Library Person
Stanisław Lem
Polish writer and philosopher of technology; science fiction as a vehicle for cybernetic and epistemological speculation.
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) trained in medicine in Lwów and Kraków before turning to fiction, building a body of work that used science fiction as an instrument for genuine philosophical and technical speculation rather than adventure. His 1964 treatise Summa Technologiae worked through prospective cybernetic, biological, and information-theoretic futures — virtual environments and molecular-scale engineering among them — decades ahead of those fields’ emergence. The 1971 story Non Serviam, framed as a review of a (fictional) book on “personetics,” follows computer-simulated “personoids” reasoning their way toward a theology of their own creator, one of several Lem fictions built directly on the era’s cybernetic and information-theoretic vocabulary.
Works in the Library
Stanisław Lem STORY 1971
Lem's fictional account of 'personoids' — conscious beings created inside a computer, who reason their way to theology.
COMPUTATION LANGUAGE
