282 pages
German language
Published Nov. 1, 2006 by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
A classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem.
When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts.
very nice take on contact with aliens. it was interesting, but i can't say i've had much fun reading it.
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.
This 'classic' barely hangs on to a three star rating by my scale(s). The early portions of the book were interesting and seemed to bode well. From the middle on to the end, things went 'down hill'. I guess I need to stick with things that appeal more to old cranky people, like me.
Read in one sitting. Captivating and really gets you thinking. I will be returning to this book to annotate. I feel like there is a lot more I can get out of this book by delving deeper.
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.
It was a pleasure to read Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, the source of two great movies, the 1972 Russian production directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and the 2002 American production directed by Steven Soderbergh including the incredible Jeremy Davies with one of the best screen weirdo performances ever. (It is only as I write this that I see that there was a 1968 Russian production called Solyaris that I didn’t know about.) The author was a Polish physician (1921 - 2006), and yet another famous person from Lviv. He is one of the most widely read science fiction writers in the world.
The protagonist in the novel, Kelvin, is a solaricist, a scientist (he is a psychologist) who studies the planet Solaris. Solaris was discovered decades before and it had such peculiar properties, e.g. the planet appeared to modify its own orbit around its pair of stars and the planet was covered …
It was a pleasure to read Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, the source of two great movies, the 1972 Russian production directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and the 2002 American production directed by Steven Soderbergh including the incredible Jeremy Davies with one of the best screen weirdo performances ever. (It is only as I write this that I see that there was a 1968 Russian production called Solyaris that I didn’t know about.) The author was a Polish physician (1921 - 2006), and yet another famous person from Lviv. He is one of the most widely read science fiction writers in the world.
The protagonist in the novel, Kelvin, is a solaricist, a scientist (he is a psychologist) who studies the planet Solaris. Solaris was discovered decades before and it had such peculiar properties, e.g. the planet appeared to modify its own orbit around its pair of stars and the planet was covered by a non-water organic ocean that created huge evanescent structures that appeared to mimic buildings or cities, that generations of scientists and others had argued over whether or not it could be sentient. Kelvin arrives at a space station orbiting Solaris and what he encounters there is the plot. Lem has Kelvin describe various books in the station library, and he creates a fascinating complex history of Solaris study, including all of the researchers names and various ideas about Solaris that have fallen in and out of fashion over time. The novel is brilliantly conceived, and there are many beautiful rich descriptions of the planet’s appearance. I won’t mention the essential problem that the characters have, in case you haven’t seen the movies, but if the science fiction aspect of the novel is stripped away we are left with both a great horror story and an unusually insightful psychological study that asks the question, what can we ever truly know about ourselves and each other?
Another aspect of the novel that occurred to me was its applicability to the idea of artificial intelligence, especially artificial intelligence that is self-aware. Lem only mentions artificial intelligence when he comments that the station’s robots (unfortunately called “automats” recalling scenes of 20th century cafeterias) are missing.
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The Grand Canyon is erroneously described as being in Colorado.
The translation says that one of the characters face appears lifeless because he is wearing contact lenses. Was that true in 1961?
This was a very good, imaginative book. One thing that keeps this book from being amazing is perhaps the translation. I read the book that was a translation of a translation so I'm sure something has been lost. Another thing was weak character development. No matter though because the story itself, even though it is over 50 years old, seems fresh, timely and very original.
Here we explore the limitation of mankind, particularly, how we are bound by our physical apparatus to experience the universe, and how we are bound by the limitations of our own intellect, mental quirks and consciousness. We use our five senses to observe and experience our reality. How can one communicate with something that has none of these things? When we blithely use science to affect a response how can we be sure we are not causing harm when we don't understand the thing we …
This was a very good, imaginative book. One thing that keeps this book from being amazing is perhaps the translation. I read the book that was a translation of a translation so I'm sure something has been lost. Another thing was weak character development. No matter though because the story itself, even though it is over 50 years old, seems fresh, timely and very original.
Here we explore the limitation of mankind, particularly, how we are bound by our physical apparatus to experience the universe, and how we are bound by the limitations of our own intellect, mental quirks and consciousness. We use our five senses to observe and experience our reality. How can one communicate with something that has none of these things? When we blithely use science to affect a response how can we be sure we are not causing harm when we don't understand the thing we are studying? And conversely, when the thing causes pain to us, how can we be sure what it is communicating? A great story about what drives us subconsciously, the emotional baggage we carry, what limits us, how we persevere regardless.
A great read that leaves a lot of questions in its wake, but in a good way.
Enjoyed the fiction but was bored to bits by the science.
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.
