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Wiadomości - Robert Boettcher

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Forum in English / Lemopedia 2014
« dnia: Października 17, 2014, 12:36:11 pm »
Currently an effort is being made to migrate stanislaw-lem.wikia.com to The Lemopedia.

For that its a lot of button pressing (open new article in Lemopedia, copy source, paste source, then delete the article on Stanislaw-lem.wikia, then adding Categorys by hand).

If anyone is interested in helping, this last year the data that is in Stanislaw-lem.wikia was gathered and there is a lot of unique stub articles about all kinds of stuff Lem came up with in his novels.

Furthermore, if anyone can provide an article or an interview by Lem translated from a foreign language into English, it could be used as a Source on this Wiki (see the http://lem.pl/lemopedia/Lemopedia:Community_portal for more info on this part of the project.

The third part is scavenging the internet for all bibliographic links to Interviews and Articles by and from Stanislaw Lem. A lot of it, starting from Material from the 90s is not readily available and research institutes might have to be contacted. For that purpose, a general list of these bibliographies and their current status in getting the source should be started. (And an updated edit with the link posted here).

Just some ideas for making this Wiki as successfull as the Stanislaw-Lem.wikia.com was (at the end between 144-4 visitors daily).

Robert B.

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Forum in English / Overpopulation addressed in Stanislaw Lem's work
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 02:24:54 am »
As far as I can recall, Lem deals with the exponential rise in numbers of the inhabitants on a planet in two books.

In Fiasco it is described in the Section where DEUS describes how the power blocks balances shifted (because of the emerging nations, participating in the project of maintaining the ice ring just like the others, were superior only in the number of their population)

In the Futurological Congress it is the Central Theme and in shortened, abbreviated form handled in the first speech held in the Congress.

I have always wondered why no cultural or economic system on Earth has yet taken into account how many inhabitants consuming how much planet Earth can actually support. All we hear is that we consume to much and that its going to be bad.

But discreet or concrete measures as mentionedin the Congress are not executed in the scope necessary to make an impact so it seems. Or they are not publicly discussed at all.

So I wonder whether the globalized culture of man on Earth is lacking its reason in this vital part of their civilization, namely to sustain its own existence.

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Forum in English / Re: Quinta and Earth
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 02:15:20 am »
That this was posted in a Forum like that, but its actually nice that it remains here, though it is a disjointed note of thoughts, riddled with doubt and concern about the state of the world.

The Problem is, for anyone reading that without having byhearted Fiasco, this will appear as little else but a rather incomprehensible Piece of Information. Nonetheless, it could be processed to become something of the Sort of "Expressions in the Real world in 2014 of Phenomena described by Lem in 1987"

@Stanislaw Remuszko: I'm under the impression the whole planet is inundated by the informaiton flood, our equivalent to the Quintans blocking out their ionospheric communication channels with white noise. At any rate there is but little hope, as Lem described in this article in German www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/interview-mit-stanislaw-lem-wir-steuern-auf-einen-nuklearkrieg-zu-a-400622.html where he says we are inevitably heading for nuclear war.

And that is described by Lem in Fiasco (1987) as a scenario to which no side will take the first step, as it would inevitably stretch to tbe point of extinction. So while we all hope self-preservation keeps us from this last final step, seeing the power blocks edge closer on each other than they have done for the last decade or so is more than enough to make someone uneasy who constantly watches the news and feeds on the informatio nprovided there.

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Forum in English / Re: Translating LEM into our new times
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 02:04:40 am »
What comes to my mind in this regard is Chapter 1 of Fiasco.

The Pilot stands in the Grail Station, and the part that deals with the mechanics of the interior is just as readable today as it was when it was published 1987.

"...the tape record ended. It fluttered on the reel."

Sure, noone uses tape recorders anymore, but its still more readable than "twitter beackup restored its synching function with tits floating cloud".

All those euphemisms (cloud - centralized server storage), (server- big fast central computer), etc. are not succesfully concealing the fact that technologic innovation is cranking and the rate of progress is more a source of concern, given the amount of resources thats pumped into upholding that bubble.

So where the phrase like"
He took a crystal and inserted it into the machine.
The blue indicator light went on. Again they heard the monotonous voice of DEUS"
could be 'updated' I do not know.

But it certainly is a sign of the Zeitgeist (not the movie, the actual meaning of the word) when the most recent posts in this forum are looked at.

