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Google.pl's crazy doodle

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Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#41

Post by knowtheory »

joshu wrote: post #12
kitsune_ wrote: post #7

Stanislaw Lem is probably my most favorite sci-fi author. He's very popular in Europe, but not so much in the US it seems. His works are hilariously funny, philosophical and have a certain magic to them. When I saw the robot I was almost certain that it had to be about him. I don't know about the quality of the English translations of his books, but in German, they are fabulous. There are a lot of word plays that are…

Lem is awesome, but avoid the ones that have come to english via a multihop route. Books translated by Kandel are fabulous. Trurl invents an electronic bard. Klaupacius challenges it: "Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter…

I can not agree emphatically enough.

If one wishes to see another excerpt indicating how amazing Lem was via Kandel, i posted one of my favorite poems of all time, also from the same short story here: http://blog.knowtheory.net/post/88490831/the-best-poem-ever-...

The poem has only one blemish, which is the assumption that "Euler" rhymes with "ruler".

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#42

Post by StrawberryFrog »

kitsune_ wrote: post #7

Stanislaw Lem is probably my most favorite sci-fi author. He's very popular in Europe, but not so much in the US it seems. His works are hilariously funny, philosophical and have a certain magic to them. When I saw the robot I was almost certain that it had to be about him. I don't know about the quality of the English translations of his books, but in German, they are fabulous. There are a lot of word plays that are…

> I don't know about the quality of the English translations of his books

I don't know about the quality of the original Polish, but ... some of his heavier works are well, heavy in the English version. I'm thinking of "Solaris", "His Master's Voice", "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub". They are good books - but so are Dickens, Tolstoy etc. which require a bit of effort from the modern reader.

However the Cyberiad is an absolute pleasure to read. I read it when I was in my early teens and I ate it up - it challenged my mind, made me laugh and was very easy to read. Other lighter ones - "Tales of Pirx the Pilot", "The Futurological Congress", "A Perfect Vacuum" are easy to read too.

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#45

Post by D_Alex »

praptak wrote: post #39

Here are some original pictures by Mróz, whose style inspired the doodle: http://solaris.lem.pl/galeria/rysunki-mroza/category/23 Site already lags, be patient.

And here is the story to which the final scene in the Google doodles refers:

English: http://english.lem.pl/home/bookshelf/how-the-word-was-saved

Polish: http://www.wattpad.com/133117-stanislaw-lem-cyberiada

Well worth the 5 mins it takes to read!

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#46

Post by mseebach »

utunga wrote: post #36
utunga wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A funny story - how I got my first Stanislaw Lem book from a Washington Square park bookseller.. Guy had a table with a wide range of second hand books mostly sci fi. I carefully picked over the pile and chose some of my favorite authors - some that were quite hard to get. When I went to purchase about three books, the guy said "OK since you are obviously a man with taste in SF I'm gonna let you see my other 'special…

maybe there's a startup sales model in there somewhere ;-) the next groupon?

Up-selling based on making the customer feel he's special, selected or privileged is not exactly a new model.

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#47

Post by ableal »

Tichy wrote: post #35

My nickname (Tichy) is from Lem's books. Definitely one of my favorite authors ever.

I suppose that Tichy Ijon (lastname firstname) is a pun on tachyon. Nicely fitting the current LHC head scratching ...

My first look at the doodle popped up "Trurl and Klapaucius" in my head - and it's been many years. Queue one Cyberiad for re-read ...

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#49

Post by morsch »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #19

This doodle appears on google.com at this point, not just google.pl.

I'm getting it on google.de as well as on google.com (with country redirection turned off); the same was true last night. You never know what kind of localisation you get with google, and I'm not just talking about the doodle, but everything else.

Re: Google.pl's crazy doodle

#50

Post by xyzzyz »

utunga wrote: post #30
kitsune_ wrote: post #7

Stanislaw Lem is probably my most favorite sci-fi author. He's very popular in Europe, but not so much in the US it seems. His works are hilariously funny, philosophical and have a certain magic to them. When I saw the robot I was almost certain that it had to be about him. I don't know about the quality of the English translations of his books, but in German, they are fabulous. There are a lot of word plays that are…

A funny story - how I got my first Stanislaw Lem book from a Washington Square park bookseller.. Guy had a table with a wide range of second hand books mostly sci fi. I carefully picked over the pile and chose some of my favorite authors - some that were quite hard to get. When I went to purchase about three books, the guy said "OK since you are obviously a man with taste in SF I'm gonna let you see my other 'special…

Don't think he actually wrote that many SF books - I think I have them all now but maybe I'm mistaken.

In my opinion, he wrote quite a lot of them -- almost 30 fiction books, half of them being novels, and other half collections of stories. Apart of that, he published over 20 non-fiction books, but they were rarely translated to English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Lem#Works

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