Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site vaxine.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!pct From: pct@vaxine.UUCP (Pierre Trepagnier) Newsgroups: net.books Subject: Stanislaw Lem Message-ID: <175@vaxine.UUCP> Date: Mon, 30-Jan-84 11:07:58 EST Article-I.D.: vaxine.175 Posted: Mon Jan 30 11:07:58 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 31-Jan-84 03:22:42 EST Organization: Automatix Inc., Billerica, MA Lines: 14 Non-blank The January 30 issue of The New Yorker has an autobiographical article by Stanislaw Lem which makes for interesting reading. He discusses his work and the impulses behind it. Here is a quote [He is discussing growing up in Poland during WWII.]: "The unfathomable futility of human life under the sway of mass murder cannot be conveyed by literary techniques in which individuals or small groups of people form the core of the narrative. It is, perhaps, as if somebody tried by providing the most exact description of the molecules of which the body of Marilyn Monroe was composed to convey a full impression of her. ...I began writing science fiction because it deals with human beings as a species ... and not just with specific individuals, be they saints or monsters."