Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. -- Twenty-Two Answers and Two Postscripts: An Interview with Stanislaw Lem

The present interview was conducted in writing, following conversations that I had with Lem in Vienna in May of 1985 and a year-long correspondence that surrounded them. Our original plan had been to converse with the help of a Polish-English interpreter. But when I arrived in Vienna, no appropriate interpreter was available. Lem had no desire to speak for the record in English or, through a third-language interpreter, in German or French. With the help of Dr. Franz Rottensteiner's able mediation from German, and Lem's own quite competent English, Lem and I did manage to discuss many of the things that later formed the basis of the interview. We agreed that the ideal format would be for me to submit my questions in English, to which he would reply in writing, in Polish. I think both of us preferred this format anyway, since it minimized the loss of information. The result was the 22 replies and 2 postscripts of the present interview, which I have annotated with Dr. Rottensteiner's assi

The present interview was conducted in writing, following conversations that I had with Lem in Vienna in May of 1985 and a year-long correspondence that surrounded them. Our original plan had been to converse with the help of a Polish-English interpreter. But when I arrived in Vienna, no appropriate interpreter was available. Lem had no desire to speak for the record in English or, through a third-language interpreter, in German or French. With the help of Dr. Franz Rottensteiner's able mediation from German, and Lem's own quite competent English, Lem and I did manage to discuss many of the th