KRAKOW, Poland - Polish author Stanislaw Lem, one of the world's leading science-fiction writers, has died in his home city of Krakow at the age of 84 after a battle with heart disease.
Lem, whose books have sold more than 27 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages, won widespread acclaim for "The Cyberiad," stories from a mechanical world ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974.
"Solaris," published in 1961 and set on an isolated space station, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. A 2002 Hollywood remake directed by Steven Sodebergh starred George Clooney.
"Stanislaw Lem died in the heart clinic, where he had been treated over the past few weeks for circulatory problems," Andrzej Kulig, director of the Jagiellonian University hospital, told Reuters.
Lem, born on September 12, 1921, in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv, studied medicine before World War Two. Following the war, communist censorship blocked the publication of his earliest writings.
After the fall of communism in 1989 Lem ceased writing science-fiction, instead devoting himself to reports on near-future predictions for governments and organisations.
He wrote essays on computer crime, as well as about technological and ethical problems posed by the expansion of the internet.
- REUTERS/VNU
Solaris author dies at 84
Stanislaw Lem
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