SOURCE: “Science Friction,” in New Republic, November 7, 1988, pp. 39–41.

In the following review, Baranczak provides an overview of Lem's literary accomplishments and discusses his early realist novel Hospital of the Transfiguration.

Q: What puts Stanislaw Lem in a category with François Rabelais and Anton Chekhov? A: All three started out in the medical profession. The best known representative of European science fiction, as well as the most widely translated among Poland's living authors, Lem wandered into literature almost reluctantly. Something of a Polish Isaac Asimov, he can claim an up-to-date familiarity with many fields of science; as the legend goes, he devours professional journals from astrophysics to zoopsychiatry at the rate of a dozen a day. Some of his non-fictional works, such as the wittily yet forbiddingly titled Summa Technologiae, or the highly technical treatise on literature's cognitive aspects, Philosophy of Chance, leave the poor literary critic in...