Dick dibujado por Robert Crumb
vs
Stanislaw Lem
¿ Qué paso?
Lem was awarded an honorary membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in 1973 despite being technically ineligible. SFWA Honorary membership is given to people who do not meet the criteria for joining the regular membership but who would be welcomed as members. Lem, however, never had a high opinion of American science-fiction — particularly the works of Harlan Ellison — describing it as ill thought-out, poorly written, and interested more in making money than in ideas or new literary forms.[14] After his American publication, when he was eligible for regular membership, his honorary membership was rescinded. Some of the SFWA members apparently intended this as a rebuke,[15] and it seems that Lem interpreted it thus, but the organization's official line is that honorary membership is only extended to people who are not eligible for regular membership. After his American publication, Lem was invited to stay on with the organization with a regular membership, but declined.[16]
Lem singled out only one American SF writer for praise, Philip K. Dick - see the 1986 English-language anthology of his critical essays, Microworlds. Dick, however, considered Lem to be a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.[17] After many members (including Ursula K. Le Guin) protested Lem's treatment by the SFWA, a member offered to pay his dues. Lem never accepted the offer. He had also been critical of science fiction in general, and had recently distanced himself from the genre, saying that his early works may have been SF, but his later ones were more mainstream.[14][16]
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA a Harlan Ellison le da con toda. A la mierda.
Claro todos queremos ver la posta de Dick!!!
What was that "Famous Philip K. Dick Letter" regarding Lem?
On September 2, 1974 Philip K. Dick sent the following letter to the FBI (Please keep in mind Mr. Dick was most probably suffering from schizophrenia):
Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974
I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem's official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.
What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA.
Their main successes would appear to be in the fields of academic articles, book reviews and possibly through our organization the control in the future of the awarding of honors and titles. I think, though, at this time, that their campaign to establish Lem himself as a major novelist and critic is losing ground; it has begun to encounter serious opposition: Lem's creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated).
It is a grim development for our field and its hopes to find much of our criticism and academic theses and publications completely controlled by a faceless group in Krakow, Poland. What can be done, though, I do not know.
¿Qué tal?
Interesante y a la vez una locura digna de Dick ya que simplemente unos años más diría..
This is to clarify certain matters pertaining to the ouster of Stanislaw Lem from the SFWA. When Philip José Farmer wrote to SFWA saying that he and I (Philip K. Dick) would resign from SFWA if Lem were admitted on a regular dues-paying basis, he was speaking both unethically and perhaps even illegally, inasmuch as he had never discussed this matter with me at all. I at once wrote SFWA to explain to them that I dissociated myself from Mr. Farmer's position, and that he was speaking only for himself, not for me. I sent a copy of my letter to Ms. Pamela Sargent — all this in and around May 1976 — so that she would know of my repudiation and indignation vis-à-vis Phil Farmer's stated position.
I had assumed all this time that my letter to SFWA had been printed, but now I understand that it has not. I should have told Ms. Sargent to make public the carbon I sent her, plus the cover letter I sent her, but unfortunately I failed to do that. In other words, I had thought all this time that my position disavowing Phil Farmer's shocking and undemocratic position was well-known. I would like, at this time, to rectify that unfortunate silence and state absolutely that Lem should have been allowed (even welcomed) into SFWA on the customary dues-paying basis by which we are all members. The most fundamental quality of fairness and proportion is involved. That Lem spoke out critically against Western science fiction is no grounds to bar him from SFWA, and I am sure that any and every fair-minded person would agree to this. I am only sorry that my own position, held from the very start, was never made public.
Since rumors reach me that Lem defended a "politically suspect" translator and has therefore left his Polish publisher, Wydawnictwo Literackie Kraków, I hope he will be allowed to go on publishing over there without having to recant in some undignified way — i.e. that he will be allowed by the Authorities Over There to be his own man — which we all should be.
Saludos...
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