Solaris: A Novel

The space race has given us, not only technological advances, but it also had an impact on other fields such as literature and movies. It has helped man to know himself better in the permanent quest of trying to understand the universe. The stimulus of getting to the moon before the other, pushed advancements in technology. At the same time it inspired writers and the film industry. This is the case of Solaris, which was first a book and then was the inspiration for at least two movies. The book is excellent in many respects and it deals mainly with philosophy, my own interpretation. The movies based on this book are a good intention of grabing some of the essential themes of the book. I liked more the Russian version since it tries to stay closer to the book. Solaris, the movie, is always compared to Kubrick's movie 2001, a Space Odysee. It seems that most people favour the Kubrick work mainly for the special effects. 2001 tries to trascend science fiction with something deeper, however the message is abstract. A 2nd movie called 2010, tries to explain the mistery, but I don't think it was succesful, sometimes is better to leave the mistery and let people imagine the end. Solaris surpasses 2001 in this respect since philosophical ideas are expressed more clearly and heavily in the book, and even gets to the movies. The polish author, Stalisnaw Lem, has included problems of morality, and religious exploration as well, which from my point of view makes it more interesting, since it makes us ponder about man and its destiny. There are lots of conversations in the book and in the movies. The philosophical questions are frequent and there is even an insinuation of an imperfect god, something like the Greek gods. Neither of the movies dwells on the description of Solaris, which is fantastic. The mile long plasma structures that grow and collapse and the colors of the two suns are something only described in the book. The author's imagination helps us discover that we have a universe in our own minds with limitless potential of uderstanding, I don't think I'm exagerating, but we may need minds like S. Lem to realize this. And there is also a love story, which may be the part that is most well known about this book, and it could be the bait to many people since this aspect touches most of them. Here we have a psychological-moral aspect that is troublesome as the rest of the book. The suicide of a person and a guilty feeling makes wonder if a second opportunity could make a person to be better this time, and transform him in the defender, to the end, of this second chance. And even though, there are many subjects in this book, the love story remains there, in the front and in the background. There is mention of the lost woman in the last paragraph of the book. Another interesting fact is the description of the ship and the items within it. The book was written at the very beginning of the space race and for this reason it uses what the author knows and is familiar with. The description of the library is interesting since he describes it in the same way a library on earth can be described. We may see a problem here, since a library, as we know it, may not be practical in space due to the fact that, nowadays, computers have taken the place of entire encyclopedias and archives. However, in this book, we could just consider a library as a symbol for a place of meetings, where the knowdledge could be so close as to pass its science through osmosis. The 1972 movie has an interesting library where there are more than books, but decoration with chandeliers, old paintings (by Bruegel) and even a Bolivian folk mask of a devil, whose meaning may not be important, but it shows that the whole movie had special details as well as music that was chosen not to be more than the movie. What is important is the depiction of the ocean which, to my eyes, could be compared to the paintings of Monet. Also, this movie has moments in the snow which are painting-like. Other special details are the clothes that Rheya wears, which are a work of art and are ageless as well as a texture that looks soft to the touch. And Tarkovsky, the Russian director, used time as a tool which I like to compare it to the time you could spend looking at pictures of Monet. For this reason, this is not a movie for everybody since action and hyperactive pictures are preferred by the common folks, who will be dissapointed with the slow pace of this movie. One of the most important of the philosophical questions, from my point of view, is when one of the scientists makes a comment about what is accomplished with the space flights, and then he says that we are looking for mirrors. The main idea behind this statement is that the scientists are forced to change the focus and scope of its work and ask themselves if they can understand the universe before they can understand themselves. This, for me, is a contribution to the eternal quest of who am I? What lays beyond our solar system? What is in the distant stars? What about God? Do I know myself? What are we looking for? given by Stalisnaw Lem, all around the space race, reflected in his book and movie.

1) Plot (3 stars) – A scientist is called to an outpost on an alien world to investigate what went wrong with an expedition, only to encounter and grapple with unexplained mysteries of his own. So, the engine that drives this plot is a first contact puzzle – what are these mysterious creatures and, more importantly, how does the human psychology deal with them? There were no big surprise twists, or really any answers. But the micro tensions of watching the main character’s psyche strain and bend was enough to keep me reading. 2) Characters (3 stars) – Kelvin is the no-nonsense lead who gradually morphs from scientist to romantic. The other two human inhabitants of the space station are well drawn as analytic minds defending their craziness. The girl interest was fine as the innocent slowly learning the truth. But I probably won’t remember any of these characters in a week. 3) Theme (4 stars) – Can we understand something that is truly alien to us? Or will our cultural bias always hamper our abilities to empathize? This is an interesting theme, and the book did a fascinating job of conjuring up what an arc of theories and frustrations could look like if we did encounter such an alien that interacted with the universe using a completely different rule set. It made me think of our own planet, and how little we even understand of what goes on in the heads of our fellow cultures, let alone our fellow terrestrial life forms, and how this poor track record of Earthly success doesn’t bode well for even seeing (let alone understanding) the truly alien. 4) Voice (3 stars) – The prose was readable, but sometimes I grew frustrated with the way in which the history of the alien was conveyed. Lem told the history through the main character reading academic paper after academic paper. It seems to me there could have been more ways to convey the back story, and if he leveraged alternatives, those sections would have felt a little less repetitive. 5) Setting (4 stars) – The base and the planet were described in interesting detail—the lighting from the twin suns, the strange ocean structures, the emptiness of the station—and I could imagine being there. But what was really impressive was the mood Lem conjured up. The book transported me into the creepy psychological state of these humans all trying to deal with the unexplained phenomena bombarding them. 6) Overall (4 stars) – Overall, I’d recommend Solaris. It’s a story with an excellent mood that tackles some grand questions about the limits of the human mind.

