[HN Gopher] Philip K. Dick: Stanislaw Lem Is a Communist Committee
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Philip K. Dick: Stanislaw Lem Is a Communist Committee
Author : m-hodges
Score : 223 points
Date : 2025-04-12 01:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (culture.pl)
(TXT) w3m dump (culture.pl)
| ggm wrote:
| I enjoy both of their writing. I'm not surprised PKD went to
| paranoid delusions, but I wonder if he also wrote to the Vatican
| about John Boyd and James Blish? Because on the same grounds
| their writings were anti-papacy.
|
| I'm guessing Drugs, Valis or the green laser told Dick to do it.
| defrost wrote:
| Dick was self aware to a degree, he lightly mocked his own
| conspiracy theories in characters that questioned why ten speed
| bikes only had seven gear wheels, two at the front and five at
| the back.
|
| He lived in that void along with the three missing gears.
| thrance wrote:
| 2 years prior, in 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanislaw Lem's
| _Solaris_ to the big screen in the Soviet Union, which may have
| contributed to Dick 's paranoia. Anyway, the film's a masterpiece
| that I highly recommend, and since it was published before 1975
| it is not subject to copyright. You can find it on YouTube [1].
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Z8ZhQPaw4rE
| psittacus wrote:
| There's also a great documentary on Stanislaw Lem. It's in
| Polish, but with English subtitles.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw
|
| Lem himself talks about the movie a bit there too, around the
| 24th minute. He didn't seem fond of Tarkowsky's religiousness
| and the impact it had on the movie.
|
| Timestamped link:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wQq4aKldaw&t=1434
|
| My impression was similar -- the movie seems to be a free
| retelling and doesn't reflect the book well.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I really like Lem, but Solaris is probably my least favourite
| of his stories. It does have the thing I most admire in Lem's
| work of being about _true_ aliens - that is, not just us again
| but in a Halloween costume like a Star Trek alien - but somehow
| Solaris doesn 't "work" for me even though say, Memoirs Found
| In A Bathtub or Futurological Congress do.
| thrance wrote:
| I haven't read the book (yet), but Tarkovsky's movie is only
| a loose adaptation of the source material, which you might
| still enjoy.
| johngossman wrote:
| Are you a PKD fan too? The two you mentioned are amongst
| Lem's most Dick-ian stories. Also note, there is a newer
| English language translation of Solaris. I liked it better
| than the one I read years ago.
| Xelbair wrote:
| I find it funny that i hated Lem for most of my life...
| because i was forced to read only his Robot stories in
| school.
|
| I still despise those moralist fables.
|
| But his other works? i love them! My favorite is The Star
| Diaries, despite having some robot stories in them.
| johngossman wrote:
| I am fascinated by the fact those stories were assigned in
| school. I happen to love them. I wonder if you would have
| disliked them as much if they were not school assignments.
| Many kids grow up up hating Shakespeare and Moby Dick
| because they were forced to read them.
| pests wrote:
| I somehow got spared and was never forced to read Moby
| Dick.
|
| I recently watched "In The Heart Of the Sea" which was an
| adaptation of a book which recounts the tragedy of the
| Whaleship Essex in the early 1800s, based on the written
| accounts of two of the surviving crew. I haven't read the
| book, but the movie frames the story as an author
| interviewing the last remaining survivor in old age.
|
| Having not read Moby Dick, I at first thought this was a
| movie version as the storyline kind of seemed similar but
| the events didn't seem to match to what I knew.
|
| Finally it clicked for me, and revealed at the end, that
| the interviewer was Herman Melville getting inspiration
| for his Moby Dick.
|
| The movie has increased my curiosity and desire into
| reading Moby Didk.
| npodbielski wrote:
| I had it as optional and I read it out of my own volition
| and some of them still stays with me after almost thirty
| years. The one about writer wanted his robot to write
| stories, but in the end realizes that actually stories
| written by his robot are much better than his, want to turn
| the robot off but instead robot kills the writer... Makes
| you think about humanity, robotics, technology and what it
| is to be human or what is self-aware machine.
|
| These were really light, nicely done stories but when you
| think about them, they introduce you to actual.problems
| that come with robotics and AI.
|
| I am glad that I read those and kind of sad that I did not
| read more of Lem's books early in my life.
| selivanovp wrote:
| The funny story is that Lem despised this adaptation and for a
| good reason if you manage to read his book. He called Tarkovsky
| an idiot and refused to cooperate with him on the script as
| Tarkovsky threw pretty much all of Lem ideas from the book to
| shoot Crime and Punishment in space.
| troupo wrote:
| Tarkovsky was making the movies he wanted, and stories were
| just pretext.
|
| Both Lem (Solaris) and Strugatsky Brothers (Roadside Picnic
| turned into Stalker) disliked what Tarkovsky did.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| Funny how closely his own machinations resemble the (obviously
| comically deranged) delusions of some of his characters. He was
| clearly quite self-aware, as another comment noted, or could it
| be that the whole FBI report was a jest? It really reads exactly
| like a passage from his novels.
|
| The subtext of the report to the FBI, that we must suppress
| artistic expression in order to protect the innocent minds from
| dangerous ideas, remains as relevant and intriguing today as
| then.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| As seen in VALIS and the Exegesis, PKD was almost literally
| living in one of his own stories later in life.
| sambull wrote:
| It does appear we are in the banning thought crime phase in the
| US.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42850909
|
| Lem and Dick are such precious peas in a pod!
|
| Too bad Dick reported to the FBI that Lem was a faceless
| composite communist committee out to get him and brainwash the
| youth of America and undermine American SF with "crude, insulting
| and downright ignorant attacks", while Lem asymmetrically thought
| all science fiction writers were charlatans except for Philip K
| Dick.
|
| https://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick
|
| https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is...
