Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

NON-SCIENCE FICTION PROSE OF STANISŁAW LEM

Stanisław Lem is known in the English-speaking countries virtually only as a Science
Fiction (SF) writer. This is despite the fact that two of his best non-fantastic novels were
translated into English,1 and his numerous critical papers and reviews published in such
periodicals as Science-Fiction Studies.2 This is in significant contrast to Lem’s reception in
countries such as Germany (with no significant difference between the eastern and western
lands), the former Soviet Union and, of course, his native Poland. The reasons for such a
phenomenon are manifold. The most important seems to be the high level of
commercialisation of SF in the English-speaking countries, especially in the US. Another is
the popular misconception (quite common even in the literary circles of America) that since
SF is only a popular genre, with very lowly origins in so-called pulp magazines and
comics, no SF writer can be seriously regarded as a true artist. Obviously, there are many
exceptions to this rule. First, some SF writers are indeed regarded seriously by the critics
(for example Kurt Vonnegut). Secondly, some prominent authors are not regarded as
writing SF, in spite of the fact that they really write in this genre. Aldous Huxley and
George Orwell are the most striking examples of this popular misconception. The reasons
for such an artificial and obviously incorrect classification are manifold, and beyond the
scope of this paper. Therefore I shall only mention that after H.G. Wells and Karel Čapek,
virtually none of the SF writers (including such outstanding authors as Olaf Stapledon) was
regarded as a “high-brow” artist.

It is important to analyse Lem's non-science fiction novels in order to prove that the
classification of Lem as a SF writer is artificial and reductionist. Lem’s non-fantastical
prose can be divided roughly into autobiographical (or semi-autobiographical) novels and
unorthodox detective stories. Both of these genres have important links to Lem’s science
fiction as well as to his philosophical writings. In his SF, Lem privileged the role of chance
and the impossibility of meaningful contact between truly alien cultures. Lem's
biographical novels and thrillers can also be read as political works. The reason is that
Lem's life was very much influenced by political events, such as the Second World War
and two of Poland’s major economic and political transitions:
I, who experienced the alternative character and fragility of subsequent social
systems (from poor pre-war Poland, through phases of Soviet, German and again
Soviet occupation, and then the People's Republic of Poland and the end of the
Soviet protectorate), disregarded fretting about individual psychology and tried to
concentrate on this, which as technologicus genius temporis shapes or rather

1
Szpital Przemienienia (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1975) was translated by William Brand as Hospital of
the Transfiguration (San Diego & NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988) and Wysoki Zamek
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo MON, 1966) was quite recently translated by Michael Kandel, as Highcastle.
A Remembrance (San Diego & NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1995).
2
Some of the most interesting of these are in the collection Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction
and Fantasy, edited and with introduction by Franz Rottensteiner (San Diego, NY & London: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1984).

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

3
becomes the possessor of human destiny.

The war and the subsequent transition from market capitalism to a centrally controlled
economy and so-called ‘real socialism’ is thus the main subject of Czas nieutracony (Time
not Lost). This trilogy, and especially the last two parts, Wśród umarłych (Among the
Dead) and Powrót (Return), which were withdrawn by the author himself after a few
editions in the 1950s and early 1960s,4 are without any doubt political novels. Their artistic
value may not be the highest (mostly due to censorship), but they remain an important
record of the times which many would like to expel from Polish history. The first part of
this trilogy, Szpital Przemienienia (Hospital of the Transfiguration) is different from
the last two parts. First, it is not written in the socialist realist style of the other parts and,
secondly, it is the only portion that is still in print in its original (pre-socialist realist) form.5
Although Szpital Przemienienia is not a political novel to the same extent as the other
novels of the trilogy, politics plays a very important part in this first part.

Politics plays an important role in Lem's thrillers, especially in Katar, translated as The
Chain of Chance. This is in contrast to the majority of orthodox English language
detective stories.6 Because of the political background of both Śledztwo (The
Investigation) and The Chain of Chance, these novels have only superficial similarities to
the classic ‘whodunit’ stories. As there is no individual murderer, a triumph of justice as
well as punishment of the criminal is impossible. Thus it can be said that the external form
of a detective story is misleading. Lem does not care either for happy endings or for solving
the whole mystery. Instead, he portrays detectives who must work for masters who have no
idea about the nature of the observed events and are in turn pressured by politicians to get
instant results in a situation without a solution.

LEM’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS

Both of Lem’s autobiographical novels, Szpital Przemienienia and Wysoki Zamek,

contain various links to his science fiction writings, especially to those belonging to his
second (1959-1967) and third (1968-1986) periods.7 However, it should be remembered
that these works, especially Szpital Przemienienia, are not ‘straightforward’
autobiographies. Even Wysoki Zamek, which is the closest thing Lem ever wrote to a

3
S. Lem, “Rozważania sylwiczne LXXI,” in Odra (September 1998), p. 109.
4
This is because of very strong intervention by censors who changed the novels to such an extent that
Lem could no longer accept them as his own work.
5
The first part was not as heavily influenced by the editors, who in turn acted as preventative censors, so it
was possible for Lem to re-create the original form of the novel.
6
A good example of an exception to this rule is SS-GB (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978) by Len Deighton.
7
Periodisation after Piotr Krywak Stanisław Lem (Warszawa-Kraków: Państwowe Wydawnictwo
Naukowe, 1974), passim.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

‘classical’ autobiography,8 is only an attempt at recalling the images of a world that ceased
to exist twenty years before the book was written. What is even more important, Lwów
(then a Polish city, now Lviv in Ukraine) and Galicja,9 where Lem was born and spent his
childhood, are presented in this novel through the eyes of a child and adolescent. The
presence of an adult Lem is noticeable only in the background, unlike in the majority of
autobiographies which present the past world as it is presently seen by the adult author.

