SOURCE: “On Lem's Highcastle,” in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 13, Pt. 3, November, 1986, pp. 345–51.

In the following essay, Anninski examines Lem's philosophical and literary perspective in Highcastle: A Remembrance, drawing parallels between Lem's formative experiences and his preoccupation with the development of individuality and the quest for absolute meaning.

On the surface, Stanislaw Lem's autobiographical novel Wysoki Zamek (Highcastle: A Remembrance, 1966) is closer to David Copperfield than to Solaris. This is unexpected. The first emotion of the reader of Highcastle is surprise: Lem, the writer of SF [science fiction], has betrayed his talent; Lem the philosopher has become a historian of mores; Lem the intellectual has turned into a painter of realistic pictures and psychological scenes. Naturally, the critical evaluation of Highcastle in the USSR began with talk of a “shift in status.” Lem's novel was interpreted in the tradition of Dickens and Alexy Tolstoy, and the purely philosophical aspect of...