Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:39:33 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] "Lem Affair"
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Interesting the things one finds using Google on usenet:

Jane Dick [1928-2001]

Born in 1928, Jane Dick died April 1st of complications relating to
pneumonia. Winner of 2 Hugo Awards [a fan-given SF award] and a Nebula
[given by the Science Fiction Writers of America], Dick was better known
for the series of movies loosely based on her short short stories
[_Screamers_, _The Automatic Woman_, etc].

 In fandom, Dick was known for the Lem Affair, in which she and
Stanislaw Lem had a brief fling. This ended badly for Dick but far worse
for Lem, who ended up leaving his wife and Poland for the West, where he
wrote sit-com episodes until his death in 1983 under mysterious
circumstances. Dick claimed the whole affair was the working of the CIA,
in particular then CIA director and future VP Alice Sheldon [Perhaps the
best known SF- connected spook and politician after Cordwainer Smith and
Newton Gingrich].

Dick's fiction was grim and unrelenting, based in a belief that the
universe was hostile to human life and that while the only possible hope
for people was other people, this was often a false hope, betrayed by
human self-interest. Paranoia and self-destructive greed appear again
and again in her fiction: some speculate that this may be related to her
twin brother, Philip, dying of neglect when both of them were still
infants.

Dick is survived by two children [Ellisa Gingrich, Steven Dick]. Dick
never married.

 - - James Nicoll, posted 2001-05-04  in soc.history.what-if

(Message <9cujqa$og2$1 at panix2.panix.com>  )

mjw