Solaris

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."

It's astounding that someone wrote this in 1963, when there was still a lot of optimism about how science and technology would lead to a better world. In the end, the character, and with it, the reader, has to conclude that the sentient being they set out to explore is more like a bored child than like a god. Communication with it fails because it's simply not interested in humans and their technology.

Enticing classic, well worth a read if you are into a science-fiction. While the book is older than me, the story and the philosophical topics the author raises are still relevant and brought me to some new thoughts on what and where we are in this modern age.

The narration (Audible) added to the strangeness, though the slow pace was frustrating, much slower than reading pace. Lem creates an organism so strange as to almost be unapproachable by logic, but not quite.

Mediocre. I was hopeful for an alien contact story and there was that in a very long winded way. The author seemed to lecture to an unseen audience about scientific "facts" and "laws" as if they are indeed fact. I have no idea if his pontifications are factual of today's time or if this was his attempt of a future that supported his ticker tape ideas. I found myself skipping several pages at a time to get to the next idea and bring me back to the actual story. I think the entire story could have been told in about 10 pages. I am not a Stanislaw Lem fan. He is no Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clark.

I begin this book with great expectations as a sci-fi fan. In the beginning it was a well thought out and original concept that gradually devolved into something resembling the musings of a 13-year-old Emo kid or a trust fund philosophy major with delusions of grandeur

Interesting premise. The book focuses on the psychological aspects of humanities manifest destiny amongst the stars. The exception being that a giant jelly planet takes the place of indians. Much like indians, the settlers of Solaris have difficulty conveying their wants and needs. Thanksgiving

Great book! Much different than both the original Russian movies (1968 and 1972), and than the recent American movie (2002). Even being a translation the power of Lem's descriptive prose thunders off the page.

I read Solaris while on (coincidentally) an extended business trip and loved it. The drama is introspective without being navel-gazing, the sci-fi is epic without being self-indulgent, and Lem doesn't waste time running down every character detail (since that would take the mystery out of it). Definitely recommend.

The book is simply incredible. If you haven't read it, read it, for crying out loud.

My issue is with the physical copy of the book itself. That cover is awful.

And that's my only complaint.

Lem throws the reader into an unknown world and effortlessly allows the infinite mysteries of the enigmatic planet to stick in the mind of Kelvin and the reader. a highly philosophical expedition of fiction.

Interesting concept - a living ocean of goo that creates shapes out of its own substance, but for reasons that are never precisely known to the characters or the reader. Not a problem In this case, because the mystery is meant to be left up to your imagination.
The one drawback is Lem's habit of going into LONG descriptions of the shapes. (pages long in some places)
I found myself skipping over them to get back to the story, which was otherwise a compelling read.

Maybe its just the translation but this failed to get my attention. Or maybe it is a mater of American vs Polish literary traditions. The premise is sort of interesting. It may have been more novel when the book was written but the idea of what happens when we meet alien life and find it so different that no communication is possible. A large part of the book is made up of long techno-babble monologs descriptive of the alien ocean, and similarly long academia-babble recounting of the work of various past researchers. The style of these long passage reads as translation like a polite 19th century novel. It is almost beyond the reader to pass up the temptation to skim these pages and get to the real action. However, there isn't all that much real action. There is very little character development and not much character interaction. The overall premise holds some interest; I kind of wish a more modern western writer would plagiarize it an make a more readable story.

Of course its possible that in the original Polish and read by a native Polish speaker, its a real rip-snorter.

A very intriguing concept. I found out about this book from watching a premier of the movie on TCM. I'm so glad I watched the movie but to truly understand it, you need the book. A true sci-fi classic.

Le monde fermé où se trouvent les personnages permet de créer une histoire troublante dans laquelle l'apparition d'êtres sosies des êtres disparus viennent hanter la station et le héros principal

I thought this was a really good book. It captivated me, and I found myself getting lost in it easily. The only thing that was so-so about it was when the main character was reading textbooks about Solaris and the Solaricists. At first I thought those sections were boring, but by the end of these book I appreciated how the mundane explanations broke down the politics of it all.

Fascinating read when someone reads to you. An interesting plot but it did not sufficiently keep my interest. I kept thinking when was the story going to start?
Normally I would have passed this book by but narration was worth my time. looking forward to narration with more titles
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This is a somewhat difficult read, and it follows a strange narrative structure. But it is truly beautiful and thought-provoking. The world could end around you, and you wouldn't notice once you start reading this mesmerising novel.

Pleasant mid-20th century Science Fiction. The book at times feels very dated. The sentence structure is occasionally distracting. I wish the author spent as much time on the characters as spent describing the plant.

The opening is like playing a first person video game. Just instantly thrown into the story. It's full of intrege and wonder. A constant question of 'What exactly is going on here?' The novel really brings to light about the human condition and just how little we really know about the human mind.