Science Fiction Studies

216 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) currency. Sometimes publishers had to pay in foreign currency, which was always scarce in the communist economy; but science-fiction rights were not high on a list of commodities to be bought for hard currency. If Dick had insisted on a payment in dollars, Ubik simply would not have appeared in a Polish translation in 1972. But Lem got enough money from other socialist countries—at official exchange rates. If he traveled to Prague and Bratislava (in the 1950s and 1960s it must have been), it was presumably on shopping sprees. In Poland itself, with its economy of dearth, many things simply were not available. Czechosovlakia was a relatively rich country, its cities had not been destroyed by the war, and stores were well stocked, much better than in Poland; so his Czechoslovak income was valuable there, but pretty worthless in Poland, for lack of goods to be bought. Although printings were large in Communist times, books were cheap, and the money not worth much. And in the 1970s, when Lem’s books took off in the German Federal Republic (where he got more royalties than in the rest of the world combined), he earned millions of German marks, which he could dispose of in Poland at blackmarket rates. Then Lem’s income from Communist countries became simply negligible and irrelevant. In Poland, the US dollar was the unofficial currency; its value was excessively high, and for German marks or dollars you could buy in Poland things that were not available otherwise. In this way, Italian marble intended for the renovation of Wawel Castle turned up in the bathrooms of Lem’s luxurious new house, which he had built in the late 1970s. And with his mounting success abroad (while he was neglected at home), his position became in reality unassailable. If Lem often traveled (in the 1970s and early 1980s) to (West)Berlin, it was because the city could be easily reached by car and the East German border-guards, unlike the Polish ones, knew and liked Lem’s books and did not search his car. In addition, because of the special political status of Berlin, Poles could enter the city without needing visas for the German Federal Republic, so there was no red tape to be overcome.—Franz Rottensteiner, Vienna SFS 1-85 (1973-2001) Available. Here is an opportunity for some lucky SFS reader to acquire all the issues from the first, in 1973, up until the end of 2001. All 85 issues are in at least good condition and almost all of them are like new. The SFS website offers the issues from 1980 on. But 20 numbers from 1980 to 2001 are no longer available there, and all issues prior to that date are sold out. Furthermore, the price at that source is $20 each. At $20 each, my holding would come to $1,700. My price, $475, is therefore less than 30% of what you would have to pay if all 85 issues were available from SFS itself. Moreover, my asking price includes shipping (but only to US and Canadian addresses). I also have a number of post-2001 issues available if you can send me a wantlist at .—RMP Call for Essays on “Intersectional Automations: Robotics, AI, Algorithms, and Equity.” This collection will explore a range of situations where robotics, biotechnological enhancement, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic culture collide with intersectional social-justice issues such as race, class, 217 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE gender, sexuality, ability, and citizenship. Human-machine communication (HMC) has moved from an important yet somewhat marginal field to lodge itself at the center of societal workings and visions for the future. From autonomous vehicles to the algorithmic filters of search results and socialmedia content; from online harassment and political boosterism via bots to sex robots; and from ubiquitous AI assistants in our homes and smart devices to wearable tech that tracks and shares our biometric data and/or extends our biological capacities, such technologies are rapidly mapping themselves onto almost every conceivable realm of human experience. This edited collection will draw an analytical circle around these interconnected and adjacent issues, lending a critical...