[nationcrafting]

Re: Stanislaw Lem. You're right, he definitely feels like he belongs in the Soviet writers context. You can tell the difference in culture, context, commercial preoccupations, etc. when you compare Soderbergh's film version of Solaris with Tarkovsky's version. Both films were enjoyable, of course, but Tarkovsky was much closer to the depth of the book.

[gambiting]

Lem's "Invincible" is my favourite book of all time. It's very hard to buy it for my English friends though, as the only translation seems to be from German(already a translation)->English from 1971, so it's not ideal.

[eps]

The thing is, of course, that Lem didn't like both :)