Szpital Przemienienia (Hospital of the Transfiguration)

Szpital Przemienienia (1955; Hospital of the Transfiguration, 1988) is the first part of a
trilogy, entitled Czas nieutracony (Time not Lost10), which also contains novels not yet
translated into English, namely Wśród umarłych (Among the Dead) and Powrót
(Return). The trilogy is a partly socialist realist work in which Lem does a kind of ‘settling
of accounts’ with the past.11 Thus Czas Nieutracony can be loosely classified as a work
belonging to the so-called ‘literatura rozrachunkowa’ (‘literature of retribution’). This was
a kind of political sub-genre very popular among the Polish writers and intelligentsia in the
period immediately following World War Two (roughly 1945 - 1949) and after the `Polish
October' (approximately from Autumn 1957 to early 1960). In the first period the
communists had not seized full control of Poland, and in the second their grip on power
was not as strong as in the years of Stalinism in Poland (roughly 1949-1955). This made
possible the appearance of such “unorthodox” literature.

8
The other, more ‘traditional’ autobiography of Lem is Reflections on My Life. It was originally
published as “Mein Leben” (“My Life”), in Neue Rundschau, No. 4 (November, 1983), and in English as
“Chance and Order”, in The New Yorker (30 January, 1984), reprinted in Dedria Bryfonski (ed.)
Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (Detroit: Gale Research Co. & Book Tower, 1984) and
Jan Kott (ed.) Four Decades of Polish Essays (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1990). This is,
however, not a full autobiography, as it addresses only selected aspects of Lem's life. There are also rare
publications, in which Lem confirms his Jewish roots.
9
A city and province in South-Eastern Poland. Lwów together with virtually the whole Eastern Galicia are
now in Ukraine, as a result of the Yalta agreement between the former Soviet Union and its major Western
allies (USA and UK), which excluded and ignored the views of the Polish people.
10
Translated by Stanisław Barańczak as Time not Wasted, in Contemporary World Writers ed. by
Tracy Chevalier, (Detroit-London-Washington DC: ST James Press, 1993), p. 317, by Czesław Miłosz as
Time Unforfeited, in The History of Polish Literature (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969), p. 501 and
as Time Saved by Darko Suvin, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1993),
p. 710. The most faithful to the original would be ‘Time not Lost’ or (as a second choice) ‘Time
Unforfeited.’ Time not Wasted means, in Polish, ‘czas niezmarnowany’ and ‘Time Saved’ means ‘czas
oszczędzony’; thus both Barańczak's and Suvin's translations are clearly inaccurate. Suvin, who is of
Croatian origin, can be easily excused, but this does not apply to Barańczak: a native speaker of Polish
and an American academic.
11
In Polish "rozrachunek z przeszłością".

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

Czas nieutracony is set during the German occupation of Poland and the first post-war
years. The first part, generally regarded as the best, Szpital Przemienienia, describes the
vicissitudes of a young doctor, Stefan Trzyniecki, who is a kind of alter ego of the author
(Lem was also a graduate of medicine). Other heroes of the trilogy include a mathematical
genius, who is murdered by the Gestapo. He is Karol Włodzimierz Wilk,12 who also
happens to be a communist and the son of a communist (as is seen in his first and middle
names). Wilk has many similarities to another fictional mathematical genius, Professor
Hogarth of His Master's Voice, as well as to the communist heroes of Obłok Magellana
(such as Professor Goobar).

Other major characters of the trilogy are the profiteers,13 Dolaniec and Żachliński, the
writer Sekułowski and various positive proletarian heroes - workers at the electric
substation). Excellent descriptions of the substation, the surgical procedures and the general
atmosphere at the hospital indicate clearly the future interests of the young Lem. The
relatively short description of the electrical substation developed into much more extended
and structurally important descriptions of the futuristic hardware in such later novels as
Astronauci and Fiasko or Niezwyciężony and Eden. Lem's medical education enabled
him not only to describe accurately the relatively simple brain surgery in Szpital
Przemienienia, but also the resurrection of Pirx the Pilot in Fiasko. The atmosphere of the
hospital wards and operating theatres depicted in Hospital of the Transfiguration also has
similarities to the other descriptions of closed communities made up of doctors or
scientists, such as are found in His Master's Voice and Solaris.

