem. Życie nie z tej ziemi Wołowiec i Warszawa: Czarne i Agora pp. 379–380.
140
Boli tylko, gdy się śmieję Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2018 p.94.. Note that in original it was “życie
austriackie z austriackim gadaniem dokoła nader wyjaławia” and that “austriackie gadanie” means in Polish
“speaking without any deeper meaning, meaningless, vain, not worth the attention of the audience” -
https://obcyjezykpolski.pl/austriackie-gadanie (accessed on 19-06-2021). Also “Austrians are xenophobes and
they had a very contemptuous attitude towards the Poles“ - Katarzyna Janowska „Rozmowa ze Stanisławem
Lemem” (“Conversation with Stanisław Lem”) Polityka 15 September 2001.

83
a kind of optimization of his own curriculum vitae141. It makes some sense, especially, as Tomasz Lem
was not really a good scientists, so he was forced to live from the royalties received for subsequent
editions of books written by his father.

Tomasz Lem’s letters are largely devoted to reporting on the preparation for exams, explaining how
American computers work and describing his progress in computer programming. Of course, one
cannot talk here about the so-called culture shock, as Tomasz Lem left to study in America as a
graduate of the American International School in Vienna, Austria. A large part of these letters is an
exchange of reflections on the changing political reality in Poland and in the world. In those letters,
Lipska describes to Lem the atmosphere of the takeover of power in Poland by the elites of the
“Solidarity”, presents the discussion taking place in the country on the subjects of joining the NATO
and reveals her doubts as to how much Poland is becoming a sovereign country again. Tomasz Lem
shares his thoughts on the speeches of Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of Germany, and his impressions
from the reports he received from Poland.

The book is crowned with three interviews that Lipska has conducted with Stanisław Lem. The first
one, entitled „Rozkosze motoryzacyjne” (“Automotive Delights”), concerns the writer’s greatest
private passion - his cars. The second, entitled „Nikomu się nie śniło” (“No one has dreamed”) is a
record of a conversation about the nature of dreams. It is very interesting cognitively, because Lem
mentions in it how once, for an experiment, he took, together with his “evil spirit”, that is, one Jan
Józef Szczepański, the drug psilocybin, which caused a change in his perception of reality. This
seemingly only small biographical element broadens the context of such works by Lem as The
Futurological Congress and Chain of Chance, where the protagonists experience states of “reality
breakdown” under the influence of drugs. Lem admits that (according to him) the one-time use of the
drug helped him to write Chain of Chance, whose protagonist experiences hallucinations in the final
scene. Lem also admits that he often dreamed of Lvov of his youth and his father, that they would
leave the apartment at Brajerowska Street together, where Stanisław Lem later tries to return, but
instead of home, he comes across a stone wall. Thus, this interview complements the controversial
monograph by Agnieszka Gajewska142, who treats Stanisław Lem’s SF works as a transformation of
his occupation time nightmares, although Lem clearly avoided this topic and most likely collaborated
with the Nazis, so he could not be a victim of the Holocaust.

The last interview, entitled „Między czosnkiem a wiecznością” (“Between garlic and eternity’), dates
from 2003 and concerns the state of culture and politics of the time. Lem, obviously no longer having
his full mental powers at that time, speaks in it of his desire for someone like Piłsudski to appear in
Poland and, implicitly, to lock up his political opponents in prisons and concentration camps, such as
the one in Bereza Kartuska. Note that acute mental limitations of Piłsudski, especially his outdated,
17th century worldview (Weltanschauung) of a poor, backward Lithuanian-Polish nobleman from the
eastern borderlands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to collapse of the Polish
economy in the early 1930s, political isolation of Poland, quarrels with all its neighbours,
backwardness and serious weakness of Poland’s Armed Forces and thus to defeat in the war with Nazi
Germany, his former (up to year 1938) ally, in September 1939.

141
Lem. Życie nie z tej ziemi Wołowiec i Warszawa: Czarne i Agora str.383–384.
142
Zagłada i gwiazdy. Przeszłość w prozie Stanisława Lema (Holocaust and Stars. The Past in the Prose of
Stanisław Lem) Poznań: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza, 2016.

84
 Lem - Remuszko (korespondencja 1988-93) - Lem - Remuszko (Letters 1988-1993)

Front and back cover of Stanisław Remuszko and Stanisław Lem Lem-Remuszko (korespondencja
1988-1993) - Lem - Remuszko (Letters 1988-1993) Warszawa: Oficyna „Rękodzieło”, 2019
Cover artist Józef Michalski

Stanisław Remuszko (1948-2020) was a Polish journalist and publicist, former editor of Gazeta
Wyborcza (Electoral Gazette) 143 . After graduating from high school, he studied, without success,

143
It is a Polish daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It is covering the range of political, international and
general news from a liberal to leftist perspective. It is owned by American company Cox Communications (it
provides digital cable television, telecommunications and home automation services and is the third-largest cable
television provider in the United States) and George Soros’ Media Development Investment Fund - a front shop
for CIA, so it was declared an undesirable organization by the Office of Prosecutor General of Russia and put on
the list of organisations banned in Russia. Gazeta Wyborcza was first published on 8th of May 1989 and was
financed by CIA, the same way as Radio Free Europe of Kultura (The Culture - edited in Paris, France) -
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/the-soros-galaxy-is-considered-a-derivative-of-the-cia-and-the-us-state-department/
(accessed on 20-06-2021).
The official founders of Gazeta Wyborcza were film director Andrzej Wajda, former communist journalist
Aleksander Paszyński and “Solidarity” activist Zbigniew Bujak, but, of course, they had not enough money to
start such a large circulation newspaper (over 432,000 copies during the first three quarters of 1998). Its creation
was an outcome of the Round Table Agreement between the communist (Bolshevik) government of the People’s
Republic of Poland and political opponents centred on the supported by the West “Solidarity” movement
(officially trade union). The paper’s editor-in-chief, since its founding, has been Adam Michnik - devoid of
ideals politician of Jewish origin, former orthodox communist, later a dissident.
Gazeta Wyborcza used its influence to whitewash former communists, particularly General Jaruzelski. After the
fall of so-called real socialism, the paper was criticized for taking part in an intensive propaganda campaign and
particularly for rigorously trying to revamp General Jaruzelski’s image (Voyteck Uzbek “The Reassertion of the
Left in Post-Communist Poland” Europe-Asia Studies No 46(5) of 1994 p. 81). In years 2020 and 2021, Gazeta
Wyborcza and its women subsection Wysokie Obcasy (High Heels) has come under criticism for repeated posting
of transphobic and TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) articles and interviews, often in relation to their
coverage of 2020 so-called women’s strike protests in Poland („List otwarty w sprawie transfobii na łamach
Wysokich Obcasów i Gazety Wyborczej” - “Open letter on Transphobia in Wysokie Obcasy and Gazeta
Wyborcza” LOBBY LGBTQ 13 January 2021).
See also Rafał Ziemkiewicz Michnikowszczyzna. Zapis choroby (Michnikism. Medical History) Lublin: Red
Horse, 2006. It presents a negative analytical and critical view of Adam Michnik, the founder and editor-in-chief
of Gazeta Wyborcza and Michnik’s role within Polish society and in the transformation in Poland after 1989. In

