STANISLAW LEM 1921-2006 WARSAW.

STANISLAW LEM 1921-2006

WARSAW, Poland -- Stanislaw Lem a science fiction writer whose novel Solaris was made into a movie starring George Clooney died Monday in his native Poland, his secretary said. He was 84

Mr Lem died in a Krakow hospital from heart failure "connect to his not new age," Wojciech Zemek told the Associated Pres He gave no other details.

Mr Lem was undivided of the most popular science fiction authors of late decades to write in a language other than English, and his works were translated from Polish into more than 40 other languages. His main division s have sold 27 million copies.

"A great artist has died, a man with the hallmarks of a genius," renowned Polish film director Andrzej Wajda told the country's PAP stranges agency.

His best-known work, Solaris, was adapted into films by way of director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and at Steven Soderbergh in 2002. That version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone

place on a spaceship above a fictional planet, a psychologist adapteds the likeness of a long-dead lover as he and the ship's company grapple with suppressed memories of missing loves.

Mr Lem's first important novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration, was censored by way of communist authorities for eight years before its release in 1956 amid a thaw following the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Other works include "The Invincible," "The Cyberiad," "His Master's Voice," "The Star Diaries," "The Futurological Congress" and "Tales of Prix the Pilot."

"He was an amazingly talented man, and Polish literature in no degree had anyone like him before," said Tomasz Fialkowski, co-author of a volume of interviews with Lem and the envoy editor of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny

While Mr Lem was widely known as a writer of science fiction, his works were not simple tales of spaceships and light sabers.

Instead, he wrote about of recent origin scientific discoveries and the evolution of man and technology, Fialkowski said. Mr Lem also foresaw many of the present day technologies, including virtual reality, Fialkowski said.

While his novels frequently took place in space in the undetermined coming events Mr. Lem "connected it all with his interest in what is going forward in the here and now, with politics," Fialkowski said.

Mr Lem was born into a Polish Jewish family onward Sept. 21, 1921, in Lviv, then a Polish city nevertheless now part of Ukraine.

His father was a doctor and he initially appeared fix to follow in that path, taking up medical studies in Lviv before World War II.

After surviving the Nazi occupation, in part thanks to forged documents that concealed his Jewish background, Mr Lem continued his medical studies in Krakow. at so early an hour afterward, however, he took up writing science fiction.

Mr Lem addressed his multiple talents with a touch of chastity and humor.

"If I was a child prodigy, it could solitary have been in the vigilances of doting aunts," Mr. Lem formerly said. "In my fourth year, I learned to write, on the other hand had nothing of great importance to communicate by dint of that means."

Mr Lem is survived at his wife and a son Zemek said. Funeral arrangements were not disclosed.

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