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- Title
Mediality and Mourning in Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" and "His Master's Voice."
- Authors
Enns, Anthony
- Abstract
This essay examines the representation of communication technologies in Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" and "His Master's Voice." Following John Johnston's definition of "mediality" as "the ways in which a literary text inscribes in its own language the effects produced by other media" (175), I argue that Lem employs the scenario of alien contact in these novels in order to represent the effects produced by competing media technologies. By metaphorically presenting these technologies as apparently sentient alien beings, Lem illustrates the notion that new technologies shape and determine consciousness by perceiving, recording, and storing information which was previously unrepresentable and which therefore belonged to the realm of the unconscious. "Solaris" and "His Master's Voice" ultimately reveal the ways in which new media technologies, such as phonography and film, influence human consciousness by prolonging the work of mourning through the preservation of voices and images of the dead.
- Subjects
CRITICISM; ESSAYS; LEM, Stanislaw, 1921-2006; SOLARIS (Book : Lem); HIS Master's Voice (Book); COMMUNICATION &; technology; POLISH science fiction
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2002, Vol 29, Issue 1, p34
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism