A curious thing...
Just the other week I was introducing a colleague whose knowledge of science fiction was limited to what you might call the ray gun and tentacled monster adventure story to Lem.
He was encouragingly motivated to broaden his interests beyond pulp (which can be fun, like lemonade on a hot day but too much of the sweet stuff is limiting).
Anyway, introducing my colleague to Lem inspired me to return to "Imaginary Magnitude" (GOLEM XIV in particular), "His Master's Voice" (which is even more strangely beautiful than I remembered and of course, "Solaris" one of the few serious meditations on what an encounter with the truly alien might mean I've ever come across.
Unfortunately, there's no complete translation into English of Lem's work Summa Technologiae - nonfiction: a series of essays (I'm told) on the implications of various advanced (real) technologies on civilization.
Not in that George Gilder way of gee-whizzing "hot trends for investment" but actually attempting to track what it means to live in a world in which viruses can be re-purposed and nanoscale machines are in active development. Our world.
The natural progression of the serious science fiction writer (as opposed to the "hicks" with rocket ship fixations, to paraphrase Bruce Sterling) may be from novelist to essayist and observer of our already strange reality.
.d.
--------- Sí, los terroristas son nihilists pero sus enemigos son nihilists también.