|
| Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (1975)
| (depauw.edu) 140 points by pmoriarty on June 19, 2018 | hide |
| past | favorite | 51 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349026
|
| https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm
|
| >In 1973, Lem became an honorary member of the Science Fiction
| Writers of America, a gesture of 'international goodwill' on the
| association's part. However, in 1976, 70 percent of the SFWA's
| voted in favour of a resolution to revoke Lem's membership. A
| very quick dismissal for such a prestigious author, but the
| reasons for his quick ejection from the organisation are clear -
| he didn't seem to regard his honorary membership as any sort of
| honour. He considered American science fiction 'ill thought out,
| poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or
| new literary forms' and 'bad writing tacked together with wooden
| dialogue', and these are just a few examples of Lem's deprecatory
| attitude towards the US branch of his genre.
|
| >Lem, however, considered one science fiction author as exempt
| from his scathing criticisms - his denouncer, Philip K. Dick. The
| title of an essay Lem published about Dick is evidence enough of
| this high regard: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. The essay
| itself waxes lyrical on Dick's many excellent qualities as a
| writer, and expounds upon the dire state of US sci-fi. Lem
| considered Dick to be the only writer exempt from his cynical
| view of American SF. It seems likely that Dick was unaware of
| Lem's high opinion of him and that he took Lem's disparaging
| comments personally, stating in his letter to the FBI:
|
| >"Lem's creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and
| Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American
| science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far
| too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one
| of those highly alienated)."
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Seems pretty silly in hindsight and probably was back then as
| well. If communist committees could write like Lem, the world
| would be a much richer place today.
|
| What stuck with me after reading many of his works was this
| underlying theme in several of his novels, of the futility of
| trying to make contact or reason with alien entities which are so
| vastly different from us, no bridge of understanding is possible.
|
| On a lighter note, his electronic bard from The Cyberiad is
| pretty spot on, quite similar to the LLMs we have now.
| kranke155 wrote:
| What blew me away from the Cyberiad was how funny it was.
| troupo wrote:
| I used to know the Russian translation by heart (and all of
| Ijon Tichy)
| apelapan wrote:
| I loved how is was mentioned in passing (as I recall it, 30
| years later), that Ijon Tichy was followed by an entourage
| of Tichiologists.
| m-hodges wrote:
| I know the title is meant to be a play on The Iliad but the
| stories remind me more of Don Quixote.
| munchler wrote:
| > This plot [about an intelligent beam of light] wouldn't be out
| of place in one of Dick's mind-bending novels.
|
| This experience was, in fact, the basis of a novel he wrote
| called _Valis_.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| One of my all time favorite books!
|
| The Empire never ended.
| grakasja wrote:
| A grand chick saved me!
| ysofunny wrote:
| one mind there is.
|
| within it, two principles contend...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I can feel the plasmate stirring within me. Time for my
| yearly reread.
| hx8 wrote:
| I haven't thought about Valis in a long time, but I do
| generally tend to label various people/organizations as "The
| Empire". I didn't realize how much that book stuck with me.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'd recommend a re-read! There's so many layers to that
| story that show themselves only on subsequent readings.
| Much like the layered flow of PKD the author, PKD the
| character, and Horselover Fat.
| kimi wrote:
| Not sure he meant is as a novel. Cfr his lecture at Metz.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Love Lem, especially The Futurological Congress
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Talk about mind bending.
|
| By the way, there's a movie somewhat based on it with Harvie
| Cartell. Worth a watch.
| wozer wrote:
| "The Congress" (2013) probably?
| cubefox wrote:
| Bruce Sterling's take on this story is still a classic:
|
| "The Spearhead of Cognition", 1987,
| https://germanponte.com/txt/catscan/sterling.html#ym2
| pavlov wrote:
| It's a lovely piece, but maybe goes a bit too far in trying to
| paint Lem as some kind of human-form planet Solaris himself,
| failing to communicate with ordinary people. For example:
|
| _"These essays are the work of a lonely man. We can judge the
| fervor of Lem 's attempt to reach out by a piece like 'On the
| Structural Analysis of Science Fiction:' a Pole, writing in
| German, to an Austrian, about French semantic theory. The mind
| reels."_
|
| That just sounds like an ordinary letter for a 20th century
| European intellectual. Reading and writing in French and German
| was table stakes.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Wow this reads like the plot of a bad romcom! I can totally
| imagine Dick sitting angry in his study getting all worked up
| over how badly Lem hated US SF and how mean that is, not
| realizing Lem actually loved his work. All this lacks is the
| grand finale where the misunderstanding is revealed and they kiss
| & make out.
| philistine wrote:
| Philip K. Dick was vindictive, continually broke, terrible at
| titles, unlucky, and a wonderful writer. He never had a happy
| ending.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >... terrible at titles...
|
| I disagree. Here are some that retain their power all these
| decades later and will likely do so for the foreseeable
| future:
|
| Time Out of Joint
|
| The Man in the High Castle
|
| Martian Time-Slip
|
| The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
|
| Clans of the Alphane Moon
|
| The Simulacra
|
| Now Wait for Last Year
|
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)/Blade Runner
| (1982)
|
| Ubik
|
| We Can Build You
|
| Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
|
| A Scanner Darkly
|
| The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
|
| Radio Free Albemuth
| 0_____0 wrote:
| They do retain their power because of the notoriety of the
| stories they head. It's a matter of taste and thus hard to
| argue, but I do think his titles were kind of clunky. Can
| you imagine if Blade Runner retained the title of the work
| it was derived from?
| nottorp wrote:
| > Can you imagine if Blade Runner retained the title of
| the work it was derived from?
|
| ... or even some parts of the plot ...
|
| It would have been more interesting than the shooting
| based thriller we got instead.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'm a big fan of PKD and also Blade Runner. You've got a
| point about the film being so very different, but I think
| it's subsequent success (it wasn't that successful at the
| time) justifies the approach to the subject matter.
|
| However I do wish that Mercerism (the religion in the
| book) was included in the film. Maybe someone should
| attempt to film a more literal adaptation.
