Sad news

Stanislaw Lem died today.

For those not in the know, he's a Polish sci-fi writer. His stories, the ones I've read anyway, are fairly straightforward spaceshippy stuff, but his style is literary and, well, inimitable. Here's a taste to whet your appetite, the opening lines of the short story "Pirx's Tale."

Sci-fi? Sure, I like it, but only the trashy stuff. Not so much trashy as phony. The kind I can dip into between shifts, read a few pages at a time, and then drop. Oh, I read good books too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind -- and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there. Earth has something random fickle about it -- here a tree, there a wall or garden, over the horizon another horizon, beyond the mountain a valley . . . but not out there.

As soon as the kids are in bed I think I'll cuddle up on the couch and read the rest. Yum!