The Future According to Stanisław Lem

Re:The Future According to Stanisław Lem by dredmorbius on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:17AM (#8312582)

Setting critical literature in fantastical or allegorical contexts is as old as writing. You'll find it in Aesop's fables, Dante, Shakespeare, Swift, and more. Soviet rule was particularly harsh in this regard, and music was another outlet (Shostakovich in particular wrote a number of pieces now considered highly subversive).

Lem is excellent, though.

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Re:The Future According to Stanisław Lem by lmm on Saturday September 13, 2014 @11:56AM (#8312710)

And doing it in SF is as old as the genre itself - Wells wrote War of the Worlds so that he could criticize British colonialism at one remove.

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Re:The Future According to Stanisław Lem by dredmorbius on Saturday September 13, 2014 @07:43PM (#8314043)

Shelley, Poe, and Verne had the jump on Wells. Their works also had an element of social criticism. It's hard for any adult writing not to.

As I said, it's part of literature. Sci Fi filled that role as it came into existence, in part a result of science emerging as a thing in the 19th century, distinct from natural philosophy.

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Re:The Future According to Stanisław Lem by copperx on Saturday September 13, 2014 @04:27PM (#8313457)

Just to be clear: Lem is critical of such literature.

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Re:The Future According to Stanisław Lem by dredmorbius on Sunday September 14, 2014 @06:38AM (#8314941)

Any specific references on that?

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