I would like to know, all those technologies are so temporary (I'm using their names now to exemplify).
studiVZ (German Facebook-Clone, in 2007 or so biggest membership base, now defunct)
MySpace (once thriving with blog and other functions - now gone into hybernation for musicians presentation)
twitter (weird thing, simply weird. The more I look at it, the more I wonder how one finds the time to read more than one link posted by someone else)
Facebook (DEFINITELY shows signs of internal decay. As I log in rather rarely, i see that EVERY time they change the Graphical User Interface. Recent 'improvement' is some kind of real time ticker for social interactions. As if those were some kind of commodity to be traded. - the air is out of that, most people comment on their close relatives family pictures, after too many 'how many like' campaigns have strained their well meaning too much).

This is not meant as a criticism on modern technologic innovations in the area of software and user experience, which would be shallow in its own wake. It is merely to exemplify that those things change. And in literature, as Lem has written it, the simplistic ways he describes the machines are working much better, because they are timeless in a way.
I wouldnt stretch it that far to say that in a few hundred years (given there are still people reading then) his descriptions of space stations and ships would not sound horribly anachronistic. But maybe that retains more substance than throwing all meaning away to get swept away with the tide of contemporary kinkerlitzchen.

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Q thank you for the link to electricity.

I must honestly say I stopped reading after the third paragraph.

This reminds me of the day back in 2006 when I walked through Regensburg and a Hare Krishna approached me and asked whether I would like to have a Bhagavad Gita (their manual) for free.
Or rather, against a 'donation fee' which ended up to be 15 Euros. Apart from the glossy colour prints, there was nothing in there of any value for me.

But it has gotten depressingly empty in the English Forum, and that someone tries a paragraph filled with philosophical anguish, only to drift off into some arbitrary explanation of his own mortality (not that I mind, mind you), birth of culture, away from the blind guided processes of evolution.

Then to see the reaction of the active forum participants to that devious spam tells more than the original post itself  :)

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Forum in English / Re: Very long word
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 01:37:07 am »
Hi Krautteich,

yes you are right, ever since the departure of Mr. Lem, things have gone quiet in the German/English (and I presume also) SPanish Part of the Forum.

But let that not deter you from asking your question.

So you want us to come up with a long word, containing that beginning and that ending?
And it has to describe some kind of machine or similar?

Could provide more context to the intended usage? For since

Hemonylogensatriparosithenkanielforsaserkolometrotron

looks like a long word to me, I dont have any idea what it describes.

Seriously, the first part of the word has as far as I can recognize no meaning, so the whole world could describe a machine, the tablespoon of curd the machine tries to eat of the sparkling failure of electronics when that task fails  :)

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Forum in English / Re: Particpation in Wider Forum
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 01:30:15 am »
Dear all,

please excuse repeated bumping. However I have this to say:
When I joined this forum in 2005 as Sogo (Lem was still alive back then), the forum was not literally teeming with activity (as nowadays 'Social Media' spam sites would. But there was activity by a few dedicated users and the exchange was quite remarkable.

Then Lem died and I had to move my living space, quite drastically chaning my schedule. The last time I logged in with the old profile and looked, there was literally no activity on the English part of the Forum.

But there is still on the Polish Side.
And to he honest, Google Translate from Polish to English is much more comprehensible than from Polish to, for Example, German.

I somewhere gathered that Google translates the page into English first, and then from there into the target language.

Not unlike Captain Prendel in Memoirs found in a Bathtub, running Shakespeares Excerpt from Romeo and Juliet through his DEC Machine twice and finding ever 'deeper' and 'hidden' meaning.

And as for the other authors, I would really like to find Science-Fiction Authors who are having their science right, just like Lem did. It took me considerable effort to read up on Physics of Gravity and Speed of Light to understand where his literary exposition took over from hard scientific facts in his book Fiasco.

If there is that type of book by other Polish Authors (translated or not) it would be interesting. Meanwhile I stick to Lem as his work is still rich enough to find new things.
And Michael Kandel has done great translations, as far as I can judge from having read the German Edition of most of Lem's books.

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Forum in English / Re: Franz Rottensteiner and Lem
« dnia: Maja 23, 2014, 01:18:59 am »
Hi Ritch,

the German Wikipedia Page of Mr. Rottensteiner has this to say:

"Ein intensiver, 1969 einsetzender Briefwechsel mit dem damals noch weithin unbekannten Stanislaw Lem führte zu einer langjährigen Freundschaft; Rottensteiner war in der Folge Lems literarischer Agent (außer für Deutschland) bis zum Jahre 1995, als der polnische Autor seinen Agenten verklagte (und den Prozess verlor)."

Which means they were friends from 1969, having exchanged letters from the time when Lem was widely unknown. However that ended when in 1995 Lem sued him and lost the case in court.

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