|
| Edit: thinking about the difference between the novel and
| the film makes me think of The Shining and I'm very much
| in the Kubrick camp - the film being a work of art by
| itself and so doesn't have to follow the source material.
|
| However, I also really like A Scanner Darkly which is
| arguably the closest PKD adaptation.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'd rather have the obsession everyone has for the few
| remaining animals on earth, and the race to own at least
| a replica. Electric sheep are just a background detail in
| the movie, while they're as central as hunting the
| replicants in the book...
|
| I'd also like the scene where Deckard runs into another
| blade runner agency, further complicating the question if
| he's a replicant or not :)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Yeah, the film could have had more content about the
| real/artificial animals though it did feature a bit with
| the snake scales and the owl.
|
| Also agree about meeting the other agency though I can
| imagine that would have complicated the plot a bit
| (disclaimer - I haven't read Androids for many years and
| can't remember the details of that scene).
|
| I just think that Mercerism was a superb concept - a
| participatory religion. I suppose it wouldn't have really
| driven the story forwards in the film whereas almost
| every scene in the film was doing that.
|
| Incidentally, here's PKD's short story about Mercerism:
| https://sickmyduck.narod.ru/pkd092-0.html
| nottorp wrote:
| > can't remember the details of that scene
|
| Deckard gets arrested by a different police agency - they
| think they're the only ones, just like Deckard's agency.
| He gets accused of being an android with implanted
| memories.
|
| They administer Voigt-Kampf tests to each other and while
| everyone ends up as human, the scene serves to make who's
| human and who isn't even more of a question.
|
| What really ticks me off about all movies made from
| Dick's writings is that they cut off most of the
| ambiguity.
|
| I shudder to think what they'd make of Ubik or A Maze of
| Death...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'd love them to get around to attempting Ubik - it's a
| shame that Gondry abandoned his attempt.
|
| In terms of ambiguity, surely Blade Runner is a prime
| example of ambiguity and the dichotomies between
| real/fake, light/dark, salvation/damnation, hunter/hunter
| etc. There's also the very significant portrayal of Roy
| Batty as both the villain and a Christ-like figure (e.g.
| nail in his hand, confronting his maker and both kissing
| and killing him).
| nottorp wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder if whoever wrote the script confused Do
| Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with Divine Invasion
| and added Christian motives from there :)
| notahacker wrote:
| I don't think the human relationship stuff including the
| animal obsession really fits in the noir movie that Blade
| Runner ended up being (and hard to say that the decision
| to turn it into a noir thriller was a bad one considering
| how influential it's been). I do agree that keeping the
| other agency and their paranoid testing of each other
| would have been entirely in keeping with how the film
| worked out though. But Deckard testing as human would
| have disagreed with Ridley Scott's idea that he wasn't...
| nottorp wrote:
| > But Deckard testing as human would have disagreed with
| Ridley Scott's idea that he wasn't...
|
| If i recall correctly the way the chapter was written
| left me doubting everything that went on in it.
|
| That may have been too hard to translate in movie form.
|
| Or maybe I should reread the book... it's been a while.
| canjobear wrote:
| Those aspects of the book are awesome but I think they
| run against the themes Ridley Scott was going for. Ridley
| Scott wanted Deckard to be an android. It's hard to
| interpret the unicorn scenes otherwise. The androids are
| shown as cruel due to their lives as slaves, but with
| human-like longings for life and meaning (like in Roy
| Baty's final speech about tears in rain). The overall
| point is to blur the boundary and say the androids can be
| meaningfully human.
|
| Whereas Mercerism and the animal stuff in the book are
| all about emphasizing the ways humans are _different_
| from the androids. The androids mock Mercerism and they
| don 't care about animals: they are incapable of empathy.
| They torture people and animals without compunction. The
| alternate police station scene, where Deckard is tested
| using a bone marrow test instead of Voigt-Kampff and
| comes out human, is evidence that he's not an android.
|
| The book is, in my view, one of the few pieces of sci fi
| media that seriously raises the question "could these
| apparently human-like machines really be human just like
| us?" and answers a resounding "no". The androids are
| psychopaths who are unable to partake of the human
| experience. Ultimately PKD is concluding that they are
| meaningfully _not_ human---and, furthermore, some
| biological homo sapiens who act like them might actually
| be androids, a theme you can find elsewhere in his essays
| [1]. To the extent that Deckard 's humanity is called
| into question it's not whether he is physically an
| android, but if he is psychologically a psychopath
| because of his job killing androids.
|
| [1] https://sporastudios.org/mark/courses/articles/Dick_t
| he_andr...
| to11mtm wrote:
| FWIW the Adventure game adaptation, is -really-
| interesting from everything I've seen on Youtube,
| especially because it's apparently randomized in various
| ways on each play-through...
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Irony: the original bladerunner novel was about a courier
| carrying surgical instruments so that the doctor would
| not be arrested for black market medical treatment.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bladerunner
|
| FWIW I was a Galactic Pot-Healer fan.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" -
| Shakespeare
|
| It's hard for me to dissociate my impression of the name
| from context of learning the name, but I do remember
| learning about 'do androids dream of electric sheep' at a
| very young age without knowing any context and I did think
| that was an interesting name.
| yazantapuz wrote:
| That was similar to my experience too. I discovered "Do
| Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" in a pop-science
| magazine article about science fiction novels in the
| nineties, along with Foundation. Both titles resonated
| with me and ignited my imagination. Years later, I was
| finally able to read both and was amazed.
| evbogue wrote:
| Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS) might not be
| PKD's best title, but it's arguably his best book.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Arguably according to whom?
| y1n0 wrote:
| The parent. Look up the definition of arguably.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Sure, if you are reading the word "arguably" completely
| literally, but that's not the colloquially understood
| implication of the term when used to describe a work.
| Obviously the author of the parent comment is implying
| they they would possibly consider it the best PKD novel,
| but the colloquial meaning implied when someone uses the
| word arguably, generally isn't just to describe one's own
| opinion, but a significant portion of the popular
| consensus.