Czas nieutracony was written between 1948 and 1950,14 before Lem decided to write
almost exclusively in the science fiction genre. Lem's decision to choose science fiction as
his main means of expression was partly political (this genre was least shackled by the
censors), and partly of more prosaic nature. He was asked by the chief editor of the
Czytelnik publishing house in early 1950 to write a science fiction novel. The enormous
popularity of this novel (Astronauci) prompted Lem to keep writing science fiction. Beside
Czas nieutracony, Lem wrote only one more novel in a genre other than science fiction,

12
This character was most likely modeled on Stefan Banach (1892-1945), a mathematical genius from
Lwów. Despite several job offers in the US (by John von Neumann), Banach stubbornly refused to emigrate.
During the German occupation of Lwów, he had to feed his own blood to the lice (which were kept in a
medical institute producing a vaccination against typhoid) in order to survive. Banach's case shows that
extreme patriotism (even if not in the phase of chauvinism) can be bad for one’s health. It also supports the
assumption that Nazism was an extremely irrational doctrine, since the Germans wasted many talents such as
Banach's because of irrational racial prejudice. These talents could have been useful in war-related
disciplines such as cryptography or computer science. However, Banach’s own limitations (mostly political
naïveté) led to his undoing and prevented him from fully realising his creative potential. Banach can be
contrasted with Einstein, who was not only a mathematical genius, but also a renaissance man, and certainly
not politically naïve (for example, he refused the post of president of Israel).
13
Officially described by the Nazi-controlled government of occupied Poland as ‘entrepreneurs.’
14
So (technically speaking) this cycle contains his first major novels.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

namely Wysoki Zamek. This was for the reason discussed above (the more lenient attitude
of the censors), as well as the ease of locating the plot of science fiction stories on remote
planets and in a distant future rather than in the mundane reality of communist Poland.

Czas nieutracony contains many autobiographical elements. The main hero, Dr Stefan
Trzyniecki, exhibits some of the young Stanisław Lem's traits: both were bright young
medical men living in German-occupied Poland. Some ideas taken from Szpital
Przemienienia, such as the detailed description of mental aberrations, were later developed
by Lem in such science fiction novels as Powrót z gwiazd (Return from the Stars). A
scene in the latter novel, set in the robot scrap-yard, contains a vivid description of various
robotic ‘mental diseases,’ which are almost identical to the human madness described in
Hospital of the Transfiguration. In Lem’s short stories, such as Podróż jedenasta or
Zakład doktora Vliperdiusa (The Eleventh Voyage and Doctor Vliperdius' Institute), from
the collection Dzienniki Gwiazdowe (The Star Diaries), one can easily find detailed
descriptions of robotic madness. In The Eleventh Voyage there is a portrait of the
spaceship's Calculator folly, while Doctor Vliperdius' Institute describes a mental
institution for the psychologically dysfunctional robots.

The whole of Czas nieutracony is written in the style of political15 prose. It is Lem's
most politically charged fiction, if the term ‘political fiction’ is understood in its narrow
meaning as ideologically inspired writing. The reason is simple: the trilogy, and especially
its second and third parts, are socialist realist works, written according to the rules set by
the political system,16 according to which writers as well as the whole literature were tools
for educating and controlling the masses. Socialist realist literature was in reality
indoctrination, which explains why Czas nieutracony, and especially its last two parts, is a
political work sensu stricto.

Wysoki Zamek (Highcastle)

Wysoki Zamek (1966; Highcastle: A Remembrance, 1995) is an anecdotal and

analytical autobiography, or rather an attempt to recreate the teenage Stanisław Lem's
experience, covering the pre-Second World War events in the then Polish city of Lwów.
Wysoki Zamek is thus the key to Lem's whole body of work and explains his interest in
technology and medicine, as well as his preoccupation with chance, unexplained
phenomena and fantastic universes. Wysoki Zamek, unlike Czas nieutracony, was
received favourably by the Polish critics, most likely because it was virtually impossible
not to notice Lem after such prominent works as Eden, Powrót z gwiazd or Solaris. As
Wysoki Zamek was translated into English only very recently, it is one of Lem's few
major works not to have been discussed widely in the English-speaking world. Since the

15
Propagandistic, and (especially in the two last parts) socialist realist.

16
This was enforced by the editors, who ‘grilled’ the young Lem during the frequent and long-lasting
conferences to such an effect, that the novels published were very different to the novels Lem actually wrote,
and especially to the novels Lem intended to write.

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importance of this novel as the key to Lem's whole body of work is difficult to
overestimate, there is hope that it will be eventually noticed by the critics.

High Castle is a rather unusual autobiography. It describes the child's, teenager's and
young adult's experiences as seen many years later from the mature adult's point of view,
but without the ‘now I know it better’ didactic frame. It can be understood as Lem's attempt
to recreate, interpret and understand himself as he was in his late childhood and very early
adulthood (up to late 1938, when Lem was almost eighteen years old). In other words, it is
a literary experiment to reconstruct the former self on the basis of relatively few surviving
memories. Wysoki Zamek is deceitful: it consciously balances on the thin border between
comedy and solemnity, pastiche and serious literature (as in many other writings of this
author). It is a novel written, in contrast to Czas nieutracony, by a mature writer, a master
of style. But the author of Wysoki Zamek is more than a novelist - he is basically a
philosopher, who also writes novels in the tradition of Swift and Voltaire. The real subject
of the book is, as the reader learns while progressing through the narrative, not the
recollections of the author's childhood, but an intellectual adventure of an adult struggling
with his recalcitrant memory. The grown-up Lem asks himself what is possible to recover
from the shadow of his own past, which memories are possible to recall and which,
although recorded in his brain, are not to be dragged up again.