85
astronomy at the University of Warsaw and finally in 1972 he graduated from the mathematics and
physics teacher training course at that university. Then he worked as a journalist for 10 years - at first
in the weekly Zorza and later in Słowo Powszechne144. After the introduction of martial law, he was
fired from work (allegedly for writing an open letter critical of the communist authorities). He was
officially unemployed for a year and a half, and in 1983–1989 he was employed as a curator at the
Central Statistical Office (Główny Urząd Statystyczny). He published in the underground press under
several pseudonyms, such as: Andrzej Piast, Ewa Bilińska, Ewa Rajska, J. February, Maciej Drzewiec,
Mikołaj Białostocki, Editor, Referendarz, Secretary and Stanisław Major. In the spring of 1989, he
started working for Gazeta Wyborcza, which was then founded for Western (mostly CIA) money, but
in the summer of 1990 he left it, which was officially motivated by disappointment with the political
evolution of the magazine, the attitude of the editorial office and the way this newspaper was financed.
It was described by Remuszko in his book Gazeta Wyborcza. Początki i okolice (Electoral Gazette.
Beginnings and surroundings)145.
He was the founder and owner of the “Sonda” (“Probe”) - Street Opinion Research Bureau. In the
1990s, as an independent journalist, he published in many media, including in Czas Krakowski, Kurier
Polski, Tygodnik Solidarność and Nowe Państwo and cooperated with Radio WAWa and the Polish
editorial office of Swedish Radio. He was also the originator and founder of several officially
registered associations, such as the Towarzystwo Poczty Podziemnej (Underground Post Society -
collectors of philatelic items issued illegally during martial law), Stowarzyszenie na rzecz Państwa
Neutralnego Światopoglądowo „Neutrum” (the Society for the World-view Neutral State) and the
Hobbit Society (fans of Tolkien’s works) and the non-functioning Towarzystwa Amatorów Niektórej
Twórczości Stanisława L. (Lema) - Society of Aficionados of Certain Works of Stanisław L. (Lem).

He is also known as the co-author of volume Lem-Remuszko (korespondencja 1988-1993) - Lem-

Remuszko (correspondence 1988-1993)146. In 1993, he tried to initiate Stanisław Lem’s cooperation
with the Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth) daily. However, this cooperation did not take place, because
Remuszko soon received the so-called divorce letter (see below). However, Remuszko was neither the
first one nor the last one to receive such a letter from Stanisław Lem. I am here the exception that
proves the rule, because after the first conversation with the Writer, I realized who he was as a human

the view of the author, the neologism „Michnikowszczyzna” (“Michnikism”) refers to Michnik himself, his
collaborators and the views presented by Gazeta Wyborcza. Ziemkiewicz describes in detail their excessive and
negative impact on the shape of politics in Poland, especially during the 1990s. Anyway, circulation of Gazeta
Wyborcza is now (year 2021) well below 100,000 copies, while in year 2007 it was above 600,000 copies
(Michał Kurdupski „Sprzedaż ‘Gazety Wyborczej’ spadła o 29 tysiecy egzemplarzy”- “Sales of ‘Gazeta
Wyborcza’ dropped by 29 thousand copies” wirtualnemedia.pl as on 7 November 2017 - access on 12-11-2917)
so it is firing the staff and its office space was reduced in year 2020 by 40% („’Gazeta Wyborcza’ zmniejsza
przestrzeń redakcyjną o 40%” - “’Gazeta Wyborcza’ reduces its editorial space by 40%” www.wirtualnemedia.pl
as on 31-07-2020).
144
It was a newspaper founded in 1947 on the initiative of Bolesław Piasecki as a voice of the Roman Catholic
PAX (Peace) Association, collaborating with the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic. This newspaper
promoted the cooperation of Roman Catholic circles with the authorities of the Polish People's Republic. It
ceased to be published in 1997. This magazine was often criticized by the Polish Episcopate, which never
recognized it officially as a Roman Catholic magazine. In October 1956, an article by Bolesław Piasecki entitled
„Instynkt państwowy” (“The state instinct”) became the pretext for the campaign against the author and against
the PAX Association. This campaign led to the abduction and murder of Bolesław Piasecki’s son - Bohdan, and
the perpetrators of this crime have remained unpunished to this day, despite the fact that Piasecki was then a
member of the State Council (the collegial equivalent of the state president’s office). It is believed that it was
either the result of the internal party struggle within the communist Polish United Workers’ Party or the revenge
of some Zionist circles for the pre-war anti-Jewish statements of Bolesław Piasecki.
145
Warszawa: Oficyna „Rękodzieło”, 1999.
146
Warszawa: Oficyna „Rękodzieło”, 2019.

86
being, so I did not insist on continuing to be acquainted with a person whom I considered very
unreliable after the first minutes of our conversation. On the other hand, virtually all the letters
contained in the brochure published by Remuszko add nothing to lemology, with notable exception for
the abovementioned “divorce letter” and Stanisław Lem’s categorical statements that he was not
working for the UB i.e. the communist Secret State Politcal Police (letter of 8 December 1989). In
those letters Remuszko (with a rather pathetic result) tries to imitate Lem’s pseudo-baroque epistolary
style, and Lem, especially after year 1988, had nothing interesting or revealing to say. Nevertheless, as
a chronicler, I had to include Remuszko book in that study, which I did, and I repeat it again, mostly as
a chronicler’s obligation.

Letter from the editorial office of Rzeczpospolita to Stanisław Lem dated February 1993

„Divorce letter” sent by Lem to Remuszko, dated May 1993

87
In translation to English (with original mistakes made by Lem):
STANISŁAW LEM
66 Narwik Street
30-436 Cracow
Tel. 66-00-92
Cracow in May 93
Mr. S. Remuszko
Warsaw, 02 784
Dunikowskiego 8/44
Dear Sir,
Although I had almost finished the draft of a version of an “interview”,
which I was ready to send to you, your letter nullified my intention.
Questions, on which you insist, I consider as being without any sense, and
if you think that they are better, so please find yourself another
respondent, not me. The draft goes to the rubbish bin and I ask you to stop
molesting me.
Any subsequent letter, fax, pix, drax and srax 147 from you will land in a
rubbish bin.
Farewell for ages!
(Signature of Stanisław Lem)

Remuszko was going to publish these letters during Stanisław Lem’s lifetime. In 1997, Prawo i Życie
(Law and Life) informed about the civil litigation that Lem initiated against Remuszko148. At that time,
the court temporarily prohibited the publication of these letters, but later changes in the copyright law
allowed Remuszko to publish his correspondence with Lem, even against the will of the writer’s heirs.
The publication of these letters should be considered an overwhelmingly positive event, despite the
fact that these letters do not really add anything important to our knowledge of Stanisław Lem.

