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Am pretty certain that Lem hasn't written any fantasy... from what I've read it's all SF (although I'm not sure where Imaginary Magnitude and A Perfect Vacuum would fit in). Posibly some of the stuff that hasn't been translated might be fantasy.
Anyhow check out Lem's site and poke around.

If you haven't checked out Lem before, do so... he's (IMO) the best SF novel writer.

Indeed, Stanislav Lem is still alive.

A.E. van Vogt, Computerworld, 1983 (... the story of our world under the cold and emotionless eye of the almighty computers ...(not brilliant, but rather anticipatory and fits in here))

Ursula K leGuin; The Dispossessed, 1974 (In The Dispossessed the values of an anarchist world, Anarres, are contrasted with those of primarily capitalist. Anarres is a barren, small moon, from which the hero, an Anarresti physicist Shevek, starts his journey to Urras, the mother planet. Shevek's tries to develop a general theory of Time, which would re-unite the estranged societies. Shevek is not completely at home in either society. He finds that the culture of Urras is more alienating than on his home world. After finishing his work he returns to Anarres, seeing that its era of cultural isolation is coming to end.)

Paul van Herck, Where Were You Last Pluterday?, 1968 (A story of a guy who saved some 10^k years on his time account)

Anything of Stanislaw Lem, B&A Strugatsky

Well, and perhaps Ringworld & Co by Niven (also "The Mote in God's Eye" with Pournelle ).

&& ... I better stop here :)

CC.

1) Unless you encrypt them, your emails are not private. No encryption == no privacy. It's that simple. The ignorance of the masses regarding this fact does not make it any less true.

When you go out in public, you're out there for all to see and hear. Yet Slashdotters routinely rail against facial recognition software used in airports, stadia, and other public places for security, and they fear and disdain use of such software with data mining systems such as the thankfully defunct TIA. Furthermore, although we know we might be photographed or otherwise recorded when we appear in public, we also require that those recordings must not be used for most commercial purposes unless we sign a release.

So like I said, there's a gray area between total privacy and a complete openness.

) Laws like this have a way of coming back to bite us in the ass. Suppose you want your emails scanned and routinely data-mined, for example. In such a case, there is no victim, so what good is the law?

You should read the bill. And let's be clear here, this is currently a bill and is not yet a law. The bill mostly just prohibits e-mail providers from scanning mail for the purposes of compiling information about you and selling it to third parties. Scanning your mail in order to enable "...address book, calendar, and other user-initiated
functions..." is okay, as is scanning your e-mail to filter out spam and viruses. As I read the bill, building an index of messages is probably okay, so long as they don't give or sell the index info to third parties.

Basically, the bill seems pretty reasonable and wouldn't seem to interfere with a company that's trying to legitimately provide a service to users. It would seem prevent unscrupulous providers from doing (some) unscrupulous things.

There are even a few amusing tidbits in the bill. For one thing, it talks about preventing employees and other "natural persons" from reading a user's e-mail under most circumstances. I can only assume that computers are therefore "artificial persons," which means that we're making some serious progress toward living in the world of Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad."

Stanislav Lem: The Invincible - this is a much earlier book by Stanislav Lem, a planet is dominated by a 'dark cloud', which, in closer observation is a myriad of dust size robots all acting together for survival, learning to destroy anything else that competes for resources.

N% of the people who watched the movie didn't get it - because there is nothing there to get. You can only pour out of a vessel what was poured into it. As for the % of the people who "got" the second and third movies - I would expect it to be higher: in Andersen's tale, almost all the people did claim to see the king's new clothes. Advocates of the last two Wachowski trilogy installments sadden me - trying so desperately to represent themselves as thinking people yet so afraid to think for themselves...

Philip K. Dick was, especially in his later works (Valis, for example) strongly influenced by Gnosticism; the article fails to mention this, but there's an interesting essay exploring some of the connections here, for those interested.

(Unrelated, but still amusing, is this letter that he wrote to the FBI, accusing Stanislaw Lem of being a "composite committee". Fun stuff.)

O-key. As a fan of Stanislaw Lem, I suggest you to read the following book:

Stanislaw Lem, Futurological Congress.It contains a picture of world of food and air programmed humans.

