Solaris

Llegamos al planeta "Solaris". Lo que parecía un trabajo rutinario en la base humana, se complica desde el primer momento. Uno de sus ocupantes está muerto, otro parece aterrado, paranoico y dice cosas sin sentido. Después ve algo...

El verdadero protagonista en realidad es el planeta. Solaris está cubierta por una mar extraño, denso, cambiante, impetuoso y creativo. Es un mar vivo y aparentemente consciente, el único habitante del lugar, tal vez sea el lugar en si mismo. El autor nos relata multitud de teorías erróneas o acertadas sobre su naturaleza, evolución, consciencia... y descubrimos cómo nuestras mentes limitadas nos definen, encadenan y nos hacen incapaces de entender lo que es ajeno a nuestra naturaleza. Es un libro científico, paranoico, romántico, filosófico, claustrofóbico incluso religioso... ¿Qué haríamos ante la oportunidad de sanar nuestra heridas, superar la pérdida, traumas, las cargas de nuestra conciencia? ¿Qué nos hace Humanos? ¿La sangre, las células, el cerebro? ¿O el amor, el dolor, la esperanza, los vínculos que creamos?

Las descripciones sobre Solaris me parecen fascinantes, igual que la incapacidad humana para reconocer su existencia, su forma de vida o inteligencia... La primera vez que leí este libro me pareció asombroso, con un toque poético, místico. Me dediqué a imaginar ese mar viviente, incluso llegué a soñar con él. Su narración es tan lograda que crees la existencia de Solaris.

Quería volver a leerlo, pero temía la decepción. Ya se sabe: no se puede cruzar dos veces el mismo río pues él y nosotros hemos cambiado. Es muy difícil escribir una reseña puesto que tiene algo inalcanzable, inaprensible... pero hice lo que pude. Me ha llegado al corazón de forma tan intensa como la primera vez. Es de esas lecturas que se quedan grabadas y te acompañan con el transcurrir de los años. He sido un habitante de Solaris, he cruzado el espacio para alcanzar un destino nacido de sueños y pesadillas.

Al acabarlo he recordado la escena de "Blade runner" donde Rutger Hauer moribundo decía: "He visto cosas que vosotros nunca creeriais" " Todas esas cosas se perderán en el tiempo como lágrimas en la lluvia". Solaris nunca se perderá mientras alguien lo lea o lo recuerde.

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 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.