#stanislaw lem
We are only seeking Man. We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors.
Stanisław Lem “Solaris”
Cracow, 25.09.2021
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“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don’t like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us - that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence - then we don’t like it anymore.”
~ Stanisław Lem (Solaris)
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I’m always reluctant to start a new (new for me) sci-fi book, because I know I’m immediately going to get sucked in and get attached and my mind is going to be blown within two seconds and it’s emotional investment, but then I start reading and it’s all of the above and more and it’s all worth it a million times
The very stylish, Kosmostrator - Classic interplanetary spacecraft featured in the 1960 East German-Polish sci-fi co-production, The Silent Star (Der Schweigende Stern). The film was released in the US in 1962 - shortened and retitled, The First Spaceship On Venus. The storyline was set in 1985 and based on Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s first sci-fi novel, The Astronauts (1951). This large scale production was the first to be shot in the ‘Totalvision’ widescreen process.
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