[1] https://youtu.be/Z8ZhQPaw4rE

His themes about the malleability of reality are just so prescient about the problems of the digital era. Neighbors no longer share the same narrative about what is actually happening in the world.

I often wonder what PKD would say if he were alive today. Heck, I wonder what he'd be doing today in the digital era... Imagine if he had a YouTube channel...

This experience was, in fact, the basis of a novel he wrote called _Valis_.

"The Spearhead of Cognition", 1987, https://germanponte.com/txt/catscan/sterling.html#ym2

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 lighter note, his electronic bard from The Cyberiad is pretty spot on, quite similar to the LLMs we have now.

  > Dick’s evidence for this denouncement was that ‘[Lem] writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not’.

It's often misunderstood that translation is done by surgically deconstructing original texts and selecting accurate meanings of words to fit into grammatical structures of the new language text is to be written. That's simply not true.

Rather. You just read the original text and try and say close-enough thing in the target language. Translators are like half ghostwriters. "Accurate" translations are sometimes not even understood by audiences. And then after all the changes, translations will still containe distinct signatures for each original languages.

For entertainment contents like a novel, there will also be marketing elements involved. Some choices may have to be made. Not necessary to interfere with the author's intent - like choosing first person pronouns and ending for each sentences.

Lem's novels being written in a language spoken in a communist country means most competent translators woild be technically a "communist", whether it's just unfortunate categorical labeling or they actually had been.

So, I think, the notion that translated works of Stanisław Lem only occasionally having distinctive foreign language components, and also being not always consistent in styles with one another as if it had been written by a Communist committee with a figurehead, would be just a description of independently rediscovered process of book translation cast in unnecessarily dark light.

I wouldn't find it so weird if PKD was that kind of uninformed crazy person stuck with such preconceptions, though. Sounds like just how it works.

I'm guessing Drugs, Valis or the green laser told Dick to do it.

The subtext of the report to the FBI, that we must suppress artistic expression in order to protect the innocent minds from dangerous ideas, remains as relevant and intriguing today as then.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc

The Congress (2013) Scan Scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

HN thread about "Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies" and The Congress discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33044479

>According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the actress is split between delusional and real mental states. Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview, Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting, namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book despite going far away from it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209861

>People who haven't used psychedelics don't tend to get or appreciate The Congress as much as those who have.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34953477

>I just watched The Congress -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and WOW, it was excellent.

I've never heard of the other two, but Fredric Jameson was a well-known literary critic. I gather that he did write about science fiction, and certainly he was a Marxist, but was he really a "sci-fi figure"?

Lem and Dick are such precious peas in a pod!

Too bad Dick reported to the FBI that Lem was a faceless composite communist committee out to get him and brainwash the youth of America and undermine American SF with "crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks", while Lem asymmetrically thought all science fiction writers were charlatans except for Philip K Dick.

https://english.lem.pl/faq#P.K.Dick

https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is...

Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (1975) (depauw.edu) 140 points by pmoriarty on June 19, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 51 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17349026

https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm

>In 1973, Lem became an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, a gesture of ‘international goodwill’ on the association’s part. However, in 1976, 70 percent of the SFWA’s voted in favour of a resolution to revoke Lem’s membership. A very quick dismissal for such a prestigious author, but the reasons for his quick ejection from the organisation are clear – he didn’t seem to regard his honorary membership as any sort of honour. He considered American science fiction ‘ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms’ and ‘bad writing tacked together with wooden dialogue’, and these are just a few examples of Lem’s deprecatory attitude towards the US branch of his genre.

>Lem, however, considered one science fiction author as exempt from his scathing criticisms – his denouncer, Philip K. Dick. The title of an essay Lem published about Dick is evidence enough of this high regard: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. The essay itself waxes lyrical on Dick’s many excellent qualities as a writer, and expounds upon the dire state of US sci-fi. Lem considered Dick to be the only writer exempt from his cynical view of American SF. It seems likely that Dick was unaware of Lem’s high opinion of him and that he took Lem’s disparaging comments personally, stating in his letter to the FBI:

>"Lem’s creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem’s crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated)."

A solid accusation of being a commie is just the cover that Lem needed to stay out of trouble back home in Poland.

If we pull aside the ideological grandstanding what we see is plain old jealousy, resentment and vindictiveness. That’s usually the case in any context. The ideological grandstanding is just a fig leaf.