An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.
For decades the photographer Krzysztof Gierłatowski has portrayed eminent Polish figures, thus creating an invaluable visual testimony. This time his "victims" are well-known citizens of Kraków: Stanisław Lem, one of the most brilliant, versatile, and unapologetically cerebral science fiction writers, author of 'Solaris'; Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the most esteemed and widely discussed Polish composers of the 20th century; and Wisława Szymborska, Nobel laureate in Literature in 1996, one of the few women poets who has received the Swedish prize. Gierłatowski assumes the role of a modern Stańczyk, a legendary thinker-jester, prophesying on the historical Polish Republic in his dramatic conviction that History annihilated the intellectual elite of his nation and the future will bring awe and destruction.
Stanisław Lem was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon claimed that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns. Multiple translated versions of his works exist.
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