147
Reference to „making a shit”.
148
Wojciech Duda „Listy Lema” (“Lem‘s Letters“) Prawo i Życie No 22 of 21 May 1997 p. 6.

88
Stanisław Lem (at the left) and Stanisław Remuszko (at the right) at Stanisław Lem’s residence in
Cracow-Kliny, late 20th century
Source: courtesy of late Stanisław Remuszko

Stanisław Remuszko (at the left) and Lech Keller (at the right) in Warsaw-Ursynów on 25th August
2020
Source: Author’s archive

89
 SUMMARY

PL+50. Historie przyszłości (PL+50. Future Histories)

Cover of: Jacek Dukaj (ed.) PL+50. Historie przyszłości Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie 2004
Cover artist Andrzej Sykut
I will conclude my analysis of the period of Stanisław Lem’s decline with a critique of one of his last
political polemic texts, which appeared as „Orzeł biały na tle nerwowym” (“White Eagle on a Nervous
Background’) in the anthology edited by Jacek Dukaj PL + 50. Future Histories149. This text is
representative of the period of Lem’s decline, as the analysis it contains is extremely incomplete,
superficial and shallow, as Lem limited his time and spatial horizon to the current Polish politics at the
time (early 21st century). This essay begins with a reference to the civil war in Iraq and the accusations
of Islam for “the lack of calls to love one’s neighbour”, as if other religions, including Lem’s, i.e.
Judaism and other Abrahamic religions such as, for example Roman Catholicism, seriously called for
this love. Lem in this essay uncritically states that the Warsaw authorities were supporting Washington
in this dirty aggressive war, contrary to the position of the rest of Europe and ignores the consequences
of adopting such a short-sighted position. He also prophetesses, as can be seen from the hindsight -
very incorrectly, the failure of the Polish motorway and expressway construction program, exaggerates
the so-called the Stan Tymiński scandal (as if Lech Wałęsa, incidentally communist secret politcal
police collaborator cryptonym “Bolek”, was not the same, if not even worse disaster for Poland as
Tymiński) and clearly overestimates the importance of Andrzej Lepper and his „Samoobrona (“Self-
Defense”) movement.

It is known that although Lepper was appointed in May 2006 deputy prime minister and minister of
agriculture in the government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, and a little later he took the same positions
in the government of Jarosław Kaczyński, in September of the same year Jarosław Kaczyński
announced dismissal of Lepper/ It was motivated by the presentation by Lepper of a long list of budget

149
Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie 2004, pp. 549-556.

90
demands 150 that had not been agreed upon beforehand and called such behaviour “warcholstwo”
(pigheadedness), to which Andrzej Lepper retorted with a statement about Jarosław’s rudeness. Thus,
on 22nd September 2006, President Lech Kaczyński (Prime Minister Jarosław’s twin brother)
dismissed Andrzej Lepper from all government positions, although on 16th October of the same year
he reappointed him to both offices. On 9th July 2007, Andrzej Lepper was again dismissed from these
positions in connection with the Central Anticorruption Bureau’s investigation into the land scandal,
which was an obvious provocation on the part of the Kaczyński brothers, but which ended Lepper’s
political career151. In the early elections in 2007, Andrzej Lepper ran for re-election without success
(he received only 8,459 votes) and the list of his political party, i.e. Self-Defense of the Republic of
Poland, did not exceed the election threshold of 5%. In year 2008, Lepper ran unsuccessfully in the
supplementary elections to the Senate in the Krosno constituency, obtaining only 3435 votes (only
about 4.1% of all votes cast) and taking fourth place out of twelve candidates.

On 30th of August 2010, the state prosecutor from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw
presented Lepper with allegations of false testimony in the prosecutor’s proceedings concerning the
leakage of the land scandal. Andrzej Lepper did not admit to the alleged offense and refused to
provide explanations, but in October 2010 the indictment in this case was referred to the District Court
in Koszalin and the trial began in April 2011. The status of auxiliary prosecutor was given to a certain
Zbigniew Ziobro, the minister (nomen omen) of justice in 2005-2007 and again from 2015, also
known for the fact that, Leszek Miller, former prime minister of Poland called him a “zero” during the
hearing before parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Lew Rywin affair152.

150
Such as wage increases for health care workers, teachers and scientists, increases in pensions, agricultural fuel
subsidies, extended agricultural insurance, a veterinarian in each district, etc.
151
It broke out in the summer of 2007, leading to the resignation of Andrzej Lepper - the then Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of Agriculture, and the disintegration of the ruling coalition of PiS, LPR (League of Polish
Families) and Lepper’s Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland. According to information provided by the
media, the case began with information that was spread by two businessmen that they could change of status of
any plot of land in Poland, and thus significantly increase its market price, by opening it for other use than
agricultural. The Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA), in order to disclose the details of the case, launched a
provocation against them. CBA agents commissioned by Jarosław Kaczyński, pretending to be Swiss
entrepreneurs, offered them a bribe in exchange for help in changing legal status of a certain plot of land. During
the action, the CBA was to obtain information that part of the bribe was to go to Andrzej Lepper, Janusz
Maksymiuk and one more person. On 6th of October 2009, in connection with this case, the prosecutor of the
Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Rzeszów charged the then Head of the CBA, Mariusz Kamiński, with charges
against, among others, abuse of powers and committing offences against the credibility of documents. The
indictment in this case was brought to the court in September of year 2010. Andrzej Lepper was then granted the
status of an aggrieved party. However, on 16th November 2015, the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej
Duda, pardoned four people related to this land scandal: Mariusz Kamiński, Maciej Wąsik, Grzegorz Postek and
Krzysztof Brendel, although the Supreme Court of Poland, in its judgment of 31st May 2017, considered this
pardon as unlawful.
152
It is the colloquial name of one of the largest and unexplained corruption scandals of the Third Polish
Republic, which broke out against the background of an alleged corruption proposal that one Lew Rywin - film
producer and former communist apparatchik of Jewish origin, was to submit on 22nd July 2002 to Adam Michnik
(Aaron Szechter) - influential politician of Jewish origin, editor-in-chief of the neoliberal, pro-Western (mostly
pro-German), pro-Zionist and anti-Russian Gazeta Wyborcza.

