Standing up for Science Fiction
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FI Aug-Sept 2006 Pages 6/30/06 9:34 AM Page 53 HUMANISM AND THE ARTS commercial SF and work free of ulterior motives. No one would have defended Standing Up for the view that Lem’s acceptance of an honorary membership included the pre- condition that he should hold his tongue, yet the shameful way he was treated Science Fiction amounted to a belated enforcement of such a condition. Charitably, one might say that people Stanislaw Lem (1921–2006) with the power to enforce their wills lost their tempers and only embarrassed themselves by giving Lem some publici- George Zebrowski ty. In protest, famed author Ursula K. Le Guin declined SFWA’s annual Nebula Roman Kojzar, from the collection of David Williams Roman Kojzar, Award in the short-story catego- ry. Incredibly, the quietly substi- tanislaw Lem, the most tuted second-place winner re- celebrated writer of sci- peated a false charge against Sence fiction (SF) since Lem at the awards banquet. I sat Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, died at the ceremony and spoke up, in late March. An exacting but was shushed. thinker and craftsman, Lem Along with a dozen other challenged his Western col- writers, I protested Lem’s ous- leagues to live up to the poten- ter, and we documented the his- tials of science fiction by reex- tory in a scholarly journal. I hold amining a debate over how to the archival evidence, which shape imaginative narratives includes one celebrated writer that is as old as the genre itself. falsely stating, in print, that Lem I first learned about Lem in had criticized Western SF in the late 1960s, when a seafaring order to gain favor with Poland’s friend of my parents hand car- communist government. ried several of Lem’s books to The officers of the organiza- me in New York City. At that tion that had ousted Lem in Soviet time, it was difficult to get mail style for his views soon found or money in or out of Poland. In themselves defending an impossi- the 1970s and 1980s, I reviewed ble position—so much so that nearly all SF that had been “The Lem Affair” is nearly un- translated into English, includ- known to the officers of today’s ing many of Lem’s books, and Stanislaw Lem is signing the English language Easton Press, SFWA, and those who had a hand was impressed by the authority Masterpieces of Science Fiction Edition of The Cyberiad, translated by in its confused and shameful with which he revisited SF National Book Award nominee Michael Kandel, illustrated by Daniel Mroz, with an introduction by George Zebrowski. motives have recanted, made themes and escaped the simple- their peace with Lem indirectly or mindedness of earlier efforts. honor him, but also because Lem could in print, remained silent, or died. We exchanged letters in Polish and not send money out of his country for a As an American writer with feet firm- English after I invited him, on behalf of the standard membership and because it ly planted in a system of publishing that Science Fiction Writers of America might have been politically awkward for is now widely accepted as broken, I take (SFWA, then an organization of a few him if someone in the West paid his way. heart from the fact that Lem won his hundred writers, now with well over fif- But after a “spun” version of his crit- case without protesting. His work alone teen hundred members), to accept an hon- ical views on Western SF was published prevailed. The issue was never about orary membership. Together with other in Germany, a few Cold Warriors in the whether Lem was right or wrong; it was writers, I had proposed this not only to SFWA took action against him by revok- always about us: the officers who should ing his membership. Clearly, this was have let his honorary membership stand George Zebrowski is an award-win- motivated by discomfort with Lem’s and those who shut up about it. SFWA’s ning novelist, story writer, essayist, views; the technical ambiguities of his recent online obituary for Lem glosses editor, and lecturer, best known for his membership would never have come up over the case. When corporate memory novels Macrolife and Brute Orbits, otherwise. Harsher criticisms of SF had fails to inform itself and to repudiate among many others. His new book is come from many writers and critics as past idiocies, it makes a new contract Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts, far back as the 1930s, and most in the with past wrongs, and new silences rub- a Publishers Weekly starred title. SFWA knew the difference between berstamp them. 53 http://www.secularhumanism.org August/September 2006 FI Aug-Sept 2006 Pages 6/30/06 9:34 AM Page 54 As Lem’s stature increased world- but still seems startling because gen- changeless mill of human quarrels that wide, his personal history became more uine SF is so rare. It is the ulterior we see reflected in endless fictions widely known—his work in the anti- motive of commerce that stimulates the whose greatness of insight has no effect, German resistance during World War II; recycling of previously successful genre on fronts that might well affect the his Jewish background, which made materials into ever more trivial forms, futures before us. Some SF has already charges of anti-Semitism against him considerable literary skills encrusting done that, for better or worse; most has strange, to say the least; predictions of a them so as to blind us to what is lost— not. In his work and criticism, Lem Nobel Prize in The New York Times; and this is why Lem’s criticism of knew the soul of SF, which seems too dif- and his house arrest during the Western SF was so infuriating. He did ficult a loyalty for commerce, which Solidarity uprising—leading to the final not denigrate writing for money, but he claims to lose money with it. But if SF collapse of the gossip that had styled had no respect for those who claimed to has helped raise our awareness of him a stooge of his government. Lem left be writing SF masterpieces of thought futures, of the deeps of time and space Poland for nearly a decade and became and foresight when they were writing around us and what we have of our still a darling of mainstream literati, who fantasy by default. largely unknown selves within, then the used him to denigrate science fiction in But masterworks do exist and the economic blacklist of SF’s best does not general. A giant is not well understood contrast is stark, so much so that know what it exiles. by distant blind men. thoughtful readers sometimes do not We have had our fabled great SF Lem sympathized with fantasy and see these works as science fiction. The writer all these past decades, but speculated that, one day, intelligent life choice for writers is clear, the result for despite his worldwide sales of twenty- might even remake physical laws. He gifted writers who take the recycling seven million copies in thirty lan- praised science fiction by Robert A. path, fatal. Choose, but don’t claim to be guages, the commercial empires did Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula K. in the other camp. not know how to sell him in English. Le Guin, but he warned newer writers His sales disappointed his second against wasting their talents on too lit- American publisher, one of whose peo- tle and betraying SF’s inherently criti- ple confessed to me that they couldn’t cal potential. Yet he said that we had “In his work and let him go because he might embar- turned our backs on thought and the rass them with a Nobel Prize. Solaris dramatization of the genuine and not criticism, Lem knew (1961, translated in 1970), his first easily solved problems of our struggle the soul of science fiction.” international success, via French and with knowledge. For Lem, SF without English, was filmed by Andre Tar- thought was unworthy. And even though kovsky in 1972, a work compared to he saw the need for escapism’s guilty Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. pleasures, he held with Isaac Asimov Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that SF was to be an “escape into reali- It is this condition of writers in mar- (1968). It was remade by director ty”—but there was far too little of that. ket economies that stood behind the ani- Steven Soderberg, starring George “It isn’t possible to construct a mosity toward Lem that was disguised Clooney, in 2002. My favorites among reflection of the future with cliches,” by the quip that “you don’t insult folks his thirty or more books of fiction and Lem wrote in 1970. “It isn’t the arche- who have honored you” and hid behind nonfiction are The Cyberiad (1967; types of Jung, nor the structures of the the mask of manners (“his membership translated, 1974) and Fiasco (1986; myth, nor irrational nightmares which violated the rules”). translated 1987). The world’s press cause the central problems of the future I remain a member of SFWA, and ranked him with Verne and Wells, and determine them. And should the have twice been honored “for service to recalling the leaps made by Ray future be full of dangers, those dangers my fellow writers,” but I still think, as do Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. cannot be reduced to the known pat- many others, that SF needs better condi- Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Philip K.