The other subject of the novel is an unconventional portrait of a child. In the opening
words of the second chapter, Lem tells us:17
I do not know if it is now absolutely clear that I was a tyrant. Norbert Wiener began
his autobiography with the words I was a child prodigy;18 I could only say I was a
monster.19
Wysoki Zamek is also a key to Lem's science fiction. Substantial parts of the novel are
devoted to detailed descriptions of various machines, ancient (even by 1966 standards)
home appliances and apparatuses of miscellaneous kinds. Some of these were built by Lem,
like, for example, a primitive electric motor that looked like an old-fashioned steam
engine.20 It was Lem's original invention so he was very disappointed when he discovered
that such motors were devised a long time ago, and almost instantly abandoned as not
practical. Lem as an inventor is an ‘ancestor’ of such creators as the physicist Molteris, the

17
What follows is my translation of Lem's Wysoki Zamek (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo MON, 1966 p.
44). Michael Kandel in Highcastle (New York-San Diego-London: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995 p. 25)
translates these words as "Norbert Wiener begins his autobiography with the words ‘I was a child prodigy.’
What I would have to say is ‘I was a Monster.’”
18
Lem's italics - in original: "I was a child prodigy, byłem cudownym dzieckiem" (Lem’s English copied
directly from Wiener).
19
Lem's italics - in original: "I was a monster, byłem potworem". Obviously, Lem relates here to his
mental traits - from the old photographs it is easy to see that he was a rather fat teenager (most likely due to
his passion for halva and other sweets).
20
Instead of a cylinder with a piston it had a coil with an iron rod, pulled by the magnetic field generated
by an electric current flowing through the coil.

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designer of a time machine described in The Star Diaries, or the two robotic constructors
Trurl and Klapaucius of The Cyberiad.

The plot of Wysoki Zamek is set in Lwów, the historical capital of Eastern Galicia,
which was under Austro-Hungarian occupation from 1772 to 1918, and returned to Polish
rule between 1920 and 1939. Galicia was, on the one hand, the poorest and least developed
of all Polish lands,21 but on the other hand, it enjoyed the highest degree of political and
cultural freedom that allowed centres of science and arts, such as Kraków and Lwów, to
flourish. For young Lem, with his upper middle-class origins, Galicia was a land where one
could almost hear the sounds of Johann Strauss' waltzes played in Vienna, a land where it
was possible to sense the presence of a spirit of the kind-hearted sovereign Franz Joseph
the First.22 The head administrator (namiestnik) of Galicia was (as a rule) a Pole,23 and a
local (provincial) parliament assembled in Lwów. It was a degree of freedom and
autonomy unheard of in those years in the German partition as well as in the Russian
Poland after the failure of the November Insurrection in 1831. It was only in Austrian24
Poland that the Poles could openly listen to the Polish national anthem, print books without
intervention of political censors and exhibit patriotic paintings. Because of the proverbial
Galician poverty it is obvious that those political freedoms were of any relevance to only a
few Poles, which could be classified as the middle and upper class (certainly less than 20%
of the Polish population of Galicja).

The other, more real, Galicia enters the pages of Wysoki Zamek only in its last chapter,
where Lem describes his last vacations before his matura.25 The author of High Castle

21
The German (Prussian) part was the best developed, together with such parts of Russian Poland as
Warsaw, Łódź and the Dąbrowa Industrial Region (now part of Upper Silesia).
22
Franz Joseph the First (1830-1916) was Emperor of Austria from 1848 and King of Hungary from 1867.
23
There were also numerous Polish members of parliament in Vienna such as Wincenty Witos, who later
became the head of several Polish governments, as well as ministers including the Prime Ministers.
24
It should be remembered that Austria of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century was
radically different from the xenophobic and nationalistic post-1918 Austria - the country of birth of Adolf
Hitler whose ascent to power was enthusiastically greeted by the large majority of Austrians in 1938. Austria
is also the first European country in which an explicitly neo-nazi party was invited to form the government
after 1945 (in coalition with the Christian Democrats). Although it can be argued that an extreme right was
in the Italian coalition government in the early 1990s, it was not perceived as a threat to the peace in Europe.
The Italian ‘neo-fascist’ party was not as xenophobic and nationalistic as their Austrian counterparts, and
also because, for well-known historical reasons, the Italians are not regarded as dangerous for peace in
Europe as the Austrians and the Germans. For obvious reasons (but perhaps unjustifiably) Europe (and, to a
lesser extent, the rest of the world) reacts more strongly to the strengthening of the extreme right in the
German-speaking countries than in the rest of Europe. For example, the French or Italian far right is
perceived only as a threat to democracy in France or Italy, while the German or Austrian neo-nazis are
perceived as a threat to democracy in the whole of Western Europe.
25
An examination for the secondary school certificate (equivalent to the HSC or the present day Victorian
VCE).