91
On 5th of August 2011, Andrzej Lepper was found dead in his party’s office in Warsaw. As it was
established in the course of the completed official prosecution proceedings, Andrzej Lepper committed
suicide by hanging himself because, according to the official version, he suffered from depression
caused by criminal proceedings, political collapse, debts of many thousands zlotys and the financial
bankruptcy of his party. However, soon after his death, alternative theories emerged according to
which Lepper was to be murdered. They were presented, among others, by well-known investigative
journalist Wojciech Sumliński in his book Niebezpieczne związki Andrzeja Leppera (Dangerous
Liaisons of Andrzej Lepper)153 , citing, inter alia, Tomasz Budzyński - an officer of the Internal
Security Agency (Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego) and pointing out that the motive was to be
information embarrassing politicians, which Andrzej Lepper has collected. The suicide version was
also ruled out by his political associate Janusz Maksymiuk, pointing to Lepper’s planning a new
election campaign.

And so on. Lem’s essay, which was supposed to showy end this volume, became its anticlimax, a
balloon burst, laboriously and often not without a good effect, inflated by the authors who preceded
him, including later Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Łukasz Orbitowski, Marek Oramus, Edmund
Wnuek-Lipiński, Lech Jęczmyk, Jadwiga Staniszkis, Ryszard Kapuściński and even controversial
sociologist, former officer of Stalinist military police Zygmunt Bauman and Jacek Dukaj - the editor
of this volume.

By the way, in his review of this volume, Wojciech Kajtoch noticed the obvious, that this is only pure
speculation, as "social or civilization development cannot be predicted in principle"154 and "the futility
of predicting the development of technology it is (...) obvious - because it is decided by inventions and
discoveries which - when implemented - cause technological upheavals; and the invention and
discovery cannot be predicted” 155 "and more importantly156:
One of the favorite mental activities in times of change is and has been the anticipation of possible social
development scenarios. It is not about utopias in this case - they (or ironizing about them) were rather the
fruit of ideas about an ideal system, unknown to humanity at least since the times of Plato, and especially
intensifying in the “centuries of reason”, such as the Renaissance, Enlightenment, first three decades of
the second half of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century in communist countries.
And this could actually end all analyzes or reviews of all kinds of futurological forecasts, were it not
for the fact that they provide us with the reliability of the best Swiss watch, the so-called
Schadenfreude, or the pleasure derived from someone else’s failure. And this is probably the reason,
sadistic from the readers’ point of view, and masochistic from the point of view of the authors of these
forecasts, why such forecasts are still being created and analyzed. I am only surprised that Stanisław
Lem, after his experience from writing Fantastyka i futurologia (SF and Futurology), again allowed
himself to be persuaded to write, in earnest, another and by definition incorrect forecast.

***

153
Warszawa: Reporter 2016. He is the author of, among others, such books as Niebezpieczne związki
Bolesława Komorowskiego (Dangerous Liaisons of Bolesław Komorowski Warszawa: Reporter 2015) and
Niebezpieczne związki Donalda Tuska (Dangerous Liaisons of Donald Tusk Warszawa: Reporter 2018).
154
Wojciech Kajtoch „Nasza i moja przyszłość w Europie (na marginesie ‘PL+50’)”- („Ours and my future in
Europe (on the margin of ‘PL + 50’)” in Szkice o fantastyce (Sketches on fantastic literature) Stawiguda:
Solaris, 2015 str. 98.
155
Ibid. p. 99.
156
Ibid. p. 99.

92
On 17th of June 2021, on 100th anniversary of Stanisław Lem’s birth, China successfully launched
mission sending astronauts to its new space station, bringing the country one step closer to completing
it. The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft, or Divine Vessel, was launched on a Long March-2F carrier rocket
from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China’s Gobi Desert. The mission sent the crew
to the core module of the new space station, called Tiangong or Heavenly Palace, which is still under
construction in a low Earth orbit.

A Long March-2F rocket carrying a crew of Chinese astronauts in a Shenzhou-12 spaceship lifts off at
the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Jiuquan, north western China, on 17th June 2021
Source: Photograph by Ng Han Guan via AP Photo
The mission is led by Nie Haisheng, the oldest member of the team and a former fighter pilot with the
People’s Liberation Army. Liu Boming, the second oldest team member, who joined China’s 2008
space mission, in which he helped Zhai Zhigang become the first Chinese astronaut to conduct a
spacewalk. The crew’s youngest member, Tang Hongbo, is the only one who was not yet in space,
despite training for 11 years. All three are members of the Chinese Communist Party, as the mission
coincides with the Party's 100-year anniversary, a major national event set for 1st July 2021.

The spacecraft docked on 18th of June 2021 with the core module, about six and a half hours after
launch. The crew was to stay in orbit for three months to test the space station. The Shenzhou-12
mission is the first crewed mission and the third launch of a total of 11 launches for China’s space
station construction. During the three months, two long-duration spacewalks ere planned. After this
mission, another three crewed space crafts and two laboratory modules are to be sent to the space
station, with the aim of completing its construction by the end of 2022157.

157
Jessie Yeung and Yong Xiong „China successfully launches mission sending astronauts to new space station“
- https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/16/china/china-manned-mission-space-launch-intl-hnk-scn/index.html
(accessed on 17-06-2021).

93
THE FALL AND THE END OF STANISŁAW LEM AS A WRITER AND A HUMAN BEING

The grave of Stanisław Lem at the Salwator (Salvator) Cemetery in Cracow

Source: Wikipedia „Stanisław Lem” (accessed on 16-09-2019)

After this analysis of Stanisław Lem’s final political essays, there should be no doubt that he was since
the late 1980s, especially in the final years of his life, quite an average political writer, of little interest
to most of his former readers. It refers mostly to the 1990s and in his last unfinished decade at the
beginning of the 21st century. At that time he was only a political writer in the very narrow sense of the
word, i.e. he wrote mainly about politics understood as only the current affairs, that is, first of all,
guerrilla fights, not even the same as before, i.e. between the great political blocs (East vs West), but
only between bourgeois political parties and their factions. Thus, Lem’s recent political essays, such as
those published in in the 1980s in Kultura (Paris), were among his least successful texts, not only
political ones. The reason for this is probably mainly because he wrote then for strictly defined and
highly conservative, right-wing, mostly émigré readers in a highly reactionary émigré journal edited
by an archaic, being at the end of his life, an “operetta” Polish-speaking Lithuanian prince, thus trying
meet the expectations of both the editor of this magazine and its far-right readers and, above all, the
CIA’s principals, who financed this monthly. This had to give a rather unsatisfactory result. Using
Lem to comment on current affairs was like using a thoroughbred Arabian horse to haul a coal rig, or a
Rolls-Royce or Mercedes-Benz S-class as a taxi. Stanisław Lem, in the best years of his life, was a
writer interested in the mechanisms of power and its historical development, and therefore the
philosophy or theory of political science suited him more than commenting on current events, no
matter how important or interesting they could be.