When I saw first Matrix, it struck me straight that Lem already provided that idea in one of his Star Diaries (information available two clicks from above). Quick googling turns out that Matrix often compared to Star Diaries, but I right now think Futurological Congress is a little bit closer.

His Cyberiad, if you allow me a fan digression, contains a ton of information (infunmation;) about what robots think about us and what problems we share. ;)

Hollywood, I am your messiah and I'm unemployed :)

Hehe.

If we make a comparison between you and Lem we could easily explain your lack of success: for about 30 of books (many of them contains more than one story, and most of Cyberiad novels worth a movie, for example) we get only four movies: Stanislaw Lem - Filmography. You do the math. ;)

PS
Star Diaries contains thoughts which are blatantly used in Sixth Day with your current Governminator. ;)

PPS
Okay, I stop. Otherwise I'll found something from Hollywood in Lem's work again.

You might also enjoy John Carpenter's craptacular classic They Live! Also, Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Conference .

Like Stansilaw Lem pointed out in Summa Technologiae, "beaming" (ie. teletransportation) creates an enormous dilemma:

A "thing" which is to be beamed has to be deassembled into it's parts (read: atoms), the parts have to be transmitted and reassembled at the destination. Now it is totally thinkable that instead of deassembling the original "thing" (read: human being), it is only scanned, only the information is transmitted, and a second, identical "thing" is assemled on the receiving end, thus creating, as Lem puts it, "the same me in Buenos Aires, with my house keys, who will eventually come back to Poland and claim my/his house... and he even has a point.

Like Stansilaw Lem pointed out in Summa Technologiae, "beaming" (ie. teletransportation) creates an enormous dilemma:

A "thing" which is to be beamed has to be deassembled into it's parts (read: atoms), the parts have to be transmitted and reassembled at the destination. Now it is totally thinkable that instead of deassembling the original "thing" (read: human being), it is only scanned, only the information is transmitted, and a second, identical "thing" is assemled on the receiving end, thus creating, as Lem puts it, "the same me in Buenos Aires, with my house keys, who will eventually come back to Poland and claim my/his house... and he even has a point.

As machines become more intelligent - more intelligent? That hasn't happened in 50 years, why would it happen now?

Does this mean that we can expect machines to experience the equivalent of nervous breakdowns and other mental aberrations? - if by 'nervous breakdowns and other mental aberrations' he means BSOD, then yeah, sure :)

Well, so far, yes, but autonomous, goal-seeking machines that can reprogram their own goals and subgoals could, in effect, develop "minds of their own" and set off in unpredictable directions. If they create goals that make no sense whatsoever to us, then we may see those choices as "crazy." - I don't believe any computer could come up with problems that 'make no sense whatsoever', that's my management's job. BTW., if a computer decided to fill up portions of memory with number (and that is basically all they can do, really) the reasons for these things can be traced back to the program and the hardware. On the other hand human 'users' can come up with things that make no sence whatsoever

that probably cannot be traced back with logic.

just imagine the potential for chaos when a supercomputer in charge of some critical aspect of our lives gets confused about its goals and purpose in life. - we had a purpose in life? !!!! ?!!???!!! (I mean except for 'boinking' of-course)

So what would be the machine equivalent of a neurosis? Imagine that you are driving down a highway in your car and, slowly at first, you begin to apply more and more pressure to both the gas and brake pedals simultaneously. You notice the car's reaction, as it "tries to cope with" the conflicting forces that are simultaneously trying to speed it up and slow it down. - so you see, it is the 'user' of the system who is to blame, not the system itself, or in this case a car, since it has no internal 'desires' to speed up and slow down simultaneously.

An intelligent machine is most likely to respond neurotically when internal directives, such as self-preservation, conflict with external instructions. - please. He should reread Asimov, the kinds of conflicts found in robots are all well documented there :)

What kind of "therapy" would work for the car's or a PC's "neurosis"? - for a MS PC, a reboot or a reinstall. Or better yet, installing a OS GNU/Linux. If that does not help - reinstall the user.

We can now see that intelligent machines are susceptible to different kinds of program malfunctions that are analogous to human neuroses and that would require special preventive and corrective procedures. - that's why complex systems need good QA'ing.

The enormous attraction of nanotechnology is that it could render traditional manufacturing obsolete. Armies of nanobots would merely synthesize the desired substances out of their atomic and molecular constituents - now he has to reread Stanislav Lem's The Invincible.

