Nazi Kitsch

Legendary Polish science fiction writer said of American science fiction that it was

“…a literary form that claims to be a mythology of technological civilization while in fact it is simply bad writing tacked together with wooden dialogue.”

In his essay Looking Down on Science Fiction:  A Novelist’s Choice for the World’s Worst Writing.

And it gets worse.

Lem believed the SFWA were fascists.

And Lem had some experience with fascists. As a Polish Jew he survived the Lviv ghettos, a Nazy firing squad, and the Holocaust.

This feature essay on the Science Fiction channel is the most complex critique I’ve ever condensed down into a video essay, telling the untold story of Lem and the Nazis, and includes contributions from leading Lem scholars, including our own Elana Gomel.

Lem encoded his insights on fascism in his books and stories. His story Provocation brings together his theory of fascism.

At a time when fascism seems stronger than ever, what Lem shows us is chilling.