However, there is no problem with considering almost all essays in Wejście na orbitę, Rozprawy i
szkice, Prowokacja, Lube czasy, Dziury w całym or Sex wars as political. Even volumes such as
Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju or Bomba megabitowa, which seemingly mainly concern computers
(information technology), can also be considered political, as almost every implementation of any
technology has political repercussions. However, the main problem here is the constant decline in the
quality of Lem’s work since 1987. So Rasa drapieżców, Świat na krawędzi and Okamgnienie are

94
no longer as good books as even the slightly earlier Sex wars, Tajemnica chińskiego pokoju or
Bomba megabitowa, while all of Lem's essay collections published after year 1987 are definitely
worse than his earlier Dialogues and Summa Technologiae. Even more - the difference between
these two masterpieces and the books published by Lem after 1987 is so great that one might even
suppose that they were written by completely different authors.

So here is my conclusion: it would be much better if Lem’s reputation had not been spoiled (tarnished)
by the works written and published by him after the critical year 1987. Because his literary output,
from the late 1950s until almost the late 1980s, was almost always of very high quality, with the
possible exception of a completely unsuccessful Philosophy of Chance, so Lem should not publish
anything after the noticeable decline in his creative and critical powers, that is, from the late 1980s.
Also: Lem, as (most likely) the best-earning writer not only in Poland, but also in the entire region of
Central and Eastern Europe (due to his popularity in the West, especially in Austria, Germany,
Switzerland and English-speaking countries) had no need to publish anything after 1987 in order to
live in comfortable conditions. On the contrary - he signed then, out of pure greed, a contract with
Hollywood for a million dollars, for the second, unfortunately much worse, American adaptation of
Solaris, even as he was then a very wealthy person not only in Poland, but also according to the then
Western European standards. As a result, the publication of his many and much worse books in period
1987-2006 became a completely futile and pointless event, and all this proves that even a genius can
be wrong and that previous, extraordinary achievements do not exclude a later period of decline,
which did not serve the writer’s reputation well and is a cause of shame and regret for those of his
numerous readers who would like to remember Stanisław Lem as a giant of literature, not only SF, i.e.
from the period between Eden and Fiasco, not Lem - the author of the cheesy Man from Mars or his
last, miserable , collections of political essays.

There is not even the slightest doubt that Stanisław Lem was undoubtedly an outstanding writer in the
period between Astronauts and Fiasco, and for many years - roughly from 1957 (the first edition of
The Star Diaries) to 1987 (when the last his novels Fiasco and Peace on Earth were published in
Poland), that is, for well over a quarter of a century, he was a writer of the highest world class. One
could even risk the claim that in his best period of creativity he was the most outstanding writer
writing in Polish in the entire history of Polish literature to date, as he met with both a positive and
often even enthusiastic opinion of professional critics, practically all over the world: from Portugal
and America in the West to Japan and China in the East and from Scandinavia in the North to Italy and
Greece in the South, and its influence on world literature, not only science fiction, academic critics is
often compared to the influence of Julius Verne, H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. There is also a huge
popularity of Lem’s science-fiction works among readers, especially in the former Soviet Union, and
also in Poland and in Slavic- and German-speaking countries. It is assumed that Stanisław Lem’s
books have been translated in over half a hundred countries into over 40 languages, and they have
reached a total circulation of over 30 million copies158, practically without much help from the Polish
authorities, which often seemed to disturb Lem more than helping him. This applies both to the times

158
The official website of Stanisław Lem, i.e. solaris.lem.pl and Wikipedia, states that his books have been
translated into over 40 languages and they have reached a total circulation of over 30 million copies (Polish
version) and in the English-language Wikipedia version it is up to 41 languages and over 45 million copies. On
the other hand, Wiktor Jaźniewicz - outstanding Polish-Belorussian lemologist believes that Lem’s works were
published in over 40 languages, in more than 50 countries and with a circulation of over 35 million copies, of
which at least 13 million in Russian, at least 9 million in Polish, and in German, and probably also at least (in my
opinion) 7 million in English. After all, Jaźniewicz has been, for many years, probably the most reliable source
of data when it comes to the work of Stanisław Lem.
As for the number of languages into which Stanisław Lem’s works have been translated, the situation is
complicated by the fact that some linguists believe that, for example, there are separate Croatian, Serbian and
even Bosnian languages, and that Flemish is separate from Dutch language and that there is a Brazilian and even
American (spoken in the USA) language, while other scientists, including myself, believe that Croatian, Serbian
and Bosnian are Serbo-Croatian dialects, Flemish and even Afrikaans are dialects of Dutch (Netherlandic),
Brazilian is dialect of Portuguese and so-called American is a dialect of English.

95
of the People’s Republic of Poland and the Third Polish Republic, which, due to the inherent stupidity
of its post-Solidarity and post-communist power elites, promoted and promotes him as another boring,
pro-regime classic.

Franz Rottensteiner noticed also159:

Poles generally have no understanding how publishing in the West works. Many Polish fans thought that
Lem was a bestseller in the West; but the opposite was the case, from a commercial point of view he
always was, except for Germany and to some extent Japan, a marginal author. Lem's editor at Helen and
Kurt Wolff books once told me that she was often asked by colleagues why they published so many Lem
books when he didn't sell? And of course, in the book industry people know how books from other
publishers do. But they believed in his literary worth, and were not interested in SF per se at all. Lem also
expected wonders from an American agent, perhaps money-wise he was justified, but Gotler was a film
agent, and he didn't talk at all with Harcourt about further books. Lem could have given him just the
representation of film rights. Of course, there are more “dynamic” publishers--but they prefer more
dynamic authors. He never appreciated how much care they took with translations. Lem sometimes liked
boast how much work he had with translators. But in fact, whenever he took a hand, it was a catastrophe.
There was a story collection planned by Harcourt, and he recommended a woman who was very sure of
her abilities and very aggressive, but not competent, I am told. Because the book didn't appear for some
time, Lem wanted the rights back, in a series of ever more insulting letters, and finally got to keep the half
of the advance already paid. I suppose he thought his new agent would resell the book for a higher price,
but it never appeared, nor did any other Lem book during his lifetime. I probably could have asked for
more money for Lem, but doubt that then so many books would have been translated. IN other countries
few books have earned additional royalties. In France, Calmann-Levy was a respectable, mildly
successful publisher, not so “dynamic” as Robert Laffont, but after one book Laffont refused to do more.
Lem had a lot of translations, but sales were always poor when there were normal market conditions.

