So it was, strictly speaking, only the Nazi legislation that brought home to me the realization that I had Jewish blood in my veins.During that time, Lem earned a living as a car mechanic and welder,[10] and occasionally stole munitions from storehouses (to which he had access as an employee of a German company) to pass them on to the Polish resistance.

[18] In 1945, Lwów was annexed into the Soviet Ukraine, and the family, along with many other Polish citizens, was resettled to Kraków, where Lem, at his father's insistence, took up medical studies at the Jagiellonian University.

[19][16][note 2] After receiving absolutorium (Latin term for the evidence of completion of the studies without diploma), he did an obligatory monthly work at a hospital, at a maternity ward, where he assisted at a number of childbirths and a caesarean section.

[20] Lem started his literary work in 1946 with a number of publications in different genres, including poetry, as well as his first science fiction novel, The Man from Mars, serialized in Nowy Świat Przygód [pl] (New World of Adventures).

[10] Between 1948 and 1950 Lem was working as a scientific research assistant at the Jagiellonian University, and published a number of short stories, poems, reviews, etc., particularly in the magazine Tygodnik Powszechny.

[10] The experience of trying to push Czas nieutracony through the censors was one of the major reasons Lem decided to focus on the less-censored genre of science fiction.

[21] Nonetheless, most of Lem's works published in the 1950s also contain various elements of socialist realism as well as of the "glorious future of communism" forced upon him by the censors and editors.

[10] Lem became truly productive after 1956, when the de-Stalinization period in the Soviet Union led to the "Polish October", when Poland experienced an increase in freedom of speech.

[21] In 1957, he published his first non-fiction, philosophical book, Dialogs, as well as a science fiction anthology, The Star Diaries,[10] collecting short stories about one of his most popular characters, Ijon Tichy.

[10] In 1964, Lem published a large work on the border of philosophy and sociology of science and futurology, Summa Technologiae, as well as a novel, The Invincible.

[10] Ijon Tichy returned in 1971's The Futurological Congress; in the same year Lem released a genre-mixing experiment, A Perfect Vacuum, a collection of reviews of non-existent books.

[10] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lem cautiously supported the Polish dissident movement, and started publishing essays in the Paris-based magazine Kultura.

[10] From the late 1980s onwards, Lem tended to concentrate on philosophical texts and essays, published in Polish magazines including Tygodnik Powszechny, Odra, and Przegląd.

Other examples include the intelligent swarms of mechanical insect-like micromachines in The Invincible, and strangely ordered societies of more human-like beings in Fiasco and Eden, describing the failure of first contact.

The Summa is notable for being a unique analysis of prospective social, cybernetic, and biological advances;[10] in this work, Lem discusses philosophical implications of technologies that were completely in the realm of science fiction at the time, but are gaining importance today—for instance, virtual reality and nanotechnology.

Throughout the entirety of his life, Stanisław Lem remained deeply attached to his original hometown of Lwów (then in Poland, now Lviv in Ukraine) and missed it greatly.

[38] In the 1990s, Lem forswore science fiction[39] and returned to futurological prognostications, most notably those expressed in Okamgnienie [pl] [Blink of an Eye].

He had a deep appreciation for the works of Polish writer Czesław Miłosz and respected Józef Piłsudski as a national leader.

[35] Lem said that since the success of the trade union Solidarity, and the collapse of the Soviet empire, he felt his wild dreams about the future could no longer compare with reality.

"[41] He was a proponent of nuclear power, which he saw as a potential means for Poland to secure its sovereignty via reducing dependency on fossil fuels from Russia.

[35] In his 2004-2006 columns for Tygodnik Powszechny, Lem was highly critical of Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Andrzej Lepper, Samoobrona, the League of Polish Families, and the All-Polish Youth.

Lem never had a high opinion of American science fiction, describing it as ill-thought-out, poorly written, and interested more in making money than in ideas or new literary forms.

Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by 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.

[49][48] Also it was suggested that Dick was under the influence of strong medications, including opioids, and may have experienced a "slight disconnect from reality" some time before writing the letter.

Lem is one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction writers, hailed by critics as equal to such classic authors as H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon.

Lem's early works were socialist realist, possibly to satisfy state censorship,[74] and in his later years he was critical of this aspect of them.

[88][89][90][91][92] Stanisław Lem died from a heart failure[93] in the hospital of the Jagiellonian University Medical College, Kraków on 27 March 2006 at the age of 84.

[21] He was buried at Salwator Cemetery, Sector W, Row 4, grave 17 (Polish: cmentarz Salwatorski, sektor W, rząd 4, grób 17).

[94] In November 2021, Agnieszka Gajewska's biography of Lem, Holocaust and the Stars, was translated into English by Katarzyna Gucio and published by Routledge.

[98] The only notable exceptions are Voyage to the End of the Universe (1963) (which didn't credit Lem as writer of the original book The Magellanic Cloud) and Przekładaniec (Layer Cake) (1968) (which was based upon his short story "Do You Exist, Mr Jones?").