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spent his holidays in the Polish army cadet corps' camp in Delatyń on a bank of the river
Prut in the so-called Huculia - a subregion of Eastern Galicia inhabited by Hucułowie. They
were a tribe of mountaineers living in extreme poverty, even by the very low Galician
standards. Hucułowie were not only extremely poor, but they were also reputed to have
suffered endemic syphilis, so young Lem's superiors strongly discouraged contact with
them, and especially their females. It was not, however, only Hucułowie that suffered
extreme poverty in the late 1930s Polish Galicia. Lem tells us that even one of his lecturers
in the rank of podchorąży (officer cadet) could not afford a pair of decent shoes. When the
podchorąży noticed that Lem was a proud owner of two pairs of shoes, he practically
begged Lem, who in turn did not know how to give his superior the pair of shoes without
personal insult. The problem was solved by the podchorąży, who simply disappeared with
Lem's spare pair of shoes.26

As the Polish literary critic, Tomasz Burek, wrote:27

... the adult Lem's universe of fantastic novels seems to expose its psychological and
social genealogy, its cultural origin, its spiritual roots, chaotic and mysterious
Genesis, whose name is Childhood, whose name is School and whose name is
Galicia.
It is this genealogy which produced Ijon Tichy (a hero of Dzienniki gwiazdowe), gave us a
description of the ultimate bureaucracy28 in Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie and set a
frame for the Czech Professor Cezar Kouska's fictitious books De Impossibilitate Vitae
and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi.29 The origin of Kouska's treatise can be traced to an
episode in the life of Stanisław Lem's father, who survived execution by the Bolsheviks
only due to an extremely unlikely event (he was recognised while marching to the place of
execution by his friend - a Jewish barber, who had the right contacts with the local Soviet
military commander).

It can also be argued that High Castle is a political novel, although in a different manner
to Lem's socialist realist trilogy. Not only because it contains the descriptions of imaginary
kingdoms and their bureaucracy, for which the young Lem skilfully produced various
certificates, permits and passes while bored by lessons in his high school, but also because

26
Lem Wysoki Zamek - op. cit. 1966 p. 203.
27
Cit. after Jan Pieszczachowicz Koniec wieku. Szkice o literaturze (End of the Century. Sketches
About the Literature), (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1994), p. 199.
28
K.u.K. (Imperial and Royal) Austro-Hungarian administration was famous for its inefficiency, general
incompetence, inaccuracy, slowness and overgrowth. On the other hand, it was not corrupt, in contrast to the
Polish administration in Galicia. This was particularly true of the period Lem described in Wysoki Zamek.
To support this we have the evidence of Mr. Wincenty Witos, the Polish Prime Minister in the 1920s, who
were earlier a deputy in the Austrian parliament. Witos wrote in his Memoirs that Polish peasants from his
Galician electorate communicated to him on several occasions their preference for the Austrian bureaucracy,
which they considered much more honest than that run by Warsaw. For more on Witos see: Jerzy Topolski,
An Outline History of Poland (Warsaw: Interpress, 1986), chapter XII.
29
See Stanisław Lem A Perfect Vacuum (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pp. 141-166.

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in almost every sentence a skilled reader can find that the world which is described in the
novel is transient, on the verge of collapse. It is about to give way to a very different world,
the world described in such political works as Gustaw Herling's A World Apart, Arthur
Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or Lem's own Hospital of the Transfiguration.

Such a reading of Wysoki Zamek requires a good knowledge of European and Polish
twentieth-century history. Unlike Australia, or even the US, both of which are characterised
by virtually stable political orders, Europe in the twentieth century suffered two major
wars, as well as numerous local wars which continue to plague this continent with
disturbing regularity. Democracy was virtually non-existent in Europe's eastern part until
the 1990s,30 and even now the political scene there remains volatile. Unlike in the countries
with stable political systems and well-developed economies, citizens of Eastern Europe
find it difficult to stay outside politics, as the numerous political changes have a direct
influence on the daily life of an ordinary person.

Wysoki Zamek describes an unusual period in contemporary Polish history - a period

of semi-stabilisation brought about by Marshall Piłsudski's May 1926 coup d`état, which
led to the establishment of quite severe limits on the democracy.31 This period lasted only
until September 1939, but for Lem it was a time of his formative years at school. Wysoki
Zamek's political discourse stands out in particular in comparison with that of Czas
nieutracony. In the trilogy the stabilisation is gone and is replaced by a general lack of
security even on the most basic levels. For during the German occupation, virtually every
Pole could be arrested without a warrant and killed or sent to a concentration camp without
a proper court sentence.32 Thus Wysoki Zamek can also be read as a kind of utopia or
eutopia – ‘no place’, ‘land of nowhere’ (after Sir Thomas More), as the reality described in
this novel lasted for such a brief period of time and existed for so few, that it was almost
unreal.