Kris Kelvin, psychologist, is on his way to Solaris. Solaris is a mysterious planet covered in a jelly-like ocean that's been the subject of thousands of studies. Kelvin is coming to the Station above Solaris to help Gibrarian. Things immediately go wrong. For one, the Station seems odd. Second, Gibarian, as Kelvin soon learns, has taken his own life. To make things even more bizarre, Kelvin sees a weird, giant woman make her way down the hall into Gibarian's office. The other two characters, Snaut and the condescending Sartorius, are less than helpful. In fact, for the longest time, Sartorius won't even communicate directly with Kelvin unless it's in a three-way video call with Snaut. It isn't long before Kelvin encounters his wife, Harey, who died after he left her with implements with which to end her own life. He left her knowing what she was planning to do, so the guilt is overwhelming and her appearance stirs up a lot of unresolved feelings. Harey doesn't seem to remember any of this. It's almost like she's a blank slate Kelvin can project his thoughts and feelings onto. Snaut and Sartorius have...manifestations of their own. So did Gibrarian, before he went mad. The Solarian ocean seems to be the source of everyone's troubles after an experiment involving x-rays. So the three decide to beam down an encephalogram of Kelvin's mind to see how the ocean reacts to it as part of an initiative to destroy the manifestations. But as the days pass, Kelvin's unresolved feelings toward Harey make him hesitant.... Solaris is a novel that comes in at the beginning of New Wave science fiction, which was highly experimental, and focused on the emotional and psychological. The age shows. There are tons of info dumps scattered throughout Solaris--huge no-nos in modern fiction--that go on for pages. To make it worse, they're sort of boring. You have to step back and appreciate the story for what it is and, at the time, what it was. The characterization was flat, the dialogue overwrought, and there was absolutely no suspense or charm. But I can tell, in its time, it was an extremely *different* book that must have sparked thousands of people's imaginations. Solaris is an interesting look into memories and how they may be manipulated. It touches on guilt, on letting go, and on sacrifice as well as a concept of a god far different from what humans normally come up with. Again, Solaris doesn't hold up to modern norms (Solaris is a psychological scifi thriller at heart). It lacks the suspense, pacing, and depth of character we expect from stories today. But it is a classic, and it does make you think. If you can set aside your normal expectations for a scifi thriller, you might get something out of Solaris.

Solaris is beautifully written, and the message behind the book is chilling if not eye-opening. In most sci-fi, humans interact with non-humans violently, peacefully, symbiotically, or however else we communicate with them (the key words being interact and communicate). However, Lem pushes us to think way outside our comfortable, boxy way of thinking and makes us wonder--what if there were beings so inherently different from us that we couldn't even begin to understand them? Do we even fully understand ourselves enough to communicate clearly with them? The planet Solaris is inhabited by one living organism--a vast "ocean" that covers the entire planet. Solarists, academics who study Solaris, attribute nomenclatures to various phenomena that occur in the organism. The book is chock full of academic arguments about the psychology and behavior of the organism. We quickly grasp, however, that despite the theorizing and debating, they know close to nothing about the ocean, whereas the ocean knows...so much more. Without spoiling the book, a psychologist named Kris Kelvin arrives in a space station above the ocean to study the organism. However, after a series of x-ray bombardments on the ocean's surface, the ocean reacts by somehow creating physical manifestations of the space station inhabitants' repressed anguish and regrets. In Kris's case, the ocean creates a striking likeness of his dead wife, whose memories has haunted him even before his arrival. The exchanges between Kris and his wife were shocking, tragic, and quite eerie, especially since she (1) cannot die, (2) physically cannot be out of his presence, and (3) she's creation of the ocean, for heaven's sake! As Kris's and his wife's relationship progresses, what becomes more and more evident is how little we know in comparison to how much we think we know. Though the book spans a little over 200 pages, Lem tells a great story and presents interesting ideas. The writing is stodgy at times; Lem's style reminded me of academic papers written decades ago by professors locked for far too long in their ivory towers. The story behind the writing, however, hookedlined and sinker-ed me. What were very dense passages, I blew right through with concentrated focus and enjoyment. Highly recommended.

