RIP Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem RIP

Search -- well, most everything. By god do I ever love The Cyberiad.

Sad he's gone, but more & more I feel really more compelled to be happy for good lives lived than bummed-out by their inevitable ends - eighty-four's plenty of years, if I get that many I won't complain that I gotta die at the end of 'em

rip

The first book of his I ever read was The Star Diaries.

"I'M THE SUNDAY ME!"

apparently he never saw the tarkovsky film of solaris!

RIP.

I've yet to read the novels, but my dad used to read me stories from the Cyberiad at bedtime when I was little, which I loved. Perfect Vacuum and Imaginary Magniture also sound amazing.

He stayed active to the end, writing columns and essays pretty regularly in the Polish press.

anyone seen this film based on his first novel?

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/hospital-of-the-transfiguration

no but that book is ... not good

and I am a Lem stan

huh, thought this revive would be about the congress. I'm seeing it tomorrow, not read the book

ooh did someone make a movie out of Futurological Congress?!?

it's the new film by the director of waltz with bashir. Not sure how faithful it is to the novel but it has robin wright playing herself and she gets turned into a cartoon by jon hamm

who is also a cartoon

the only lem I've read apart from solaris is the cyberiad, which reminded me of the third policeman

looks like the Congress only tangentially related to the plot of the Lem novel but looks interesting nonetheless

I never saw Waltz w Bashir

Cyberiad was Lem's children's stories

Again, I've not read the Lem novel, but as piece of socialist futurism, this movie is pretty amazing:

http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_ikarie.php

Yeah, I really dig it - though I think there's some problem over different endings in the US? Think the second run release has the 'proper' one.

looks like the Congress only tangentially related to the plot of the Lem novel but looks interesting nonetheless

Its appearance on the 'worst film you ever saw' thread might suggest otherwise.

hmm comparison to Southland Tales a bit frightening

it's strange to me how many people have tried adapting Lem's stuff (I hate Tarkovsky's Solaris fwiw), as scifi writers go his style and preoccupations to not lend themselves well to film imo.

do not lend

that should say

haven't read Solaris, so love the Tarkovsky film, especially the opening sequence - great water/sound imagery, the sudden appearance of a horse. maybe it is a travesty of the novel, i dunno.

I just have no patience for Tarkovsky's ponderous framing, the way lines of dialogue are written and spoken as if they have no relation to each other, that kind of thing. I dunno if it's a travesty of the novel; it's certainly true to the novels general themes and plot, I just hate the way it's presented. The novel is better and much clearer about what's happening, since so much of it takes place within the protagonist's heads and is developed through omniscient narration/internal monologues. The film is maddeningly oblique by comparison, and perhaps out of necessity, since it's a film of material that is inherently not really filmable.

Yeah the book is pretty much unfilmable.

Enjoyed both the book and the film, both films actually, the same way I enjoyed both the book and the film of The English Patient. *ducks*

Grab a coffee for the Tarkovsky film, then gradually sink into it (can't say "go with the flow"): it gets compelling later on (stayed up all night watching it on TCM, and that's gotten really hard, but no choice). It's Russian as hell, but/and out on a strong limb of its own from the Polish original, like Blade Runner is from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

it's certainly true to the novels general themes and plot

Really? That's not how Lem tells it.

C'mon Lem is one of those guys. It's like believing everything Buñuel told the two Mexican film professors in Objects of Desire. You've got to take with a grain of salt.

I have no idea what lem said about the film but yeah when are authors not cranky about film adaptations made w out their input

You said you were a Stan stan! His opinions on both adaptations are pretty entertaining even if you don't agree with them. '"I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not Love in Outer Space.' (On Soderbergh's)

http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/qsolarisq-by-tarkovsky/176-lem-about-the-tarkovskys-adaptation
http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/soderbergh/147-the-solaris-station

Lol he's not entirely off there but then he never saw either film

Part of being a Stash stan is knowing that he will never miss an opportunity to criticize, constructively or otherwise.

I mean, it's like if you bought a live Lou Reed album, wouldn't you be a little disappointed if he didn't say something bad about Xgau if not John Rockwell?

Indeed!

The film has very little to do with not only the Lem (beyond storyboard basics), but also Tarkovsky has v little to do w/other film. With distance it just seems he stumbled on it by accident. Even if the book was written in a 'filmable' way (and I never accept that about any book, he films the book's skeleton, so it is still Lem) Tarkovsky would've found a way to conceal meanings and do it in a 'ponderous' fashion.

Maybe Tarkovsky would've been a terrible poet instead.

in November there's a Lem film retro in NY

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/48261