As for Lem as a human being, the situation is not so simple. He spent the German occupation period
actively collaborating with the Nazis, if we take at face value his memoirs concerning the period of the
German occupation, mainly in the books by Stanisław Bereś and Tomasz Fiałkowski, and based on
conversations with him 160 . Anyway, Stanisław Lem and his parents must have had a 100% legal
“Aryan” papers for a long time, as otherwise, with their distinctly “non-Aryan” appearance and pre-
war acquaintances that exposed them as Jews, they, and especially not hiding himself Stanisław,
would not survive long in German-occupied Lvov - a city terrorized during the Nazi occupation by
various open and secret German161, Ukrainian162 and Jewish police163 and with the Polish underground

159
Letter dated 22nd of March 2021.
160
They are books by Bereś: Lem über Lem. Gespräche (Lem about Lem. Conversations) Frankfurt am
Main: Insel, 1986), Rozmowy ze Stanisławem Lemem (Conversations with Stanisław Lem) Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987 and Tako rzecze… Lem (Thus Spake... Lem) Kraków: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 2002 and by Fiałkowski Świat na krawędzi. Ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Tomasz
Fiałkowski (The World on the Edge. Tomasz Fiałkowski talks to Stanisław Lem) Kraków: Wydawnictwo
Literackie, 2000 and 2007 (2nd edition).
161
First of all, it was the Sicherheitspolizei, i.e. the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), i.e. the
Security Service. The Security Police consisted of the Criminal Police (Kripo) and the Gestapo (Geheime
Staatspolizei, i.e. the Secret State Police), as well as the SS police (SS-Polizeiregiment) and the Ordnungspolizei,
i.e. the “Ordinary” or Order Police, which included, among others, Schutzpolizei (Schupo or uniformed police),
traffic police (Verkehrspolizei), railway police (Bahnspolizei, also called “the blacks’), factory (industrial) police
(Werkschutz), and postal police (Postschutz), Sonderdienst (special service) units, auxiliary police (Hilfspolizei)
formed from members of the German paramilitary self defence units (Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz). There was
also the Feldgendarmerie (“Field Gendarmerie”) and later Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police), but it was
limited in practice to the uniformed German soldiers.
162
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (Ukrainische Hilfspolizei, Українська допоміжна поліція). Large number of
Ukrainian police officers was also members of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, i.e. the OUN.
The Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft battalions (Ukrainische Schutzmannschaft - Protection Battalions or Police
Battalions, also known as the black police) were also active in Lvov and its vicinity. All these formations were
subordinate to the High SS and Police Commander in Cracow (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer “Ost”), who was
also a member of the GG government, subordinate to the general governor Hans Frank. More, for example, in
Wikipedia - entry “Organization of the police and security apparatus in the General Government”.

96
(mostly right-wing, pro-Western AK i.e. the Home Army) definitely indisposed to the Jews. In his
collaboration with the Nazis, Stanisław Lem went so far as to hide a war criminal, i.e. a Jewish
policeman, the so-called Odman, if we take what he told Fiałkowski as true. It must be not forgotten
that an Odman, i.e. Jewish policeman in the ghetto was- a person responsible for terrorizing his
countrymen in the Lviv ghetto and for delivering further contingents of his countrymen to the
reloading yard, i.e. Umschlagplatz, from where these contingents went straight to the German
extermination (death) camps164:
For several days I was hiding a friend in the attic who worked in the Jewish militia, Ordnungsdienst. As
he went further into the world, I decided it was better to swim from there, because if they caught him, he
might lead them to my trail, which would end rather badly for me. Then I moved to Zielona Street.

Due to their collaboration with the Nazis, the Lems could not move with the vast majority of Lvov
inhabitants of non-Ukrainian origin to Wrocław or Upper Silesia, and they had to spend years in
cramped shared flats in Cracow. For the same reason, Stanisław Lem was afraid to fly to the USA,
despite the invitation he had received from the consulate of the United States of America, and for the
same reason Stanisław Lem, despite his undoubtedly Jewish origin, rejected the possibility of
emigrating to Israel in advance, because he was afraid that he might be recognized there by someone
who might have remembered him as a Nazi collaborator. And for the same reason, after the war,
Stanisław Lem traveled only to Germany and to Germany’s former allies from World War II, or to
countries whose governments or large parts of population actively collaborated with Germany during
that war, i.e. primarily to Austria, i.e. formally to Hitler’s homeland, and also (alphabetically) to
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia and
Hungary165.

After the liberation of Lvov from German occupation, Stanisław Lem wrote submissive letters to the
authorities of the USSR, offering the Bolsheviks his services - including as a constructor of huge tanks
- “land battleships” - see chapter III. The Soviet authorities, however, ignored those symptoms of
collaboration that they were ideas that, even then, in the 1940s, were outdated, as naval battleships
turned out to be practically defenseless against massive aviation attacks at the end of World War II -
we are talking here about the largest battleships ever built, i.e. the Japanese Yamato and Musashi, and
many other, slightly smaller armored ships of all major fleets at the time, such as, for example,
German largest battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz). Due to their collaboration with the Nazis, the Lems
were also unable to move to Wrocław or to Upper Silesia (Katowice conurbation), so they initially had
to crowd for years in small, rented Cracow flats.

163
They were the Odmans or members of the Jewish police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, literally Jewish Order
Service). It was partially subordinated to the Judenrat, i.e. collaborating with the Nazis Jewish self-government
in the ghetto.
164
Świat na krawędzi. Ze Stanisławem Lemem rozmawia Tomasz Fiałkowski (World on the Brink.
Stanisław Lem Talks to Tomasz Fiałkowski) Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2007 p. 47. In original
Polish: „Ukrywałem przez kilka dni na strychu kolegę, który pracował w milicji żydowskiej, Ordnungsdienst.
Kiedy poszedł dalej w świat, uznałem, że lepiej stamtąd spłynąć, bo gdyby go złapali, mógł ich naprowadzić na
mój ślad, co by się dla mnie skończyło raczej niedobrze. Przeprowadziłem się wtedy na ulicę Zieloną”.
Lem calls here the Jewish auxiliary police “militia”, which is a serious mistake, perhaps committed by him on
purpose. The truth is that the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst consisted of the Jewish police units inside the ghettos,
labour and concentration camps. They were subordinate to the Judenrats (the Jewish self-governments), who in
turn were actively collaborating with Nazi Germany. The units of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst were used by the
German occupant for requisitions, round-ups, escorting displaced persons and deportation actions, as the
Germans usually did not catch their Jewish victims in the ghetto - such round-ups were ordered by the Odmen,
who provided contingents of their countrymen for the so-called Umschlagplatz (reloading yard), where the
Germans appeared and took them to the German death camps, e.g. in Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Bełżec, Majdanek
(Lublin) or Treblinka.
165
At that time, Croatia was then a republic within the Yugoslav Federation, and Russia and Ukraine were in the
same capacity within the Soviet Union.