30
In Central and Eastern Europe only Austria and Czechoslovakia (both until 1938) could be regarded as
stable democracies. Poland ceased to be a truly democratic state in May 1926 (after Piłsudski's coup d'etat),
and Germany in January 1933, when Hitler became the chancellor. Russia and the Soviet Union were never
democratic. Kerenski's government was too short lived and controlled too little of this huge country to be
significant. The same can be said of the Baltic and Balkan states.
31
That was a period of the so-called colonels’ rule (semi-military junta), which resulted in imprisonment
of such political leaders as Stanisław Dubois and Norbert Barlicki of the (social-democratic) Polish
Socialist Party, Wincenty Witos (former prime Minister) of the Polish Peasant Party or Wojciech
Korfanty, leader of the Christian Democratic Party and of the Silesian Insurrections, which resulted in
some territorial gains for Poland. They were kept and terrorised in a military prison in Brest Litovsk and
later some of them in a concentration camp at Bereza Kartuska. See also Jerzy Topolski, An Outline
History of Poland op. cit. 1986, chapter XII.
32
See Raphäel Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1944), -chapter on Poland.

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LEM’S DETECTIVE STORIES

Both of Lem's detective stories, Śledztwo (The Investigation) and Katar (The Chain of
Chance) have in common not only the fact that they both belong to the same sub-genre, but
also (which is much more eminent) the preoccupation with the importance of probability
and chance in our daily life. Thus it was quite appropriate for Wydawnictwo Literackie in
Kraków to publish these two novels in one volume.33

Śledztwo (The Investigation)

Śledztwo (1959; The Investigation, 1974) is Lem's first detective story. Although it can be
analysed as a ‘classical’ thriller, it contains many ideas, which Lem later developed in his
science fiction works and essays. Foremost among these are the notions of chance and
probability and their effects in shaping the individual future. If The Investigation is a
detective story, then it is closer to G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown series than to the
writings of Agatha Christie or even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. On the surface, Śledztwo
describes a Scotland Yard investigation of a mysterious transmigration of corpses. But the
most important and interesting aspect of the sujet is the description of the ‘professional
stupidity’ of the investigators, who bluntly reject any unorthodox approach to police work.

The main hero of the novel, Lieutenant Gregory of Scotland Yard, investigates the
mysterious movements of a number of corpses in and around South-East England's
mortuaries. Our young police officer quickly finds that these are not ordinary cases of body
snatching. All the evidence points to the conclusion that the bodies moved by themselves,
with no human intervention at all. Faced with this series of unexplained phenomena,
Lieutenant Gregory begins a desperate quest for a rational explanation. In the course of the
inquest he asks various experts for help. They, in turn, furnish him with numerous
hypotheses: scientific, philosophical and even religious.

The most plausible hypothesis is presented by the statistician, Dr Harvey Sciss, in his
conversation with Lt Gregory:
... This isn't a criminal investigation, it's a scientific study. ... This case has nothing
at all in common with criminology. No offence of any kind was committed, no more
than when someone is killed by a meteor. ... Some corpses disappeared. How? The
evidence suggests they walked away by themselves. Of course, you, as a policeman,
want to know if any one helped them. The answer is yes: they were helped by
whatever causes snail shells to be dextrorotatory. But one in every ten million snail
shells is sinistrorsal. This is a fact that can be verified statistically. I was assigned to
determine connections between one phenomenon and other phenomena. That's all
that science ever does, and all that it ever will do - until the end.
... Norfolk and its surrounding region34... constitutes an enclave with relatively low
cancer mortality. In other words, the rate of death from cancer has remained more or
less the same for the past thirty years, although it has continued to increase in

33
Śledztwo • Katar, (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1982) (in the `Nowa Seria Dzieł' series).
34
The area of the mysterious movements of the corpses.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

adjacent regions. When the difference between the mortality rates of this enclave
35
and the adjacent localities exceeded a certain level, corpses began to disappear.

This and other conflicting hypotheses baffle the police. Lieutenant Gregory goes even
deeper into a metaphysical morass and in doing so finds himself further and further from
the solution. The most promising explanation provided by Dr Sciss is ignored not only by
the constabulary, but also by Sciss' fellow scientists. Thus we witness a lost opportunity
caused not only by the narrow-mindedness of the policemen, but also by the fragmentation
of science and the absence of proper communication channels between the scientists.36 The
police, by simple inertia, desperately seek a ‘traditional’ explanation, such as a psychopath
who breaks into the morgues. The scientists, who seek a cure for cancer (with rather poor
results considering their number and resources), are not prepared to verify Dr Sciss'
hypothesis not only because he is not medically trained, but also because of the boldness of
his theory and its links with apparently sensational events.

Although Śledztwo is set in mid-twentieth century England, it is concerned with issues

that are extratemporal. It is really a philosophical story in the guise of a detective novel, in
the same way as Głos Pana37 conceals its real substance as a philosophical treatise under
the costume of a science fiction novel. Thus The Investigation can, and should be read as a
philosophical story about the limits of science and scientists in particular, and the limits of
culture and human beings in general. As the above arguments are also political, the novel
can also be read as political. Dr Sciss’ understanding of science is a minimalist one, as
according to him all that science can do is to “determine the connection between one
phenomenon and other phenomena”. This is, of course, a philosophical statement with
very strong political consequences, as it strongly states Lem’s positivistic philosophy of
not only science.

