This Aesopian language - this couching of hard subversive truths in sheep's clothing - Lem found extremely congenial, and his decision to stop writing fiction in 1989 may, at least in part, have come from a sense that, now that he no longer needed to tell fables, he no longer needed to write fiction.The great novels followed fast, beginning with Eden (1959; translated in 1987) and Pamietnik znaleziony w wannie (1961, translated as Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, 1973). Lem disliked this novel for its na? crudity, which did not keep it from being one of his most popular titles on the Continent (no English edition ever appeared).It was around this time, though, that Lem, like many of his contemporaries, began to learn how to "operate" the abstract, seemingly unreal worlds and concerns of science fiction, and to say exactly what he wished to say, in a code only dolts (that is, Party officials) would not be able to decipher immediately. Ballard, who shared some parallel experiences and also attended medical school before turning to writing, shares with Lem a dry-ice sharpness of eye, a cold, seemingly impassive focus on the grotesqueries of the human condition.Very soon, Lem published obscurely the first of his approximately 70 books, the never-translated Czlowiek z Marsa ("A Man from Mars", 1946), though he soon found himself frustrated by the Polish censors, who blocked several further manuscripts; it was not until the release of Astronauci ("The Astronauts", 1951) that his career was really launched. Lem returned to medical school but soon quit - interestingly, the British author J.G. He worked as a mechanic and welder, later recording that he had some success at the task of sabotaging German vehicles.In 1944, the Soviet army occupied Lwow, never to leave until the end of the Soviet Union itself; Lwow is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

After normal schooling, he began medical studies at Lwow University, 1940-41, until the Germans occupied the city, where he survived the Second World War as a member of the Polish resistance with false papers. His 1961 novel Solaris was filmed twice, first by Andrei Tarkovsky and most recently, in 2002, in a version starring George Clooney and directed by Steven Soderbergh.Lem was born in Lwow, Poland in 1921, to well-to-do parents; though never professing Judaism (he was not a religious man), he had Jewish ancestors. In monoglot Britain and America, he was, after Jules Verne, the best-known and most influential science-fiction writer to be translated into English. Writing in a language not easily accessible to other Europeans, and restricted in his travel by inclination and political barriers, he became all the same world-famous as the most daring and demanding of those authors of speculative fiction - like the Strugatski Brothers in the Soviet Union, and Josef Nesvadba in Czechoslovakia - who managed to flourish behind the Iron Curtain during the years of plague, 1946-90. His novels and stories - though not many of his non-fiction works - were translated into 35 languages or more, selling at least 27 million copies. Along with Czeslaw Milosz, Stanislaw Lem was for 50 years Poland's premier intellectual of the imagination. Stanislaw Lem, writer: born Lwow, Poland 12 September 1921; married 1953 Barbara Lesniak (one son); died Krakow, Poland 27 March 2006.

He did it because he was deeply a politician of principle and a human being who fretted about what was right and what was wrong.Tam Dalyell. Parkyn as a member of the Select Committee thought I had been reckless but stuck out his neck in arguing on my behalf with the whips and House authorities.He had no need to do so, because it was not to his advantage. He became a recognised authority on polyester resins and reinforced plastics.On a personal note, in 1968 I got into huge trouble with the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons in what turned out to be a cause c?bre as a result of the Select Committee's visit to Porton Down and subsequent disclosures on the front page of the Observer newspaper I was very nearly ejected from the House of Commons. For a quarter of a century he was on the court of the Institute of Technology which became Cranfield University.