Solaris

First read this in the late 70s. Since seen the classic Russian sci-fi film and the mediocre American sci-fi film. Treated myself to a new copy and just finished reading it. Still as fascinating as it was when I first read it. The sentient ocean on Solaris digs into the deepest recesses of your mind and brings to life your darkest memory. How can we understand a seemingly intelligent planet when we have only scratched the surface into trying to understand our motives? What is real and what is imagined? Deeply philosophical read. Ray Smillie

First let’s get the translation straight; Wikipedia states there is only one English translation, by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, and that this is actually a translation of the French translation and, further, that Lem himself, who read English fluently, repeatedly voiced his disappointed in this translation. It further states that an improved translation seems unlikely due to rights issues. However my edition states ‘This is the first English translation directly from the original’ by one Bill Johnston and I have absolutely idea whether this is considered a better or worse translation but I found the prose clumsy and extremely heavy going. So please bear that in mind regarding my comments below! So what is the book about? I’m not sure I can answer that question. I’m not even sure Lem could have answered it. On a purely prosaic level it is about the planet Solaris. Largely ignored when first discovered as it was calculated that its unstable orbit around a binary pair of stars meant it would shortly be meeting its end, but it later turns out that orbit was somehow being actively managed to maintain stability by what was now interpreted to be a sentient planet; at least the ocean of plasma covering the surface is thought to be sentient. This new understanding has generated much renewed interest in the planet and the possibility of making Contact with it. By the start of the book this research has been ongoing for over a hundred years with the only real progress being the creation of whole libraries of books cataloguing the unfathomable behaviour of the ocean of plasma, of Solaris. Many theories abound but there has been absolutely no success in creating any plausible interpretation of these phenomena. Into this scenario steps Kris Kelvin the newest recruit to the permanent research station on Solaris numbering just four members including Kelvin. The narrative divides quite distinctly into two separate threads; the human interactions of the research team and the description of the behaviour of the Solaris over the many years it has been studied. The first is handled as a fairly straight forward story narrative as the crew try to understand the ‘ghosts’ so disturbingly created by Solaris from their own memories. The second is handled through an immense amount of incredibly dense pure exposition. Hard to read and simply documenting the history of observations of Solaris’ behaviour over the years and the abortive attempts to understand them. This latter makes up a good half of the text and its sole purpose seems to be to present Solaris as being utterly impenetrable and that ultimately all attempts to understand it are doomed. So effectively half of the book is just descriptions of the incomprehensible actions of the planet which remain to the end of the book unexplained and unexplainable. Very unsatisfying; the only philosophical conclu...

It's a fantastic read, for it stretches beyond sci-fi (though a perfect story of that genre) and touches on philosophy and love. It's what I would call a "meta" story, I was always very aware there were many threads beneath every word. It's a great read that I wish I hadn't put off for so long.

The ideas presented within this book were engaging. Where it lost me was in some of the larger chapters that tried to capture the history and “science” behind the ‘ocean’ on the planet. I was also thrown off by some of the stilted language and odd emotional reactions the team had with each other. The more interesting philosophical notes are tagged on at the end. Not a bad book, but also not great.

For many years I postponed reading Solaris. Andrey Tarkovsky is my favourite film director, and having seen his film on Solaris I was afraid to be disappointed by the book. The easy availability of Kindle edition encouraged me to try. And I'm glad I did. The book and the film ... are similar in some ways, and different in others. Tarkovsky is more poetic, introspective, spiritual. Lem - rational, philosophical. It shows. Both are the best in their genre, in their approach. But that means that even though the themes are similar, the main message coming from Solaris experience is diffferent. It shifts from hope bordering on despair in ever being able to comprehend a totally different, alien rationality that exhibits some purpose but is never comprehensible in itself (Lem), to awareness that the only thing of value, the only precious substance worth preserving for eternity is humanity, human relations, human vulnerability - and hope/bordering on despair in ever being understood/preserved in time/saved by a totally different rationality (Tarkovsky). Even though it might seem like nuances, that's a grandiose shift of message. I now understand why Lem was unhappy with Tarkovsky's film. Solaris is primarily a book of ideas, but there is also a very deep psychological undercurrent. I picked some quotes from the book where you can see some ideas that you would notice both in the book and the film - but developed in different ways: 1) The idea of humanity wanting to get mirrored, understood by The Universe, and being in horror when The Universe mirrors back the worst of humanity's traits. ""A normal person," he said. "What is a normal person? Someone who's never done anything heinous? Right, but has he never even thought about it? Or maybe he never thought about it, but something inside him thought it, the idea popped into his head, ten or thirty years ago, maybe he fought it off and forgot about it, and he wasn't afraid, because he knew he'd never carry it out. Right, but now, imagine that suddenly, in broad daylight, among other people, he meets IT embodied, chained to him, indestructible. What then? What do you have then?" I said nothing. "The Station," he said quietly. "Then you have Solaris" "We're not searching for anything except people. We don't need other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. One world is enough, even there we feel stifled. We desire to find our own idealized image; they're supposed to be globes, civilizations more perfect than ours; in other worlds we expect to find the image of our own primitive past. Yet on the other side there's something we refuse to accept, that we fend off; though after all, from Earth we didn't bring merely a distillation of virtues, the heroic figure of Humankind! We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that tru...