Stanisław Lem - Influence

Influence

Franz Rottensteiner, Lem's former agent, was instrumental in introducing him to the Western audience, but they later separated on bitter terms. Rottensteiner summarized his importance:

With, Lem is the most successful author in modern Polish fiction; nevertheless his commercial success in the world is limited, and the bulk of his large editions was due to the special publishing conditions in the Communist countries: Poland, the Soviet Union, and the German Democratic Republic). Only in West Germany was Lem really a critical and a commercial success in recent years interest in him has waned. But he is the only writer of European SF of whom most books have been translated into English, and kept in print in the USA. Lem's critical success in English is due mostly to the excellent translations of Michael Kandel...

— Franz Rottensteiner, View from Another Shore: European Science Fiction, second updated edition, Liverpool University Press 1999, ISBN 0-85323-942-8, Note on the Authors: Stanislaw Lem, p. 252

Stanisław Lem, whose works were influenced by such masters of Polish literature as Cyprian Norwid and Stanisław Witkiewicz, chose the language of science fiction as in the communist People's Republic of Poland it was easier — and safer — to express ideas veiled in the world of fantasy and fiction than in the world of reality. Despite this — or perhaps because of this — he has become one of the most highly acclaimed science-fiction writers, hailed by critics as equal to the likes of H. G. Wells or Olaf Stapledon.

Lem's works influenced not only the realm of literature, but that of science as well. For example, Return from the Stars includes the "opton", which is often cited as the first published appearance of the idea of electronic paper.

In 1981 the philosophers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett included three extracts from Lem's fiction in their important annotated anthology The Mind's I. ... Hofstadter commented that Lem's "literary and intuitive approach... does a better job of convincing readers of his views than any hard-nosed scientific article... might do".