2006, ISBN: 9781156223017

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: … Meer...

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Stanisaw Lem (Polish pronunciation: ; 12 September 1921 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Stanisaw Lem (Polish pronunciation: ; 12 September 1921 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has twice been made into a feature film. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon claimed that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult and multiple translated versions of his works exist. Lem was born in 1921 in Lwów, Poland (now Ukraine). He was the son of Sabina Woller and Samuel Lem, a wealthy laryngologist and former physician in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Of Jewish ancestry, he was raised a Roman Catholic and later viewed himself as an atheist "for moral reasons. the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created. intentionally". After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, he was not allowed to study at the Polytechnic as he wished because of his "bourgeois origin" and only due to his father's connections was accepted to study medicine at Lwów University in 1940. During World War II and the Nazi occupation (19411944), Lem survived with false papers, earning a living as a car mechanic and welder, and becoming active in the resistance. (Lem's family had. More: Books, , Polish-Satirists~~Books-LLC, , , , , , , , , , General Books LLC<