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Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

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Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#51

Post by yazantapuz »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #40
bookofjoe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... terrible at titles... I disagree. Here are some that retain their power all these decades later and will likely do so for the foreseeable future: Time Out of Joint The Man in the High Castle Martian Time-Slip The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch Clans of the Alphane Moon The Simulacra Now Wait for Last Year Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)/Blade Runner (1982) Ubik We Can Build You Flow My Tears, The…

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - Shakespeare It’s hard for me to dissociate my impression of the name from context of learning the name, but I do remember learning about ‘do androids dream of electric sheep’ at a very young age without knowing any context and I did think that was an interesting name.

That was similar to my experience too. I discovered "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" in a pop-science magazine article about science fiction novels in the nineties, along with Foundation. Both titles resonated with me and ignited my imagination. Years later, I was finally able to read both and was amazed.

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#52

Post by troupo »

kranke155 wrote: post #35
indigoabstract wrote: post #9

Seems pretty silly in hindsight and probably was back then as well. If communist committees could write like Lem, the world would be a much richer place today. What stuck with me after reading many of his works was this underlying theme in several of his novels, of the futility of trying to make contact or reason with alien entities which are so vastly different from us, no bridge of understanding is possible. On a l…

What blew me away from the Cyberiad was how funny it was.

I used to know the Russian translation by heart (and all of Ijon Tichy)

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#53

Post by troupo »

thrance wrote: post #4

2 years prior, in 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanisław Lem's Solaris to the big screen in the Soviet Union, which may have contributed to Dick's paranoia. Anyway, the film's a masterpiece that I highly recommend, and since it was published before 1975 it is not subject to copyright. You can find it on YouTube [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/Z8ZhQPaw4rE

Tarkovsky was making the movies he wanted, and stories were just pretext.

Both Lem (Solaris) and Strugatsky Brothers (Roadside Picnic turned into Stalker) disliked what Tarkovsky did.

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#54

Post by troupo »

emtel wrote: post #29

Stanislaw Lem was far too much of a genius to believe his works were directed by any sort of committee, communist or otherwise. He is still overlooked far too much - people seem to regard Solaris as his only work of note. But he has so works, all bizarre, imaginative, and insightful. Fiasco and His Master’s Voice are two of my lesser known favorites.

The Invincible, Solaris, and Eden all deal with the question "what if aliens are truly alien, and we cannot find any points of contact with them?"

Even his lighter work (Cyberiad, Ijon Tichy) is very insightful

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#56

Post by DonHopkins »

skrebbel wrote: post #16

Wow this reads like the plot of a bad romcom! I can totally imagine Dick sitting angry in his study getting all worked up over how badly Lem hated US SF and how mean that is, not realizing Lem actually loved his work. All this lacks is the grand finale where the misunderstanding is revealed and they kiss & make out.

> All this lacks is the grand finale where the misunderstanding is revealed and they kiss & make out.

Don't despair. It could still happen! Somebody just has to make a Stanislaw Lem robot.

Hanson Robotics: Philip K Dick: Research Robot:

https://www.hansonrobotics.com/philip-k-dick/

There's a funny story about that robot (and a hilarious parody of a guy who worked on it in HBO's Silicon Valley).

BEGIN NSFW DIGRESSION

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38311690

DonHopkins on Nov 17, 2023 | prev | edit | delete [–]

I can do anything I want with her - Silicon Valley S5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29MPk85tMhc

>That guy definitely fucks that robot, right?

That "handsy greasy little weirdo" Silicon Valley character Ariel and his robot Fiona were obviously based on Ben Goertzel and Sophia, not Sam Altman, though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/8edbk9/th...

>The character of Ariel in the current episode instantly reminded me of Ben Goertzel, whom i stumbled upon couple of years ago, but did not really paid close attention to his progress. One search later:

VIDEO Interview: SingularityNET's Dr Ben Goertzel, robot Sophia and open source AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKbltBLaFeI

You can tell he's a serious person, because he pioneered combining AI with blockchains:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goertzel

>Career: Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a project which was founded to distribute artificial intelligence data via blockchains.