97
Stanisław Lem simply lied when he wrote for a German newspaper that166:
I knew that my ancestors were Jews, but I knew nothing about the Mosaic faith and, regrettably, nothing
at all about Jewish culture.
It was although he had on a high school diploma excellent result in Judaism167. He also deliberately
lied to Bereś, giving him the wrong date of repatriation from Lvov, and confessed to Fiałkowski,
which he probably later strongly regretted, that he was in dealings not only with German and Soviet
occupiers, but also with at least one Jewish policeman i.e. the Odman. As a human he was therefore
very unbelievable. He was simply an ordinary opportunist who always and everywhere collaborated
with the current authorities, unless they were already on the brink of collapse and therefore he fled in
Lvov from the German company Rohstofferfassung (working for the Wehrmacht) and from Beutepark
der Luftwaffe (German Air Force Facility), when it was already obvious that the Third Reich is about
to collapse, and it began to work in earnest in People’s Poland in the so-called democratic opposition,
when it was already known, after the obvious failure of Gorbachev’s “reforms”, that the days of Soviet
power were numbered - not only in the USSR itself, but also in Poland.

There was nothing surprising in this, as intelligent rats always escape from a sinking ship - no matter if
it is inept, corrupt and basically illegal Sanacja i.e. pre-war Polish government (Lvov, September
1939), or the Soviet in other words Bolshevik government ( Lvov 1941, Warsaw 1989) or the Nazi
authorities (Lvov 1944) or the sinking of socialist realism (Poland 1956). The worst thing about it is
that Lem has always created himself to be a fighter for the cause (here you can insert the name of the
current case) and that in his old age he probably believed his lies and actually considered himself an
immaculate knight, fighting only for a good cause, except that he probably would not have been able
to explain what specific cause he had fought for since coming of age in 1939, except for his own and
his closest family welfare.

The Jewish origin of Stanisław Lem is no explanation here, as many Polish Jews survived the German
occupation without collaborating with the Nazis and survived the years of the Polish People’s
Republic without collaborating with the so-called communists, i.e. Bolsheviks from the PPR/PZPR
parties. The fact that the vast majority of Polish Jews who survived these two difficult periods,
survived them only because they collaborated with these totalitarian regimes, is also no excuse for
Stanisław Lem, because the cost of this collaboration was such that it does not justify its benefits. As
the eminent Jewish poet aptly put it168:

166
Franz Rottensteiner (red.) Microworlds San Diego, Nowy Jork and London: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1984 p. 4 - chapter „Reflections on My Life” originally as „Mein Leben” („My Life”) in Neue Rundschau No 4
of November 1983.
167
See copy of secondary school-leaving examination certificate of Stanisław Herman Lem in the archives of the
Jagiellonian University - file reference number WL II 387.
168
It is “The Song of the Murdered Jewish Nation” by Icchak Kacenelson - a shocking poem written in 1944
with a moving introduction, combining elements of an autobiographical story, a historical account and a
mourning threnody, being one of the most original accounts of a Holocaust (Shoah) witness. Kacenelson lost his
wife and two sons in the Warsaw ghetto, and was hiding with his third son on the Aryan side after the ghetto
uprising. He was found by the Nazis in the Hotel Polski, from which he was taken with his son to the
concentration camp in Vittel, France, where this “Song” was written. Kacenelson was murdered by the Germans
and their accomplices in the German extermination camp in Auschwitz in May 1944. In translation to Polish
from Salomon Łastik and Arnold Słucki (eds.) Antologia poezji żydowskiej (Anthology of Jewish Poetry)
Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1983, pp. 104-112:
Jam jest ten, który to widział, który przyglądał się z bliska,
Jak dzieci, żony i mężów, i starców mych siwogłowych
Niby kamienie i szczapy na wozy oprawca ciskał
I bił bez cienia litości, lżył nieludzkimi słowy.
Patrzyłem na to zza okna, widziałem morderców bandy -
O, Boże, widziałem bijących i bitych, co na śmierć idą.
I ręce załamywałem ze wstydu. Wstydu i hańby –
Rękoma Żydów zadano śmierć Żydom – bezbronnym Żydom!
Zdrajcy, co w lśniących cholewach biegli po pustej ulicy
Jak ze swastyką na czapkach – z tarczą Dawida, szli wściekli

98
 I am the one who saw it, who looked closely,
When my children, my wives, and husbands, and my grey-headed old men
Like stones and chips, the torturer threw on the carts
And he beat without mercy and slandered with inhuman words.
I looked at it from the window, saw gangs of killers -
Oh, God, I saw those who were beating and the beaten going to death.
And I wrung my hands with shame. Shame and disgrace -
The defenceless Jews were put to death by the hands of the Jews!
Traitors, who in shiny boots, ran along the empty street
As with the swastika on their caps - with the Shield of David, they went furious
With mouths that hurt foreign words, they are arrogant and wild,
Those who threw us down the stairs, who dragged us out of our houses.
Those who torn the doors out of the frames, violently bursting in, thieves,
With the baton rose to the blow - to the homes full of terror.
They beat us, chased old people, and drove our youngest
Somewhere to the frightened streets. And they spit God in the face.
They found us in wardrobes and pulled us out from under the beds,
And they cursed, “Go to hell on the Umschlag, your place is there!”
They dragged all of us out of our flats, and then they rummaged in them longer,
To take our last clothes, a piece of bread and grain.
And on the street - go crazy! Look and feel troubled, because here it is
A dead street, and with one scream it became a terror -
Empty and full from end to end like never before -
Carts! And because of despair and screaming it is hard for carts.
Jews in them! They tear hairs from heads and wring hands.
Some are silent - their silence is even a louder screaming.
They are watching. Their gaze. Is it real? Maybe a bad dream and nothing else?
With them the Jewish police - cruel and wild thugs!
And from the side - the German looks at them with a slight smile,
The German has stopped afar and is watching - he does not interfere,
He is killing my Jews using Jewish hands!

Below is translation from the original Yiddish by Jack Hirschman from” Yitzhak Katzenelson The
Song Of The Massacred Jewish People Berkeley, California: Regent Press, 2021 pp. 33-38:
O My Pains!

Pains! O my pains… Blessed, you blessed Jews!