Another argument for considering The Investigation a political novel is the way Lem
shows that the state, which was created to protect its citizens, becomes overprotective and
paranoid. Such a state seeks to uncover anti-state plots even in unexplained phenomena of
nature, and, what is even more important and disturbing, seeks a solution by employing the
police (the repressive apparatus) and ignoring scientific (i.e. rational) advice. It should not
be forgotten that the state described by Lem is a ‘model’ liberal democracy (the UK). It is
thus rather easy to envision the consequences for innocent citizens if the same phenomena
were to occur in a totalitarian regime (for example in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia).

The last novel discussed in this paper (Katar) is a continuation of the earlier Śledztwo.

35
Lem The Investigation, (London: André Deutsch, 1992), pp. 117-121.
36
Lem developed this subject further in his science fiction novels Solaris, His Master's Voice and
Fiasko.
37
Note the similarities between Dr. Sciss of The Investigation and Prof. Hogarth of His Master's Voice:
each one is a brilliant mathematician, and, above all, both can be regarded as a kind Lem alter ego.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

The two novels are linked not so much by their external structure of a detective story, but
their ‘hero’: probability. Another link is constituted by the fact that the they are both
political and philosophical novels, a fact consistently overlooked by the great majority of
Lem's critics, even such expert lemologists as Jerzy Jarzębski,38 Antoni Smuszkiewicz39 or
Andrzej Stoff.40

Katar (The Chain of Chance)

Katar (1976; The Chain of Chance, 1978)41 is another one of Lem's thrillers which can
be summarised as a "whodunit with probability as the butler".42 This time, the investigator
(a former American astronaut) is much more intelligent and flexible than Lieutenant
Gregory of Scotland Yard, and finally accepts the proper scientific explanation. The plot is,
at least initially, rather traditional for a novel supposedly written in the detective story
genre: it starts with a number of mysterious deaths in Italy.

It later turns out that all the victims were male, middle-aged and relatively wealthy
foreigners with some loose connections with Naples. All these clues were not sufficient for
the Italian police and Interpol. These instrumentalities were confused and thus decided to
terminate their investigations. The hero of Katar, a former US astronaut turned private eye,
decides to duplicate the route of one of the victims in a bold attempt to unravel the
connections between what appeared to be unrelated events. Our hero consults physicists
and physicians as the course leads him through a strange (particularly post-modern) world
where life is cheap, accidents occur at random and logic seems to be on occasion
redundant. As Lem's alter ego, the novel's hero tells us in his closing words:
... Just as some bullet is bound to hit its target, someone was bound to crack the case.
And if that's so, then regardless of the publisher or author, the publication of this
book was also a mathematical certainty.43

Katar links a sensational plot to profound reflections on the dangers that accompany the
advancement of our civilisation. It is an exercise in Freudian self-analysis, which contains
descriptions of madness taken almost directly from the pages of Hospital of the
Transfiguration. It is also an excursion into the field of scientific extrapolation, similar to
38
Jerzy Jarzębski, Zufall und Ordnung. Zum Werk Stanisław Lems (Chance and Order in the Works
of Stanisław Lem) Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986.
39
Antoni Smuszkiewicz, Stanisław Lem, Poznań: Rebis, 1995.
40
Andrzej Stoff , Lem i inni (Lem and the Others), Bydgoszcz: Pomorze, 1990.
41
“Katar” means “head cold” (an illness which afflicts the hero of the novel, and which is instrumental in
solving the mystery).

42
Cit. after anonymous review in Los Angeles Times – cit. after The Chain of Chance, (London:
Mandarin, 1990) (back cover).
43
Lem The Chain of Chance op. cit. 1990, p. 179.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

that in Filozofia przypadku. The story is that of a former astronaut, who initially attempts
to solve the puzzle of the mysterious deaths. However, in the course of his pursuit of the
mysterious killing force, he becomes a hero (or a victim) of ‘extraordinary coincidences.’
The story makes us aware that we live in a world where what was extraordinary yesterday
becomes very ordinary today, and what seems extreme now will become quite normal
tomorrow. And all this because of the so-called ‘law of large numbers’ (more precisely, the
laws of statistics), which causes what was traditionally regarded as an extraordinary
coincidence bordering on a miracle to be regarded as the norm.