|
| One person could take a position opposed to the general
| held consensus on any topic, but if one person is the
| only one to hold this opinion, in english, it would
| generally never be described as a position that is
| "arguably" the case, even though if you read the word
| literally, one person is technically arguing it.
| chrislongss wrote:
| Not sure about the critical consensus, but VALIS is by
| far my favorite Dick's book. I read almost all of his
| works and love very many short stories and novels,
| however VALIS is in a class of its own in science fiction
| IMO.
|
| The title is also brilliant: mysterious and vague until
| you learn what is stands for. What's not to like?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me of this. Just ordered it, long
| time since I originally read it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In case you were curious, The Three Stigmata of Palmer
| Eldritch:
|
| 1) A mechanical right hand
|
| 2) Artificial steel teeth
|
| 3) Electronic, glowing eyes
|
| The Android Sisters answer the question "Do Androids Dream
| of Electric Sheep?":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP8bOqTAco0
| noisefridge wrote:
| I'm curious why you like these so much as titles. Tastes
| differ, but in my opinion, "A Scanner Darkly" is the only
| standout winner here.
|
| Without knowing anything of what the story was about, would
| "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" convey anything
| important to the reader? Even as a standalone metaphor it's
| confused: humans don't dream about sheep! There is an old
| trope of counting sheep to fall asleep, but that's not a
| dream.
|
| In any case, we're now thinking about sheep, not a noir
| detective story set in a declining post-biosphere world.
| hx8 wrote:
| I think Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a great
| title.
|
| It sets up the narrative style and loads the gun for a
| incoming tragedy.
| parineum wrote:
| Isn't the point of a title to get someone to read the
| book (and not be disappointed by it's contents)?
|
| I get you don't want to name a crime novel like a self
| help book but the title of the book is really just going
| to get me to pick it up off the shelf and read the back,
| not assume the narrative style and complete plot of the
| book.
|
| Book titles are click bait and always have been.
| jzb wrote:
| A title doesn't have to do anything other than draw the
| reader's attention to the work. "Do Androids Dream of
| Electric Sheep?" is, IMO a great title -- and it does
| relate to the humanity of the androids.
|
| It's a far superior title compared to "Blade Runner,"
| which is actually better than the book.
|
| Anyway, I'd say that the fact we're still talking about
| his work nearly 50 years after his death suggests he
| might not have sucked at titles...
| TeaBrain wrote:
| I agree that the book title is great, but I've never
| understood the fawning over the movie. The art design is
| great, but the movie script turned a contemplative story
| into a generic thriller with a unique aesthetic.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Hardly generic- it is somewhat generic after what has
| come since, as there has been so much cheap copying of
| the original.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| That aesthetic had me riveted to the screen from the
| first minute to the last.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its mostly hailed as a great artsy movie, that general
| audiences find super boring. I think its asethetic & art
| design is what its hailed for. Nobody hails bladerunner
| for its pacing.
|
| Its hard to be good at everything. Being really good at
| one aspect is enough to get people to fawn.
|
| I disagree on the contemplative bit. I think both are
| quite contemplative but in very different ways.
| benatkin wrote:
| > There is an old trope of counting sheep to fall asleep,
| but that's not a dream.
|
| How about when people dream about what they were thinking
| about when they fell asleep? It happens.
| bawolff wrote:
| In the context of the story, i think "dream" should be
| taken as "yearn for" i.e. something you dream of having
| one day, not so much what you dream of at night.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Even as a standalone metaphor it's confused: humans
| don't dream about sheep!
|
| Sure but its meaningful in the context of the story. The
| main character does literally dream of an electric sheep
| (in the book this is a metaphor being able to love, and
| by extension be human)
|
| I don't think title metaphors have to be standalone. Very
| few books are like that. Its like criticizing Hamlet
| because if you don't read the play you have no idea who
| hamlet is.
|
| > In any case, we're now thinking about sheep, not a noir
| detective story set in a declining post-biosphere world.
|
| That's the theme of the movie not the book.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| maybe because English is my third language, but i always
| loathed the scanner darkly title. so empty and try-hard.
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's a reference to a biblical passage.
|
| 1 Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see through a glass,
| darkly, but then we shall see face to face".
|
| There wasn't any clear glass back in Paul's day. Looking
| through glass meant that your vision was obscured.
| Gud wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder that I still have more PKD to read.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| "Blade Runner" was taken from a 1974 Alan E. Nourse novel
| called "The Bladerunner"; the name's relation to PKD is
| tangential at best.
| CalChris wrote:
| The name was taken from Nourse but via ER Burroughs'
| script/book. The name was bought actually. But the plot,
| that came from PK Dick's novel.
| cratermoon wrote:
| There's also a 1979 science fiction novella by William S.
| Burroughs titled _Blade Runner (a movie)_
| cyberax wrote:
| I grew up in the USSR and then Russia, so I was exposed to
| Stanislaw Lem's books and I loved them.
|
| Much later, I tried reading Ubik and I just couldn't get
| into it. What's the point of the story? It feels like it's
| written under the influence of heavy drugs. Yeah, it's
| absurdist but somehow far less fun than the Hitchhiker's
| Guide to the Galaxy.
|
| Another thing that really grated on my nerves, is that
| women are barely more than cardboard cutouts in his
| stories.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| He wrote Transmigration of Timothy Archer because Ursula
| LeGuin took him to task about this
| wcarss wrote:
| If you have any links or book recommendations to share on
| that history, I for one would love to know them.
|
| I find the history of the interactions of SF authors
| strangely compelling -- e.g. the book "Hell's
| Cartographers" is a personal favourite, and it's just a
| set of autobiographical essays from NY 40s-70s SF authors
| talking about their time in the scene.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| https://blog.loa.org/2010/12/what-philip-k-dick-learned-
| abou...
| rasz wrote:
| >women are barely more than cardboard cutouts in his
| stories
|
| Same as Lem. Reading Return from the Stars was physically
| panful.
| csours wrote:
| Are those even _his_ titles? Authors generally don 't make up
| the title themselves. Sometimes they can help pick one from a
| list created by a title editor.
| shervinafshar wrote:
| Most of the above are his titles. Some which were published
| in serialized form before being published in a single
| volume ( _Martian Time-Slip_ and _We Can Build You_ ) had
| different titles. Letters, manuscripts, and publication
| notes are helpful to shed some light on this matter; e.g.
| _The Transmigration of Timothy Archer_ was regularly
| referred to as the "Archer novel" or "Bishop Timothy
| Archer".