Z gębą, co słowa im obce kaleczy, butni i dzicy,

Co nas zrzucali ze schodów, którzy nas z domów wywlekli.
Co wyrywali drzwi z futryn, gwałtem wdzierali się, łotrzy,
Z pałką wzniesioną do ciosu – do domów przejętych trwogą.
Bili nas, gnali starców, pędzili naszych najmłodszych
Gdzieś na struchlałe ulice. I prosto w twarz pluli Bogu.
Odnajdywali nas w szafach i wyciągali spod łóżek,
I klęli: „Ruszać, do diabła, na umschlag, tam miejsce wasze!”
Wszystkich nas z mieszkań wywlekli, potem szperali w nich dłużej,
By wziąć ostatnie ubranie, kawałek chleba i kaszę.
A na ulicy – oszaleć! Popatrz i ścierpnij, bo oto
Martwa ulica, a jednym krzykiem się stała i grozą –
Od krańca po kraniec pusta, a pełna, jak nigdy dotąd –
Wozy! I od rozpaczy, od krzyku ciężko jest wozom.
W nich Żydzi! Włosy rwą z głowy i załamują ręce.
Niektórzy milczą – ich cisza jeszcze głośniejszym jest krzykiem.
Patrzą. Ich wzrok. Czy to jawa? Może zły sen i nic więcej?
Przy nich żydowska policja – zbiry okrutne i dzikie!
A z boku – Niemiec z uśmiechem lekkim spogląda na nich,
Niemiec przystanął z daleka i patrzy – on się nie wtrąca,
On moim Żydom zadaje śmierć żydowskimi rękami!

99
So blissfully secure in your ignorance on the other side
of the ocean. Ah, if my pains were able to speak,
they’d poison your life, darken your world.

Torments, you’re evermore a depth arisen in me.

What are you drilling for? Do you want to enter me
or go out of me? Don’t struggle so, pains. Grow,
grow in silence in me, you’re so very ruthless.

You’re gnawing at me, eyes closed, mouth open

like worms in a tomb…oh torments, oh sorrows!
Calm down and rest in me with my dead ones,
in my broken heart, like worms in the earth.

Ani hagvar* I’m the man who was present, saw

how they flung my kids, my women, young and
old, into wagons like stones, pieces of wood
pitilessly beaten and covered with insults.

I’ve looked out the window, seen the batterers,

O God, observed them and their blows and wring
my hands in shame, in shame and ignominy:
they’ve even used Jews to murder other Jews!

Converts and quasi apostates with shining boots,

wearing caps with stars of David like swastikas
and with a strange, coarse, rotten lingo pulled
us from our houses, threw us down the steps.

They broke through the doors, violently burst into boarded-up

Jewish houses, found us, beat us,
pushed us, young and old, toward the wagons,
spit in God’s face, profaned the light of day.

Took us from under beds, in closets, cursing:

“The wagon’s waiting. Up you go, to hell, to the
station**, to death.” Dragged us to the street while
searching for a last dress, kasha, bit of bread.

Look in the street and you’ll go crazy! The street’s

dead or rather it resonates with cries and shouts.
The street’s empty up and down but for wagons full of Jews,
in each one a long lament and outcry.

Wagons full of Jews wringing their hands, tearing at their hair,

some silent ones’ shouts are even louder.
They look ‘round. Is it a nightmare they’re in?
Jewish cops with boots and caps—poor me!

The German stands off to the side as if laughing to

himself; he observes but doesn’t intervene. Poor
me,— the German’s made Jews kill my Jews.
Look at the wagons, the shame, the agony

From my window I’ve seen the wagons full,

heard cries of grief rising skyward, silent, muted moans.
O wagons of sorrow full of the living en route to death.
Horses are moving, wheels turning.

O stupid horses, why hang your heads so sadly?

100
 Why, wheels, do you turn so slowly sad? Maybe
you know where you’re carrying the noble daughters
of my people, my brilliant sons?

Ah, if you knew, you’d savagely neigh, rear up and

like wringing hands, your legs both front and back
would buckle like legs in despair before all the world
and you wheels would stop turning ‘round.

But they don’t know. They move on, turning from

Nowolipki Street to Zamenhofa Street going to the station
where the train’s waiting to take us away,
return empty tomorrow. My blood’s freezing up!

Notes:
* “Ani hagvar” means “I am the man” (LK)
** Abbreviation of Umschlagplatz, where the train station was that took the Jews to their death (Jack
Hirschman)

***

Outstanding artists can be classified according to the course of their artistic career as169:
 Dying relatively young, in the best period of their artistic creativity, e.g. Vinenzo Bellini, Frederic
Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
 Dying at an advanced age, but fully creative to the end, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and
Richard Strauss;
 Long-lived, but basically giving up creativity at an advanced age, e.g. Gioachino Rossini and
 Living long and creating in an advanced age, even though they were not at their full creative
powers, e.g. Graham Greene, and unfortunately it also includes Stanisław Lem, who in 1985
criticized Green for that although “the lime ate his brain”, he continued writing170.

So with this, unfortunately, I finish the most important part of this study about Stanisław Lem. At the
end of it I show the photographs of probably the only (so far, at least) monument of Lem, i.e. from the
city of Kielce.

169
In other words, after the Fiasco, completed in 1986, Lem has shown signs of not so much the so-called
senility, understood after Mieczysław Wallis (Późna twórczość wielkich artystów - Late works of great
artists Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1975 p. 9) as a category of the late style, but rather a
marasmus senilis (progressive atrophy of the aged), not so much physical as mental in the case of Lem.
According to Wallis, this “artistic” senility is a style that can be observed when the creator is already aware of
his mastery, superiority in the field of art he practices and no longer feels obliged to respect any considerations
deeply rooted in traditions, sanctified for centuries by canons and conventions, receivers’ habits or even one’s
own creative past. He then has complete freedom in using the means that he uses in his art, does not make
concessions to the readers and thus does not help them in the reception of his work. As one can see, this does not
apply to the late works by Lem, only to his period after finishing Głos Pana (1968, His Master’s Voice) and
before returning to “classic” SF in Wizja lokalna (1982, Official Hearing on the Spot), i.e. to the period when
he wrote Doskonała próżnia (1971, A Perfect Vacuum), Wielkość urojona (1973, Imaginary Magnitude)
and Golem XIV (1981) and to his later experimental books such as Prowokacja (1984, The Provocation) and
Biblioteka XXI wieku (1986, The Library of the 21st Century, translated as One Human Minute).
170
A letter by Stanisław Lem to Virgilijus Čepaitis dated 6th of April 1985.

101
Monument of Stanisław Lem in the Alley of Famous People in Kielce, Poland - created by Leszek
Kurkowski in year 2009
Source: Photograph taken by the author on 3rd of October 2020

102
Monument of Stanisław Lem in the Alley of Famous People in Kielce, Poland - created by Leszek
Kurkowski in year 2009
Source: Photograph taken by the author on 3 rd of October 2020

103