>He once received a grant from Jeffrey Epstein.

>Sophia the Robot: Goertzel was the Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created the Sophia robot. As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning. Experts in the field have treated the project mostly as a PR stunt, stating that Hanson's claims that Sophia was "basically alive" are "grossly misleading" because the project does not involve AI technology, while Meta's chief AI scientist called the project "complete bullshit".

Well at least she's SEXY and EASY TO CONTROL! I can't wait for Epstein's flight manifests are released, to see if Sophie is on it! I hope she didn't leave her head in the overhead bin.

END NSFW DIGRESSION

So apparently the PKD robot's head was lost after David Hanson accidentally left it in an overhead bin of an airplane: "Hanson suspects the head was either stolen by an unscrupulous baggage handler or fell victim to an overzealous security guard who called in a bomb squad." The bomb squad may have even blown it up with another robot! I wonder if it got lucky and found its way to Poland to search for Lem's robot head.

Wired: Losing One’s Head:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161221090733/https://www.wired...

Now Philip K. Dick’s Missing Android Head Has His Own Radio Show:

https://gizmodo.com/now-philip-k-dicks-missing-android-head-...

Bring Me The Head Of Philip K Dick:

https://archive.org/details/bring-me-the-head-of-philip-k-di...

Bring Me The Head Of Philip K. Dick's Simulacrum Paperback – April 21, 2021:

https://www.amazon.com/Bring-Head-Philip-Dicks-Simulacrum/dp...

The lost robotic head of Philip K. Dick has been rebuilt:

https://gizmodo.com/the-lost-robotic-head-of-philip-k-dick-h...

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#58

Post by apelapan »

troupo wrote: post #52
kranke155 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What blew me away from the Cyberiad was how funny it was.

I used to know the Russian translation by heart (and all of Ijon Tichy)

I loved how is was mentioned in passing (as I recall it, 30 years later), that Ijon Tichy was followed by an entourage of Tichiologists.

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#59

Post by pests »

johngossman wrote: post #23
Xelbair wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny that i hated Lem for most of my life... because i was forced to read only his Robot stories in school. I still despise those moralist fables. But his other works? i love them! My favorite is The Star Diaries, despite having some robot stories in them.

I am fascinated by the fact those stories were assigned in school. I happen to love them. I wonder if you would have disliked them as much if they were not school assignments. Many kids grow up up hating Shakespeare and Moby Dick because they were forced to read them.

I somehow got spared and was never forced to read Moby Dick.

I recently watched “In The Heart Of the Sea” which was an adaptation of a book which recounts the tragedy of the Whaleship Essex in the early 1800s, based on the written accounts of two of the surviving crew. I haven’t read the book, but the movie frames the story as an author interviewing the last remaining survivor in old age.

Having not read Moby Dick, I at first thought this was a movie version as the storyline kind of seemed similar but the events didn’t seem to match to what I knew.

Finally it clicked for me, and revealed at the end, that the interviewer was Herman Melville getting inspiration for his Moby Dick.

The movie has increased my curiosity and desire into reading Moby Didk.

Re: Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem Is a Communist Committee (2015)

#60

Post by BrandoElFollito »

trwired wrote: post #41
p0w3n3d wrote: post #28

As far as I know Stanisław Lem was not allowed to like anything from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland disallowed people to like anything that came from "the rotten west"

> As far as I know Stanisław Lem was not allowed to like anything from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland disallowed people to like anything that came from "the rotten west" Such statement would hold somewhat true for the Soviet Union until the 80s, but not for Poland, whose society never stopped seeing itself as a part of wider European community, and because of significant migration in the XIX and XX ce…

Not to mention that people were traveling to the west quite a bit (especially to France and the US), VCR tapes were broadly shared and they had this dichotomy of communism and the church reigning each one on everyone.
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