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| In the fiction publishing world, authors generally do make
| up their own titles. The editors at the publishing house
| might exercise veto power and/or make their own
| suggestions, but I don't think I've ever heard of novelists
| and short story authors not being allowed to title their
| own work, with the exception of work-for-hire jobs, e.g.,
| writing a book in a series whose "author" is actually a
| pseudonym or writing for a book packager.
| bawolff wrote:
| For some of these, the title is very key to the theme of
| the book, and the characters reference it in the climax.
|
| At least i remember that happening in a scanner darkly and
| do androids dream of electric sheep.
| kimi wrote:
| Wonderful writer? let's face it: he was a mediocre writer,
| but had such powerful ideas/visions/themes (you name them)
| that you, as a reader, are hooked to his stuff.
| mezentius wrote:
| This sentiment is often repeated by people who should know
| better (Adam Gopnik, no less) but it's always seemed to me
| patently false. PKD was a highly skillful prose writer, but
| it's often not entirely appreciated that he wrote to
| produce a deliberately comic and ironic effect. (Read Lem
| on PKD's "transmutation of kitsch into art.") This is what
| nearly all of the overly-serious film adaptations of his
| work miss: he was quite funny, and intended to be.
|
| You can argue that some of his books were written too
| quickly, or deploy his usual tricks less successfully, but
| that doesn't qualify as mediocrity. For that, look to most
| "hard" sci-fi, Reddit fan-fiction, and LLM-generated slop.
| chrislongss wrote:
| That's an interesting insight, thank you. Are there any
| good articles about his deliberately comic / ironic
| approach, or his approach in general? His reliance on
| cliche story building troupes (like private detectives)
| can be off-putting at times, would love to understand
| better what was behind his choices.
| mezentius wrote:
| A good starting point is Stanislaw Lem, "Philip K. Dick:
| A Visionary Among the Charlatans." [1] For more recent
| analysis, read Jonathan Lethem: "My initial
| responsiveness to Dick's work was to delight in his
| mordant surrealist onslaught against the drab prison of
| consensual reality... It took me a while to grasp how
| Dick's novels, those of the early sixties especially,
| function as a superb lens for critiquing the collective
| psychological binds of the postwar embrace of consumer
| capitalism." [2] You can also read PKD himself; he gave a
| few lectures that give some insight into his thinking and
| intentional process. [3]
|
| I'd also suggest that when talking about PKD, it's
| especially important to distinguish between "cliche" and
| "trope," since these two concepts are often improperly
| equated in popular TV-Trope-ified discourse. A cliche,
| e.g. "True love conquers all," tends to lull the reader;
| it terminates further thought. But a trope is merely a
| familiar anchor point, an allusion to a literary
| tradition, and (potentially) an invitation to a dialogue
| between the current text and some previous work. ("The
| hero prepares by putting on his armor," for example, is a
| trope that dates back to the Iliad.)
|
| Dick often begins with a character or situation anchored
| in a familiar setting (possibly for more mercenary than
| aesthetic reasons--he was after all scraping together a
| living in the context of pulp paperback novels) but step
| by step strips away the anchors, leaving the reader
| untethered to settled meaning or "consensual reality."
| The undercover narcotics cop turns out to be a
| schismatic, unaware that he's surveilling himself. The
| noir-like investigator gets arrested by another
| investigator who seems to be his double, pulled into
| another precinct identical to his own... etc.
|
| If the lack-of-respectability of his materials bothers
| you (as it seemed to bother Gopnik), it may be helpful to
| see PKD in the tradition of Kafka, and as a precursor to
| the post-modernists like Robert Coover, who gleefully and
| intentionally play games within familiar texts to comic
| and profound effect. But PKD really isn't so far away
| from the most interesting of his much-maligned SF pulp
| colleagues. See A.E. van Vogt's "The Weapon Shops of
| Isher," where the author plays games with doubles,
| shifting narrators, and familiar pulp characters to
| intentionally strange and dislocating effect--although in
| his case, the kitsch never quite makes the transmuting
| leap into art.
|
| [1] https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm
|
| [2]
| https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/11/14/multiple-
| worl...
|
| [3] https://californiarevealed.org/do/7622580c-be04-46d6-
| 831c-fc...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Compared to Sue Grafton he was a genius at titles. Her Kinsey
| Millhone murder mystery series starts with _" A" is for
| Alibi_, followed by _" B" Is for Burglar_, and continuing to
| the final installment, _" Y" is for Yesterday_
| mcv wrote:
| He was very good at channeling his mental issues and
| insecurities into brilliant plots. I wonder if his books
| would have been as good if PKD hadn't been so fucked up as a
| person. Paranoia seems to be a surprisingly effective muse.
| mistyvales wrote:
| Pretty sure his editor(s) created most of his titles, but
| could be wrong.
| jll29 wrote:
| That's why meeting in person is so important, whatever the
| area.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I suppose someone on the Internet had to ship these two for a
| first somewhere sometime.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| > All this lacks is the grand finale where the misunderstanding
| is revealed and they kiss & make out.
|
| Don't despair. It could still happen! Somebody just has to make
| a Stanislaw Lem robot.
|
| Hanson Robotics: Philip K Dick: Research Robot:
|
| https://www.hansonrobotics.com/philip-k-dick/
|
| There's a funny story about that robot (and a hilarious parody
| of a guy who worked on it in HBO's Silicon Valley).
