282 pages
German language
Published Nov. 1, 2006 by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
The newer English translation is a hundred times better then the old, and is as good as the Hebrew translation. To think that such a psychological masterpiece was translated to the English-speaking crowd through its mediocre French translation is to recognize that crime in literary terms has been done.
Holy Moly, this was one weird book.
Not so much the fact that the planet the story takes place on is one big living organism, no, the weird part is that the characters are completely incompetent in communication or working inside an organisation.
It is mind blowing that they weren't supposed to give daily reports back to Earth, or that they didn't set an alarm when they where clearly invaded by this creature.
Sure, the book was written decades before we set foot in space. But come-on, in what world are people going to bring a library of books into space. The writer clearly didn't know anything about science or math to calculate payload.
I still haven't seen either film version of this novel, so I had almost no notion of what I was getting into. Solaris is original, alternately horrifying and philosophical. There are dry portions of Solaris history that are necessary to support the narrative, but derail the action, but I'm very happy with the overall impact.
