A real rash of people I respect have died over the last week or so: Ali Farka Toure, Buck Owens, and now Stansilaw Lem, the Polish sci-fi writer. Bummer. One of the relative handful of sci-fi writers whose work transcended the genre (along with Phillip K. Dick). Here's a wikipedia bio link.
I finally rented the DVDs of Solaris last year, both the Tarkovsky and the Soderbergh remake, based on Lem's novel. Both were good, but Tarkovsky's seemed to have more of Lem's attitude to it. But read the book first.
An Aside: Death has some weight for me recently; that strep throat I mentioned earlier ended up, through a series of bizarre medical ineptitude on the part of people I pay good cash money to monitor my health, turning into kidney failure and a short hospital stay. Now I keep thinking, how many blogs would report my death? Hell, I don't even have a wikipedia stub! I better start working.
[via Slashdot]
Posted by johndanseven at March 27, 2006 11:07 PM