First, the translation (by Bill Johnston): Excellent. I have read other translations before and thought that they were probably obstacles to truly appreciating the novel. I frequently found myself questioning whether or not Lem’s ideas and characterizations were truly coming through (especially when character names were changed!) and how much of the content was *truly* his. That is no longer an issue. This translation makes me, as an English language consumer, feel as though I have finally actually read the novel for the first time. (I desperately hope this translator will also be commissioned to do _His Master’s Voice_ as soon as possible.) Second, the novel: Very, very good. I only rate it four stars, overall, because certain technical issues and psychological studies were glossed over that would have added a great deal of verisimilitude to a quite gripping story. Most readers would probably find these technical details nonessential to the core of the story, but they do open a couple of plot holes that bothered me as someone trying to complete the setting and round out the characters in my mind’s eye. The *essence* of the story is a great one, and I have found myself revisiting the questions raised ever since I first read the novel in another translation many years ago. Very few authors seem to have Lem’s ability to see beyond human biases in order to illustrate what an alien intelligence might be like. (See also: _His Master’s Voice_) I would not hesitate to recommend this translation to any English language readers who might want to read the novel in support of, or in lieu of, seeing any of the film adaptations that have been attempted. I have enjoyed the original Soviet-era film and the later Steven Soderburgh remake, but neither is thoroughly representative of the novel as presented in this new translation. Do read it. And think about it.

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 truth--the part of it we pass over in silence--we're unable to come to terms with it! [...] It's what we wanted: contact with another civilization. We have it, this contact! Our own monstrous ugliness, our own buffoonery and shame, magnified as if it was under a microscope!" 2) The idea of defective/crippled God/Meaning. Lem ir very clear on this, Tarkovsky treats the subject less directly - through poetic expression, general ambiance of the film. " I'm no specialist in religion, and I may not have come up with anything new, but do you happen to know if there ever existed a faith in... a defective God? [...] I mean a God whose deficiencies don't arise from the simplemindedness of his human creators, but constitute his most essential, immanent character. This would be a God limited in his omniscience and omnipotence, one who can make mistakes in foreseeing the future of his works, who can find himself horrified by the course of events he has set in motion. This is. . . a cripple God, who always desires more than he's able to have, and doesn't always realize this to begin with. Who has built clocks, but not the time that they measure. Has built systems or mechanisms that serve particular purposes, but they too have outgrown these purposes and betrayed them. And has created an infinity that, from being the measure of the power he was supposed to have, turned into the measure of his boundless failure. [...] It seemed to me very, very authentic, you know? It would be the only God I'd be inclined to believe in, one whose suffering wasn't redemption, didn't save anyone, didn't serve any purpose, it just WAS." 3) failure to communicate with a Complete Other. "I didn't believe for a minute that this liquid colossus, which had brought about the death of hundreds of humans within itself, with which my entire race had for decades been trying in vain to establish at least a thread of communication--that this ocean, lifting me up unwittingly like a speck of dust, could be moved by the tragedy of two human beings. But its actions were geared towards some purpose. True, even this I was not completely certain of. Yet to leave meant to strike out that perhaps slim, perhaps only imagined chance concealed in the future." To my mind, here Lem and Tarkovsky disagree with each other. At the very end of the film we see The Solaris mirroring back the Human World, though in a heavily distorted form, thus giving hope that some of it might be preserved for eternity. For Lem preciousness, sacredness, preservance of humanity is not the main point - it's more an awe in front of Unknowable who can exploit human weaknesses, vulnerability for purposes unknown, and desperate wish to come even one step closer to the Truth, to comprehending the Unknowable. Both Lem and Tarkovsky are geniuses. Their messages are almost always very subtle, and can be interpreted in various ways. But it is clear to me that they saw Solaris differently. If you've seen the film, do read the book! There are some important, interesting concepts/ideas that Andrey Tarkovsky didn't/didn't want to show in the film. The very idea of symmetriad, for example: " A human being is capable of taking in very few things at one time; we see only what is happening in front of us, here and now. Visualizing a simultaneous multiplicity of processes, however they may be interconnected, however they may complement one another, is beyond us. We experience this even with relatively simple phenomena. The fate of a single person can mean many things, the fate of several hundred is hard to encompass; but the history of thousands, millions, means essentially nothing at all. A symmetriad is millions, no, billions, to the nth power; it is unimaginability itself. What of it if, in the recesses of one of its aisles that is a ten-fold version of a Kronecker space, we stand like ants holding onto the folds of a breathing vault, that we watch the rise of vast planes grayly opalescent in the light of our flares, their interpenetration, the softness and infallible perfection of their resolution, which only lasts a moment, for everything here is fluid--the content of this architecture is motion, intent and purposive. We observe a fragment of the process, the trembling of a single string in a symphonic orchestra of supergiants, and on top of that we know--we only know, without comprehending--that at the same time, above us and beneath us, in the plunging deep, beyond the limits of sight and imagination there are multiple, million fold simultaneous transformations connected to one another like the notes of musical counterpoint. For this reason someone gave them the name of geometric symphony, but if this is the case, we are its unhearing audience."