What if nanotechnology were to fall into the hands of terrorist and hate groups or nations bent on blackmailing civilization? - Oh my! Good thing GWB is in power in the US of A. He'll just bomb da bastards! (-Nukular, Lisa, it's pronounced nukular!)

In short - this guy................. If you know your SciFi well you don't need to read him.

Very interesting - I don't suppose you could summarise how Loebner changed the rules after that?

I imagine Whalen's entry was based on CHAT, which I played with an older version of back in the early nineties when I was a psych undergrad at Carleton and was fortunate to know co-creator Andrew Patrick through the NCF. CHAT was/is a project at the Communications Research Centre of Industry Canada. You could reach it in those days from Hypertelnet (I think I was the first person to escape Maur the dragon alive ;).

Personally I think that natural language systems are a very important research area, both for regular human-machine interaction and AI (in fact, I believe these define a spectrum, but that's a WHOLE 'nuther discussion). Say you do manage to establish a Friendly AI along the lines of Lem's Golem (thanks to other posters for the links). How do you begin to communicate with it if you haven't already put work into natural language comprehension and Turing-like blackbox human seeming expression? It can't be infinitely intelligent, after all, and to start with it'll be more like (some barely imaginable Friendly AI version of) a child. It seems like people assume anything smart enough to be called "AI" will automatically understand how to make itself known to us. I don't see it that way.

Even though contests like the Loebner prize may not lead to "real" AI, they help develop useful adjuncts to it, as well as tools for more immediately useful machine interfaces. People get all amped about speech interfaces and such even for regular old computers; where do you think that work is going to magically spring from? It's a long hard incremental path.

At the official Stanislaw Lem Web site, they have the entire statement made by Lem about the new movie version of Solaris , written on December 8th.

He seems to have a negative view of the typical Hollywood ending, saying that

It seems that these deep, concrete ruts of thinking cannot be avoided: either there is a happy ending or a space catastrophe. This may have been the reason for the touch of disappointment in some of the critics' reviewsthey expected the girl created by the ocean to turn into a fury, a witch or a sorceress who would devour the main character, while worms and other filth would crawl out of her intestines.

At the official Stanislaw Lem Web site, they have the entire statement made by Lem about the new movie version of Solaris , written on December 8th.

He seems to have a negative view of the typical Hollywood ending, saying that

It seems that these deep, concrete ruts of thinking cannot be avoided: either there is a happy ending or a space catastrophe. This may have been the reason for the touch of disappointment in some of the critics' reviewsthey expected the girl created by the ocean to turn into a fury, a witch or a sorceress who would devour the main character, while worms and other filth would crawl out of her intestines.

From his offical website

Ever read Stanislav Lem's "Peace on Earth"?

The book Solaris, written by Lem, a French author...

Lem is Polish author, see here: http://www.cyberiad.info/english/main.htm

Try this one: http://cyberiad.info/english/main.htm

Should it possibly point: Here or possibly Here?

The first film based on Lem's "Solaris" was produced in 1972 by the legendary Russian film director Vladimir Tarkovsky. However the task of filming Lem's great vision turned out to be a serious problem - and not only an artistic challenge. Communist authorities demanded numerous changes of the original screenplay that drastically distorted the plot and even disturbed the internal structure of the film. Nevertheless the film was awarded the special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was described as "the most intelligent and insightful film in the history of science fiction movies".

Reading Philip K Dick's letter to the FBI about Lem says legions about Philip K Dick, the FBI and the level of intelligence in the intelligence community.

Personally I can't stand PKD. Some of his ideas are interesting, but I don't like the style of writing. I think he might be medically insane.

Heinlein is competent, but all his books seem to follow more or less the same patterns (the hero is usually filthy rich, there's always some battle in court, etc.). Somewhat like Hollywood cinema, they're always extraordinary stories about extraordinary people. Personally I prefer extraordinary stories about ordinary people.

Silverberg has one good book (The Labyrinth) and the rest (the ones I've read, at least) are painfully bad.

Another author I like is John Varley. He usually has interesting, original ideas, and writes quite well. But in some of his books I have a feeling he just got lost and couldn't come up with an ending that made any sense.