|
| BEGIN NSFW DIGRESSION
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38311690
|
| DonHopkins on Nov 17, 2023 | prev | edit | delete [-]
|
| I can do anything I want with her - Silicon Valley S5:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29MPk85tMhc
|
| >That guy definitely fucks that robot, right?
|
| That "handsy greasy little weirdo" Silicon Valley character
| Ariel and his robot Fiona were obviously based on Ben Goertzel
| and Sophia, not Sam Altman, though.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/8edbk9/th...
|
| >The character of Ariel in the current episode instantly
| reminded me of Ben Goertzel, whom i stumbled upon couple of
| years ago, but did not really paid close attention to his
| progress. One search later:
|
| VIDEO Interview: SingularityNET's Dr Ben Goertzel, robot Sophia
| and open source AI:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKbltBLaFeI
|
| You can tell he's a serious person, because he pioneered
| combining AI with blockchains:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goertzel
|
| >Career: Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a
| project which was founded to distribute artificial intelligence
| data via blockchains.
|
| >He once received a grant from Jeffrey Epstein.
|
| >Sophia the Robot: Goertzel was the Chief Scientist of Hanson
| Robotics, the company that created the Sophia robot. As of
| 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat
| system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general
| reasoning. Experts in the field have treated the project mostly
| as a PR stunt, stating that Hanson's claims that Sophia was
| "basically alive" are "grossly misleading" because the project
| does not involve AI technology, while Meta's chief AI scientist
| called the project "complete bullshit".
|
| Well at least she's SEXY and EASY TO CONTROL! I can't wait for
| Epstein's flight manifests are released, to see if Sophie is on
| it! I hope she didn't leave her head in the overhead bin.
|
| END NSFW DIGRESSION
|
| So apparently the PKD robot's head was lost after David Hanson
| accidentally left it in an overhead bin of an airplane: "Hanson
| suspects the head was either stolen by an unscrupulous baggage
| handler or fell victim to an overzealous security guard who
| called in a bomb squad." The bomb squad may have even blown it
| up with another robot! I wonder if it got lucky and found its
| way to Poland to search for Lem's robot head.
|
| Wired: Losing One's Head:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20161221090733/https://www.wired...
|
| Now Philip K. Dick's Missing Android Head Has His Own Radio
| Show:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/now-philip-k-dicks-missing-android-head-...
|
| Bring Me The Head Of Philip K Dick:
|
| https://archive.org/details/bring-me-the-head-of-philip-k-di...
|
| Bring Me The Head Of Philip K. Dick's Simulacrum Paperback -
| April 21, 2021:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Bring-Head-Philip-Dicks-Simulacrum/dp...
|
| The lost robotic head of Philip K. Dick has been rebuilt:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/the-lost-robotic-head-of-philip-k-dick-h...
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Due to the economic restrictions of Poland under the communist
| regime, Lem was unable to give Dick his due royalties. Surely
| losing out on this potential source of income, regardless of
| reason, would incline Dick unfavourably towards Lem
|
| If we pull aside the ideological grandstanding what we see is
| plain old jealousy, resentment and vindictiveness. That's usually
| the case in any context. The ideological grandstanding is just a
| fig leaf.
| dgfitz wrote:
| This should be the top comment. Turns out ideology can be
| trumped by emotion.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The only thing stronger than society's ability to undercut
| authors is the author's ability to find any excuse to talk
| about it.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| As far as I know Stanislaw Lem was not allowed to like anything
| from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland disallowed
| people to like anything that came from "the rotten west"
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yes, and as far as I know Stanislaw Lem was also genuinely
| contemptuous of the 1950s default style of US sci-fi: square-
| jawed heroes who triumph over every puzzle, right every wrong;
| Cowboys and Indians on a frontier planet, manifest destiny,
| etc.
|
| A lot of his work emphasises how this tendency fails in the
| face of the sheer unknowable _alienness_ of the outer universe.
| e.g. Solaris, The Invincible, Fiasco.
|
| Lem liked Phil Dick though, because Dick's work was more
| sceptical and mind-bending: more like his own work than it was
| like the spaceship heroics.
| stonogo wrote:
| I'm sure you know this, but for those who might not, US sci-
| fi was just as varied as anywhere else... except in the
| domain of John W. Campbell, for decades the editor of the
| biggest-circulation sci-fi magazine in the country, where he
| very much explicitly selected for that kind of story. Lots of
| famous authors active in the era have tales of how they
| edited their work to meet Campbells demands -- I recall one
| where the author switched the 'human' and 'alien' species
| because Campbell wouldn't print a story where humanity
| 'lost.'
|
| Truly a fascinating character, and an author in his own
| right, responsible for the story that John Carpenter would
| adapt for his film The Thing. I don't share his taste in
| science fiction, but he had a massive impact on the genre.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yes, indeed. I was thinking of the pulp magazines, and also
| to an extent the Original Series of Star Trek.
|
| See Jeannette Ng's "2019 John W. Campbell Award" acceptance
| speech on the topic, and commentary that followed.
| andybak wrote:
| You're doing a genre with a complex timeline somewhat of
| a disservice here. Dick's career spanned two or three of
| the broad "waves" of SF. He was embraced by the New Wave
| authors probably more than any other writer not of their
| generation.
| bawolff wrote:
| Im not super well read in that era, but i feel like that sort
| of square-jawed americanism was already kind of being
| deconstructed at that point. E.g. asimov books were all about
| how brain beat brawn, and violence is the last refuge of the
| incompetent.
