[HN Gopher] The Truth, by Stanislaw Lem (1964)
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The Truth, by Stanislaw Lem (1964)
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-09-20 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| cjameskeller wrote:
| >"We did it on August 6"
|
| Notably, the Feast of the Transfiguration.
| [deleted]
| int_19h wrote:
| I wish the subject of "solar life" was explored more in sci-fi.
| It's something that shows up every now and then, but rarely in
| any detail, or significant to the plot.
|
| For another example along these lines, there's David Brin's
| "Sundiver": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96472.Sundiver
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Creative fantasy? If life exists in the plasma of a Sun, creating
| an artificial 'sun' would no more create life than building a
| crib creates a baby.
| superkuh wrote:
| The DKIST, a 4m diffraction limited solar telescope on top of a
| mountain in hawaii https://dkist.nso.edu/, comes online in
| science mode before the end of the year. It will be able to
| resolve tens of kilometer scale structures on the sun for the
| first time. There's still a lot left to be discovered on these
| small scales as the short timescale coherent radio emissions
| have indicated for decades. DKIST will give us our first images
| of whatever is making these very short radio burst... and
| whatever else is there we didn't predict.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The implication is that processes happen so much faster at
| temperatures over a million degrees that all you have to do is
| create the right conditions and then life evolves immediately
| from our temporal frame of reference.
|
| So the analogy would be closer to watching a goldilocks planet
| from the edge of the event horizon of a black hole.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Or a computer simulation running at 1 trillion X "real time".
| anarbadalov wrote:
| Fair warning, this story is about 9,000 words. But it's so rich
| and weird and dazzling. It's among my favorite Lem stories --
| although i admit i hadn't read anything of his until we (MIT
| Press, where i work) started reissuing his books last year, so
| i'm by no means an expert on him. Anyway, there was a lot of
| interest in an excerpt from Lem's memoir I submitted here a few
| months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25533405), so
| thought i'd share this as well.
| eigenhombre wrote:
| Really glad to hear there is an effort forward to bring out
| more of Lem's work. One of the most interesting SF authors,
| with what would seem to be a deeper understanding of actual
| science than most of the others I've read. I especially love
| His Master's Voice, and am happy to see that on the list of MIT
| reissues!
| woleium wrote:
| Lem is best known for Solaris, of which there are two film
| adaptations. imho the book is better than both films, and the
| first film is better than the second.
| regnull wrote:
| I read a lot of Lem when I was a kid. Solaris is great, it was
| definitely one of my favorites. Here's another one that I liked
| a lot: Return from the stars. It's funny how he predicted a lot
| of modern technology spot on, but his hero goes to a post
| office to send a telegram to his friend on another continent.
| rjsw wrote:
| Even in the first film there is only one brief scene that hints
| at the backstory that is a major part of the book.
| AQuantized wrote:
| I love his descriptions of the different phenomena like
| symmetriads. One of the few books I've read that describes a
| truly alien intelligence. The often recommend Blindsight being
| the other one I can think of.
| dkarl wrote:
| He is also known among programmers for The Cyberiad, which is
| available in an amazing English translation by Michael Kandel.
| The Cyberiad is a collection of tales about two Constructor
| robots who travel together and try to outdo each other at
| creating bizarre and often disastrous inventions to solve
| problems on different planets.
|
| Edit: Here is a snippet in which Klaupacius challenges Trurl's
| latest invention, the electronic bard, to compose "a love poem,
| lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure
| mathematics," and gets a response:
| https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jbuhler/cyberiad.html
| pdonis wrote:
| What is really amazing about this (and about the whole
| English translation by Kandel, but the poetry is particularly
| amazing) is that to me, as a native English speaker, this
| seems like it was written originally in English--not written
| originally in Polish and then translated into English.
| MatmaRex wrote:
| It seems to me that the English poem is indeed Kandel's
| original. There are very few similarities to the Polish
| version, other than the general theme. I found Lem's poem
| here: http://www.matematyka.wroc.pl/book/stanislaw-lem-
| zakochany-c...
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Oh man. Definitely. It was upon reading this story years
| ago that I realized just how magical translations of
| stories could be. Lem's humor is so precise and dependent
| on wordplay and the puns are non-stop. I have no idea how
| Kandel (the translator) was able to bridge the gap between
| two languages that are so different. The English language
| results are as sharp and precise as anything anything an
| English speaker might come up with. Possibly better in some
| instances.
| brg wrote:
| Fiasco remains Lem's work that has had the most profound affect
| for me. The creativity and style of Lem, as it has been brought
| it English speaking audiences, is unparalleled in bridging
| science fiction and literature.
| k255 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28508336
| christkv wrote:
| Probably my favorite story
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
| er4hn wrote:
| This is by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who were contemporaries
| of Lem.
|
| FWIW by favorite Strugatsky novels were Hard to Be a God, and
| The Doomed City.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I really enjoyed Snail on the Slope.
| selfsimilar wrote:
| It might be a good novel (I've only seen the Tarkovsky film,
| Stalker) but this wasn't written by Stansilaw Lem.
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