The Chain of Chance delivers no ready recipes for living and prompts us to no easy
solutions to existing problems, with one exception. Like the novel's hero, the reader should
not, even under the heaviest stress, give up the good fight until the very end. When we
manage to come out of a sticky situation safe and sound, we should force a laugh,
appreciate the irony and come up with a sober evaluation of our experiences. This novel
has direct links to Lem's major theoretical work Filozofia przypadku: Literatura w
świecie empirii (The Philosophy of Chance: Literature in the Empirical World), as
well as to his essays collected in Doskonała próżnia (A Perfect Vacuum) and Wielkość
urojona (Imaginary Magnitude). These links are, above all, through the privileging of the
importance of chance. Hence it can be said that the English title, The Chain of Chance, is
somehow better than the original title which means only ‘head cold’, or, to be more precise
‘hay fever.’44

Katar, like the earlier Śledztwo are thus much more than detective stories. They are
also political novels describing the ‘heuristic’ limitations of the modern ‘democratic’
states,45 such as the UK and Italy, and its organs such as the bureaucracy and, above all, the
police. In The Chain of Chance, not only is the rather inept Italian police force ridiculed,
even the international law enforcement agencies, such as Interpol, are presented in a
negative light. The Italian state as described in Katar is very different to the stable, almost
Victorian, England of the earlier Śledztwo. The war against crime and especially
international terrorist organisations is already lost, despite desperate attempts to employ the
latest technology (as in the scene at the airport). In a rather unusual turn for an author of
science fiction, in Katar Lem rejects the possibility of solving social problems through the
employment of even the most clever technological gadgets.46

44
The medical condition suffered by the novels' hero, which occurrence helped him to finally solve the
mystery.
45
It can be argued that the modern democratic state is not a sufficient condition for the good reading of
these texts by Lem, as there is a strong justification that we should be run by scientists and humanities’
scholars rather than by professional politicians. In view of the recent political events, such as repeated terrorist
attacks on the US, Russia and Australia, which prove how far sighted Lem was in his critique of state
instrumentalities of security, we may read Katar in contexts that were not available just a few months ago
(this comment was suggested to me by Dr. Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover).

46
It must be noted that, unfortunately, this does not apply entirely to the present-day (early 21st century)
Lem, who (quite suddenly) became (however only temporarily) a supporter of the latest American weapons
as a solution to the Balkan crisis. Apparently, the recent large-scale terrorist attacks on America made some

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****

It can be said that Lem predicts and describes in his autobiographical novels and detective
stories the gradual fall of the modern democratic state. It will occur, according to Lem's
logic, because of internal conditions such as atrophy,47 caused by the general stagnation in
pre-war Poland, as portrayed in Czas nieutracony and Wysoki Zamek. Or else by the
conditions of the 1950s England, portrayed in Śledztwo, or by the inability to confront a
much weaker enemy - the terrorists - who attack in a random manner and have no moral
principles, as portrayed in the modern Italy of Katar. Thus, there are only two ways left
open for a democratic state under strain. Either to reject moral principles which will lead to
autocracy (it is as if Lem foresaw the events in present-day US). Or accept the impossibility
of fighting the unethical enemy, which leads to anarchy. It can be said that Lem sees48 the
modern liberal democratic state as a kind of aberration, a temporal phenomenon, which in
the long term will have to give way to either a dictatorship or lawlessness.49

Lem as a writer of political fiction is considerably removed from the sensational

political thrillers that usually link the collapse of law and order to some catastrophic event,
such as nuclear war, the outbreak of an epidemic or the assassination of a head of state.
According to Lem, the collapse of a modern liberal-democratic state is a lengthy process,
difficult to observe by an untrained eye. A collapse, or rather decay, of this kind is not
spectacular, and is therefore not material for a bestseller or a movie blockbuster. Even if
such a book were to be written, there is yet another, more important and fundamental
reason why it would be difficult to sell. As the disintegration of a modern liberal
democracy could not be blamed on external factors, such as terrorists or natural disasters,
the real culprit must be the system itself. However, the liberal-democratic system is
presently regarded (at least in the West) as the best of all possible worlds. Thus, because
any serious critique of such a social system is currently highly unfashionable in the West,
Lem's voice can be regarded as the voice of one calling in the wilderness.

In his philosophical treatise Dialogi,50 and especially on a chart in chapter VIII, Lem

changes in Lem’s world-view. It should also be noted that in the earlier Powrót z gwiazd (1961), and later
Wizja lokalna (1982), Lem proposed what he considered as a virtually full-proof technological solution to
social and thus also political problems, such as violent crime.
47
Understood as “wasting away through under-nourishment or lack of use” – The Concise Oxford
Dictionary, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 59. Compare Lem, Dialogi (The Dialogues), (Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984), pp. 328-357 (chapter entitled “Cybernetyka stosowana: przykład z
dziedziny socjologii” – “Applied cybernetics: an example from sociology.”)

48
Or, to be more precise, saw it roughly up to the 1990s.
49
See. Lem Dialogi (The Dialogues), (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984), pp. 265-270.
50
Ibid., pp. 265-276.

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 Lech Keller (Monash University, Australia)

argues that liberal democracy is a political system that can survive only under strictly
defined conditions. The most important of those conditions is, according to Lem, the level
of the so-called ‘psychical temperature,’ or the tendency to spontaneous behaviour.
Democracy can, according to this theory, survive only in relatively low psychical
temperatures. As, for mostly historical reasons, the level of this parameter is higher in the
Mediterranean countries than in the Northern Europe, so (according to Lem) anarchy is
more likely in the Italy of Katar than in the England of Śledztwo. Thus, it could be said
that the most important difference between these two novels is the level of ‘psychical
temperature,’ as both books are otherwise very similar in plot as well as in their
philosophical and political messages.

15