Global Lords: I Have Information System

Chapter 515: Chapter 370: A Girl’s Nightmare, Castle Night 1

[This Chapter is a long-awaited anti-theft Chapter]

[To defeat the Blue Pen Fun Pavilion]

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[Friends staying up late can also choose to read it tomorrow]

[Don’t ask me why it’s long-awaited, because the author really can’t come up with a replacement main text section]

[Writing isn’t hard, writing a lot is hard]

[Regular readers still follow the old rules]

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Literary Newspaper · Night Reading at this Moment

Before-bed night reading, a beautiful piece, takes you into the memory world of reading.

In Poland, there is a writer like this:

Anthony Burgess praised him as ”the wisest, most learned, and wittiest among active writers today”; Kurt Vonnegut admired him for his excellent language mastery, imagination, and portrayal of tragic characters, stating that no one could surpass him;

Liu Cixin said he has a tremendous imagination, truly unparalleled; Andrei Tarkovsky adapted his works into the movie ”Flying to Space,” cementing a classic in film history;

This writer, hailed by countless people as ’unsurpassable,’ is Stanisław Lem, the most dazzling science fiction titan of the Polish literary scene.

marks the centennial of Lem’s birth; to commemorate this incomparable writer, Yilin Publishing House recently published Lem’s six representative works for the first time in their entirety: ”Solaris,” ”The Futurological Congress,” ”Invincible,” ”His Master’s Voice,” ”Catastrophic Defeat,” ”Eden.”

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Stanisław Lem

Stanisław Lem was born in 1921 in Lviv, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) to a wealthy family of doctors. He worked as a car mechanic, earned a doctorate in medicine, and also founded the Polish Astronaut Association.

His works often focus on philosophical themes exploring the impact of technology on humans, the nature of wisdom, alien communication, and the limits of human cognition, among others. In 1996, Lem was awarded Poland’s national medal, the ”White Eagle Medal,” and Poland’s first artificial satellite was also named after him.

Lem’s novels, whether long or short, always feature captivating plots. His protagonists are often placed in novel environments: traveling back and forth through alternate space-times, worlds where machines rebel, or planets filled with bizarre creatures. Yet he is drawn to these templates not because he believes in the scenarios portrayed by such narratives, nor does he intend to depict a ”real future,” but to use them to construct and test his own ’literary models’ and thereby express his views about the world and humanity.

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Andrei Tarkovsky’s ”Flying to Space” (1972) Poster

Lem is skeptical about the possibility of communication between humans and other civilizations. His novels depict numerous extraterrestrial life forms, including Solaris’s blue ocean, the unique mechanical insects in ”The Invincible,” and the alien humans living in despair and fear in ”Eden,” among others. But these alien life forms are entirely different from humans, and we cannot expect any gain from such communications, and the same applies to them.

Due to the limits of cognitive experience, when faced with other civilizations, humans have no other breakthroughs besides realizing their own impotence and having to rely on themselves again. Lem’s depiction of contact between humans and alien life primarily aims to explore human nature. His conclusion is that humans have many weaknesses and limitations, but it is only when encountering an identity crisis that we can face our cognitive boundaries.

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Liu Cixin said, ”Lem has a very remarkable imagination, truly unique. His works give a deeper portrayal of the relationship between humans and the universe, and compared to American sci-fi, are more refined in literature, with more profound artistic conceptions and evoke more reflections and thoughts.”

Wu Yan commented on him, ”Lem always manages to mock our lives from their core, mixing scientific papers, folklore, fables, myths, and legends, and using humorous yet penetratingly absurd language and plot to reflect our world.”

This is also why some critics compare Lem to classic names like Voltaire and Swift. When a sci-fi novel probes the limits of human cognition with poetic and philosophical strokes, readers temporarily forget its genre, entranced by following such writing into closer-to-truth ultimates.

It is often said that sci-fi writers are adept at predicting the future world. As early as the mid-20th century, Stanisław Lem had envisioned e-books, tablets, smartphones, and even the ”matrix” virtual world in his works. Below, let’s see some of the technological items he prophesied for today’s society from excerpts of Lem’s works?

Provided by Literary Newspaper

E-book & Tablet

Provided by Literary Newspaper

Stanisław Lem might be the first sci-fi writer to accurately predict the end of paper books and the advent of e-books and their readers. In his 1961 novel ”Powrót z gwiazd” (tentatively translated: ”Return from the Stars”), these were already realized. The novel came about 40 years before humans first tried using electronic paper. Lem introduced e-books as small storage crystals called ”opton” that can be uploaded to devices resembling today’s tablets. Nowadays, most people call it the ”Kindle” e-book reader.