I’ve tried to watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie, Solaris, numerous times, to no avail. For that, I blame myself: I lack the patience to endure the film’s ponderous pacing and just give up. I never even attempted the George Clooney remake from 2002. Why push my luck? However, I knew that Solaris was based on a novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem. That novel is regularly acclaimed as a sci-fi classic, so I decided to give it a go. I wasn’t expecting much, and I…was pleasantly surprised. Above all, I appreciated the pace of the novel. Though not entirely action-heavy, it was far more pulpy than I anticipated. The plot moved at a reasonable clip—much quicker than the film, anyway—and while most novels have a fair bit of fat on them, Lem’s felt reasonably lean. I also liked the genre into which the novel fell: metaphysical science fiction. It’s not especially common to find books written in that style these days. It’s true that sci-fi often tackles philosophical questions, but in my experience, that kind of inquiry is rarely as central as it is here, especially in contemporary work. In the 1960s, however, when Lem wrote Solaris, the world was engaged plenty of self-reflection. The space race was in full swing, and the situation on Planet Earth seemed to be deteriorating day by day due to the Cold War, actual war, civil rights protests, nascent feminist and lesbian/gay movements (the inclusion of bisexuals and trans persons would come later), and a massive surge in youth culture that was upending traditional norms. As we took our first tentative steps toward the stars, people naturally wondered, “Is all this contention normal? Would alien races be more peaceful? What are we bringing to the universe?” In the end, Lem manages to find a solid balance between action and overt philosophizing. And while it’s not my favorite sci-fi novel, it was a delight to read.

The book describes the life of scientists aboard a shuttle on Solaris, a very unusual planet. Solaris sits between two suns, and it is mostly a vast ocean. But this is no simple ocean; rather, the ocean is somehow alive. It is not entirely clear how or in what way Solaris is alive, and an entire field of Solaris studies has been developed over decades to explore this issue while coming to very few hard conclusions. At times, the ocean seems to mess with human's minds, including by re-creating persons from the human's past. But the reason for this creation is not clear. The book is interesting and the description of the development of Solaris studies gives the world-building a lot of authenticity. However, at times the discussion of the physical features of Solaris gets a little tedious.

Solaris was first published in 1961. It is older than most of its readers, but the story has not aged in the least. It is perhaps because it doesn't rely on trickery, gadgets and mimicry. Its concept is utterly original and reaches beyond the confines of its sci-fi genre. A psychologist, Kris Kelvin arrives at the space station on the planet of Solaris shortly after one of the scientists based there takes his own life. Immediately upon his arrival, strange things begin to happen. He sees a naked, athletic black woman who cannot possibly be there. Soon, Rheya, his long gone lover, makes an appearance, and will not leave his side. She too cannot be real but all his senses, and his memories, tell him that she is. Two other resident-scientists experience similar ... hallucinations? encounters? relationships? It's difficult to define. This "resurrection" of the long-dead lovers can only be attributed to the planet of Solaris, and more specifically to the ocean that inhabits it. The ocean covers the entire surface of the planet. It appears to be a living, organic form which has evolved to such an extent that it is capable of thinking, creating, understanding and probably penetrating into man's mind to retrieve his memories and to use them to recreate people from his past. This doesn't seem entirely innocent - it may be that those "visitors" are spies or even assassins, although they claim to be benign and act innocently enough. They cannot be killed and sent away - they keep coming back. And more importantly their personalities evolve and they are able to form genuine relationships with "their" humans. "Solaris" explores not only the depths of the universe and the diversity of matter/creation, but even more intriguingly the depths of human mind, its secrets, memories and its self-awareness. The book is about the new and unexplored frontiers, our soul being the most remote and the hardest to comprehend. Brilliant, intelligent book!

Bom Livro, clássico que deu origem ao filme Solaris de 1972.

AI psychosis 60 years before AI psychosis was invented.

Awesome, not like the movie and better for it. Dense and well written. Not without thrills and nice Scifi themes, but more a psychologic exploration of the MC and humanity’s eternal themes.

Considering it was published in 1960/61 when the space race between the US and Russian governments was just beginning, the author slipped in a lot of warnings that no one heeded. LOVED it! Read it in 1970, when I was still a teenager! Thought it was time for a second reading, and it was just as delightful the second time around!