| trwired wrote:
| > As far as I know Stanislaw Lem was not allowed to like
| anything from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland
| disallowed people to like anything that came from "the rotten
| west"
|
| Such statement would hold somewhat true for the Soviet Union
| until the 80s, but not for Poland, whose society never stopped
| seeing itself as a part of wider European community, and
| because of significant migration in the XIX and XX century,
| also felt a connection with the US. Poland took advantage of
| Stalin's death to wrangle itself somewhat free of Soviet
| hegemony and starting with Gomulka's Thaw [1], adopted a more
| liberal model. It was still a dictatorship, but in comparison
| with the Soviet Union itself and also a few of the more
| repressive regimes in other satellite states, it was
| significantly more open. Edward Gierek's [2] rule only
| reinforced that course.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all roses. The inflow of Western
| culture faced many obstacles still, but those were often more
| of economical nature -- in general books were translated,
| movies were shown in cinemas, the TV was filled with (somewhat
| dated) American and Western European TV shows, and Polish
| artists followed world trends in music (although with
| significant delay). The ,,rotten west" mindset never took root
| in Polish society and the authorities didn't enforce it with
| much zeal once the most repressive era ended in the mid-50s.
|
| [1] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_October
|
| [2] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gierek
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Not to mention that people were traveling to the west quite a
| bit (especially to France and the US), VCR tapes were broadly
| shared and they had this dichotomy of communism and the
| church reigning each one on everyone.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| What I'm saying that writers were clearly forbidden by the
| communist powers to look towards west. Those were cancelled
| subjects, and cancel would be the least punishment there
| available. That's why everything that was written against the
| censorship bureau, would be covered by an allegory blanket,
| and writers were often asked to remove parts of they could be
| deciphered by the censor officials. Of course later on the
| iron hand of authorities was loosening and more and more
| forbidden words were tolerated, up to the 1989 Round Table
| event when Poland was freed (not before strong military
| repression happening in 1981)
| tehjoker wrote:
| In the "west" currently, you are not allowed to publish
| anything looking favorably "east" in a serious way on
| mainstream networks. You have to call everything a
| "dictatorship". You are (maybe not anymore soon?) allowed
| to publish things at the margins of society that few will
| read or watch, hence the claim of free speech within a
| wider propaganda system.
|
| Sometimes they allow things to rise and present themselves
| as alternative media, but the ones that get wide broadcast
| (millions of views etc) almost always have a built-in limit
| that supports US interests implicitly, particularly with
| respect to foreign policy.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all, but I guess maybe we
| can get wishywashy about how you define "mainstream
| networks." Taking a couple examples from some quick
| googling for essays written by one of my favorite
| economists/commentators, Noah Smith:
|
| 1: China Is a Communist Success Story. Kinda. (2015) --
| He talks about how China's state-owned enterprises and
| central planning have achieved huge economic growth, and
| says that while central planning has its limitations,
| China's approach shows that it can work to a certain
| extent.
|
| 2: Xi Jinping vs. Macroeconomics (2023) -- he analyzes
| Xi's shift of Chinese resources from the real estate
| sector to advanced manufacturing, and concludes that it's
| an attempt to address economic imbalances by promoting
| high-tech industries. Smith suggests that under certain
| ideological frameworks (like China's), that kind of
| policy could be seen as a sound response to economic
| challenges.
|
| 1
| https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-30/china-
| is-...
|
| 2 https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/xi-jinping-vs-
| macroeconomics
| tehjoker wrote:
| There are exceptions, but this phenomenon is well
| documented. I would also ask if you really think these
| two pieces are really representative of the opinion in
| the mass media, which I would barely characterize Smith
| as.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/78912/manufactur
| ing...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Reality-Politics-News-
| Media...
| paganel wrote:
| > What I'm saying that writers were clearly forbidden by
| the communist powers to look towards west.
|
| That's highly debatable, and it most certainly depended on
| the writers. I can speak for Romania (from where I'm from),
| where the works of Faulkner or Hemingway were held in very
| high esteem starting with the early 1960s, when translation
| of most of the stuff they were famous for started to be
| translated. The same goes for most of the Anglo (and
| Western) literature. Yes, in the second half of the '80s
| stuff was less rosy in that domain, but that mostly because
| of the self-imposed austerity we were going through, almost
| nothing of note was getting published anymore, with rare
| exceptions (such as a wonderful translation of Proust in
| 1987-1988, something like that).
| ajuc wrote:
| Lem wrote in his journal:
|
| "Na poczatku 48 roku wyjechalem na miesiac do Pragi, gdzie
| zostalem zatrudniony w rzadowej klinice im. Klimenta
| Woroszylowa (wyobrazcie sobie u nas szpital imieniem Hermanna
| Goeringa). I ledwo wytrzymalem ten miesiac. Codziennie jak nie
| masowka na stolowce, to agitka w szpitalnych garazach. W moim
| rodzimym krakowskim szpitalu na Montelupich byloby to nie do
| pomyslenia. My bylismy jednak najweselszym barakiem w
| obozie..."
|
| "In the beginning of 1948 I went to Praga for a month, where I
| worked in government health clinic named after Kliment
| Woroshylov (imagine a hospital named after Goering in Poland).
| I barely managed to survive that month. Every day either a
| general meeting in the dining hall or political agitation in
| the hospital's garages. In Krakow Montelupi's hospital where I
| usually worked it would be unimaginable. We indeed are the
| merriest barrack in the [socialist] camp..."
|
| Poles often called themselves that because censorship was the
| least strict there and we had some contact with the western
| culture (mainly through the "Kultura Paryska" - a Polish
| emigrants in Paris printed a newspaper that was very
| influential in Poland despite being theoretically banned - it
| was smuggled in en masse - it was so influential that to this
| day the political program developed by Giedroyc and
| Mieroszewski in that newspaper is serving as the core for
| Polish foreign policy - and it's working very well so far).
|
| It changed depending on the period (50s were the worst) - but
| western culture was usually pretty well known and admired in
| communist Poland. We had very lively jazz scene, Beatles and
| other rock bands were played in radio (for example in Polish
| Radio 3 there were whole auditions based on showcasing western
| music - it was considered a "safety valve for Polish youth" by
| the communists).
