> they were not best what literature can offer. In many cases they use story as boilerplate to present some technical marvel.
There's an awful lot of sneering at science fiction writing as subpar literature and it's completely unfair. Some of Asimovs work actually is good literature, despite the fact that some is just filler that he wrote because he was more or less forced to by his publishers. I've never particularly rated Clarke, so perhaps your criticisms there are fair. What about Ray Bradbury, or Philip K Dick or Frank Herbert or Zelazny? There are more I could mention too, including some writing today.
Having said that Lem is pretty special. I loved some of The Star Diaries and there's a scene in the Futurological Congress that still brings a smile to my face (sewer rats on hallucinogens hallucinating they're human and playing bridge).
I just watched The Congress --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and WOW, it was excellent. Quite different from the book The Futurological Conference that it's based on: for example, it had cockroaches playing poker instead of sewer rats playing bridge. ;) But well worth watching for its unique take on the entertainment dictatorship. If you liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Looker, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you won't be disappointed! Something weird happens in the middle of the film, that's all I'll say...
>According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the actress is split between delusional and real mental states. Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview, Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting, namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book despite going far away from it.
It took longer than its length of two hours to watch, because I had to stop and rewind to replay and and freeze frames frequently. (Check out what's going on in the fish tank while she's saying "I wish you could see me animated, it's pretty sick. It's like a genius designer on a bad acid trip. Oh my god, I don't know, I look like a combination between Cinderella on heroin and an Egyptian queen on a bad hair day".)
I'm going to have to watch it many more times, because there were a lot of details to absorb -- time will tell if it's up there with Blade Runner as one of my favorite movies very loosely based on a great book.
There's an awful lot of sneering at science fiction writing as subpar literature and it's completely unfair. Some of Asimovs work actually is good literature, despite the fact that some is just filler that he wrote because he was more or less forced to by his publishers. I've never particularly rated Clarke, so perhaps your criticisms there are fair. What about Ray Bradbury, or Philip K Dick or Frank Herbert or Zelazny? There are more I could mention too, including some writing today.
Having said that Lem is pretty special. I loved some of The Star Diaries and there's a scene in the Futurological Congress that still brings a smile to my face (sewer rats on hallucinogens hallucinating they're human and playing bridge).