Lem is definitely one of my favourite authors, and I'd recommend him to anyone who likes SF (and most people who don't as well). Memoirs is not a good place to start, though. Most of his books are much "lighter" and easier to read. I wouldn't recommend Memoirs (or His Master's Voice, or even Solaris) to someone who doesn't know any of his work.

Fiasco is a more or less conventional novel, where Lem's usual cynicism is woven into the story in a way that won't put off the casual readers.

Futurological Congress, Star Diaries and Memoirs of a Space Traveler are very funny books, and a good introduction to Lem's habit of creating new words to give a shape to new concepts. The same applies to a lot of his short stories. The Invasion from Aldebaran is brilliant.

Return from the Stars is (like Solaris) more about people than it is about the world, and will probably appeal to people who don't like SF, as well as to those who do.

Here are links to a couple of sites dedicated to Lem's work:

http://www.k26.com/solaris

http://www.cyberiad.info/english/main.htm

RMN
~~~

http://www.cyberiad.info/english/dziela/cyberiada/ cyberiadapl.htm
After this short story, you will want to read everything he wrote.

Does anyone else think Lem as a young man (seen in the right photo here) looks like George Clooney? Weird.

Stanislaw Lem has a homepage here. He's 80 years old, but he is still writing. During WW II he lived through the Soviet and German occupations. His bio is here.

Stanislaw Lem has a homepage here. He's 80 years old, but he is still writing. During WW II he lived through the Soviet and German occupations. His bio is here.

The writer has his own agenda beyond bshing Lucas. Science fiction writers have been banished to the back of the bookstore for a long time, and worse one cannot break out of it once one is pigeon-holed there. He is really angry at the marketing of publishers, Star Wars just gives him a vehicle (although the point about Empire Strikes Back is telling).

As for Stanislaw Lem, he and Cordwainer Smith ARE the greatest science fiction writers ever (just ask him- he certainly told the SFWA about it). Here is his home page. Note that Soderbergh and James Cameron are in on the movie.

My suggestion is start out light with the Cyberiad, go to Pirx the Pilot, then move up to the Star Diaries, the Futurological Congress and Solaris.
Cordwainer Smith wasn't mentioned in the article, but he's the spiritual and emotional side to Lem's freewheeling tech and savage satire. His real name was Paul Linebarger, and he practically invented modern American Psychological Warfare. This is his daughter's website which like the Lem website will give you a taste of the writing.

Two novels came out in 1964 about heroes from a barren world that produced drugs humanity is dependent on- Dune and Norstrilia. I love Dune, but Norstrilia is better.

Finally, Legends of the Galactic Heroes shows Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Star Trek for the small little tripe they are. Space Opera has never been so big.

Check them out!!!!!

The movie was made in Russia, but the book is written by a great Polish SF writer Stanislav Lem. Here is more information about him http://cyberiad.info/english/main.htm

I am really glad to see the unlikely break of microsoft-flaming and transmeta-worshipping programming schedule on slashdot - especially since it has to do with good books from Eastern-bloc countries. I wil second all recommendations already given for the Strugatsky brothers. Hwever, when I think of Russian sci-fi, the first name that actually comes to mind is Polish.

Stanilsaw Lem, a Polish author who is immensely popular in Russia and many European countries (but, alas, poorly known in the states) is, in my opinion, the most incredible sci-fi author I've ever had the privielege of reading. His books are above and beyond what is commonly referred to as "science fiction" by the people I meet. Lem's prevailing notion is that a laser gun on a spaceship does not make a rehashed soap opera plot into something that may be classified into the science fiction genre.

Lem's books go a full range from hillarious to serious to outright bizarre. His "Memoirs found in a bathtub" was Terry Gilliam's inspiration while the latter was shooting Brazil. Lem's "Solaris" has been made into an amazing movie by Russia's cinematography great Andrei Tarkovsky - and more likely than not, it is available in your local blockbuster or library. I can go on and on, but I figured that if you (the reader) have made it this far down this post, I might as well provide the links and let you figure out if that sounds like something you'd like to read for yourself. So,

Planet Solaris - The Official Lem site

A brief biography and overview of books

If you can read Russian, this contains the translations of the bulk of his work into Russian.

A really good fan site, with overviews of all major works

A short passage from The Cyberiad - one of Lem's most famous collections of short stories

List of Stanislaw Lem's books, sorted by average customer review rating, at amazon

Take care!

PsychoOne