|
| We even had yearly indie punk/rock festival in Jarocin where
| all the anti-mainstream western-inspired kids went to drink and
| sing punk songs against the system.
|
| Don't get me wrong - communism was obviously evil. But it
| wasn't competent/diligent enough to be 100% totalitarian in
| Poland. That would take too much effort and for what? You'd get
| paid the same either way. If you were unlucky you could
| definitely go to prison for a wrong joke or song. But most
| people didn't.
|
| Anyway.
|
| Lem definitely would have written that he liked American sci-fi
| if he did liked it.
| emtel wrote:
| Stanislaw Lem was far too much of a genius to believe his works
| were directed by any sort of committee, communist or otherwise.
|
| He is still overlooked far too much - people seem to regard
| Solaris as his only work of note. But he has so works, all
| bizarre, imaginative, and insightful. Fiasco and His Master's
| Voice are two of my lesser known favorites.
| troupo wrote:
| The Invincible, Solaris, and Eden all deal with the question
| "what if aliens are truly alien, and we cannot find any points
| of contact with them?"
|
| Even his lighter work (Cyberiad, Ijon Tichy) is very insightful
| gambiting wrote:
| And outside of Sci-Fi he was still an absolute powerhouse.
| "Hospital of Transfiguration" is an absolutely haunting novel
| that you will keep thinking about for months later if not
| years, and "Journals found in a bathtub" is on a different
| level.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Philip K. Dick should have been one of the 1st ones realizing
| that such a brilliant and creative work as that coming from Lem,
| could never have been created by a committee, much less by a
| communist one.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| An EPIC scene from "The Congress" (2014)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc
|
| The Congress (2013) Scan Scene
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8
|
| HN thread about "Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So
| His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies" and The Congress discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33044479
|
| >According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were
| inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress
| by Stanislaw Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the
| actress is split between delusional and real mental states.
| Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview,
| Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him
| during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's
| allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting,
| namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and
| expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book
| despite going far away from it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209861
|
| >People who haven't used psychedelics don't tend to get or
| appreciate The Congress as much as those who have.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34953477
|
| >I just watched The Congress --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and
| WOW, it was excellent.
| gambiting wrote:
| I love Lem's work and I can't stand this film lol, it's
| just.....complete nonsense. And yeah, I have never done
| psychodelics, maybe that's why.
| danielktdoranie wrote:
| TIL Philip K. Dick was even more based than I previously thought.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Different take:
|
| A solid accusation of being a commie is just the cover that Lem
| needed to stay out of trouble back home in Poland.
| notahacker wrote:
| That might have been a more interesting hypothesis about
| motivation if Philip K Dick was denouncing Lem as a communist
| propaganda on stage at a convention rather than in a private
| letter to the FBI
| derelicta wrote:
| I miss the times where we had this sorta influence.
| antirez wrote:
| Solaris is such a masterpiece that resisted any accusation,
| fortunately.
| aszantu wrote:
| Lems fiction was so wonderfully weird, I remember something about
| a double agent in a mental hospital trying to figure out wether
| the other patients are double, triple or quadruple agents. Very
| confusing, was a script for a movie, don't know if it ever got
| made
| cubefox wrote:
| This might be "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub". It has the possible
| double and triple agents, but it takes place in some sort of
| underground Pentagon rather than in a mental hospital. It's
| similar to Kafka's "The Process".
|
| There is also "Hospital of the Transfiguration", which takes
| place in a mental hospital, though I haven't read that one.
| mentalgear wrote:
| So Dick could also be a Dick.
| lordfrito wrote:
| I have immense respect for PKDs writings, he was far far ahead of
| his time, sad that he was such a mess mentally.
|
| His themes about the malleability of reality are just so
| prescient about the problems of the digital era. Neighbors no
| longer share the same narrative about what is actually happening
| in the world.
|
| I often wonder what PKD would say if he were alive today. Heck, I
| wonder what he'd be _doing_ today in the digital era... Imagine
| if he had a YouTube channel...
| verisimi wrote:
| Even if it hadn't already been banned, it's highly unlikely
| you'd be watching it. Mr beast tho, not that's some content,
| huh?
| amiantos wrote:
| If Dick and Lem were around these days, Dick would have a very
| vocal online following that would all insist that Dick is correct
| and claim that Lem is most definitely a government psyop and
| anyone who says otherwise is just brainwashed by the mainstream
| media.
| djaouen wrote:
| Even monkeys sometimes fall from trees!
| numpad0 wrote:
| > Dick's evidence for this denouncement was that '[Lem] writes in
| several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and
| sometimes does not'.
|
| Man reads some translations, suspects it might have been written
| by multiple people? But that's what translation is...
|
| It's often misunderstood that translation is done by surgically
| deconstructing original texts and selecting accurate meanings of
| words to fit into grammatical structures of the new language text
| is to be written. That's simply not true.
|
| Rather. _You just read the original text and try and say close-
| enough thing in the target language_. Translators are like half
| ghostwriters. "Accurate" translations are sometimes not even
| understood by audiences. And then after all the changes,
| translations will still containe distinct signatures for each
| original languages.
|
| For entertainment contents like a novel, there will also be
| marketing elements involved. Some choices may have to be made.
| Not necessary to interfere with the author's intent - like
| choosing first person pronouns and ending for each sentences.
|
| Lem's novels being written in a language spoken in a communist
| country means most competent translators woild be technically a
| "communist", whether it's just unfortunate categorical labeling
| or they actually had been.
|
| So, I think, the notion that translated works of Stanislaw Lem
| only occasionally having distinctive foreign language components,
| and also being not always consistent in styles with one another
| as if it had been written by a Communist committee with a
| figurehead, would be just a description of independently
| rediscovered process of book translation cast in unnecessarily
| dark light.
|
| I wouldn't find it so weird if PKD was that kind of uninformed
| crazy person stuck with such preconceptions, though. Sounds like
| just how it works.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| If a committee can produce the Cyberiad, books should always be
| written by committees.
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