The theme he stresses in most of his work is that machines will someday be as human as Homo sapiens and perhaps superior to him. Mr. Lem has an almost Dickensian genius for vividly realizing the tragedy and comedy of future machines; the death of one of his androids or computers actually wrings sorrow from the reader. ~ Philip Jose Farmer in The New York Times (2 September 1984)
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Farmer praises Lem's ability to make machines seem human, evoking deep emotional responses from readers about their fates.
- In plain terms
- Lem writes about robots and computers so well that readers feel sad when they die.
- What can you take from it?
- Good storytelling can make readers care deeply about non-human characters.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Can a machine truly be human?
- Why do we feel sadness for fictional robots?
Another view
Not all readers connect with non-human characters in the same way.
More from Stanislaw Lem
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