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."

Very philosopical with an interesting perspective that man cannot make contact with any aliens not similar to himself. It was a very interesting read for its originality of premis.

Solaris felt like an uneven read and, as other reviewers have noted, this may be due to this particular translation (Kilmartin/ Cox translation). Reportedly, Lem was not very happy about this version of his novel and thought it did a suspect job of a Polish to English translation. This is evident, as the book has choppy parts that seem to come out of nowhere. Pity I only found this out after reading the novel, otherwise I might have sought other translations.One element of the novel is the psychological aspect of Kris Kelvin travelling from Earth to Solaris, the unsettling and mysterious paranoia that seems to envelop with regard to Solaris' ocean and the consequences of the experiments. The other two men who remain on the planet, Snow and Sartorius, have vastly different demeanors and theories on what is happening. As the experiments are conducted, there are bizarre physical manifestations, or "guests", of past regrets and guilts that show themselves to the three men. Each man handles this manifestation in different ways.It is not long before Kelvin sees former wife, Rheya, next to him. Is she really Rheya? Is she human? Alien? Lem does an apt job getting into the brain of Kris and revealing his guilt associated with some painful memories.The author also twists science, adding an ironic element to the quest of humans going out in attempts to understand alien worlds. The problems these explorers face, the dilemmas they try to deal with, are very human. Isolated far from Earth, they do not have to combat ungodly, horrific and grotesque aliens we often associate with other worlds, but rather personal, inner demons and past guilts.The novel is deeply rooted in aspects of not only humanity's expectations of "first contact" with other worlds and its hopelessness, but the nature of human thought and humanness. This is especially evident as "Rhyea" and Kelvin spend time together, and she becomes aware of her true identity.Solaris is complex, but sometimes in the wrong way, as in long , diverting summaries about Solaris' environments and technical passages on weather conditions. I'm all for exposition, but these passages are way too long-winded and erudition heavy, and they stall what is otherwise a good premise and story. This may be part of this translation, though.Check out Tarkovsky's 1972 version of the film, fantastic companion piece to this novel. It is so visually stunning and the Russian director knows exactly how this book should feel, with pacing, mood and imagery. The film is slightly better exploring the parameters of human psychology, and also adds a preface that sheds more insight into Kelvin's flight to Solaris. The film also goes deeper in examining themes of love and hope, and the despair of separating past from present.

I went in expecting deeply philosophical sci-fi and I did get that. But I also got an even more deeply felt horror vibe. The way it looks into the deeper realms of the human soul and finds….just questions. It shook me deeply. Add that the scenes with the guests are just sometimes really atmospheric and surreal and you have a really terrifying read. I have to admit I’ve seen the original movie and visions from it entered my mind at times driving the fear along but I think even a fresh read without the visuals would be terrifying. It asks deep questions about what it means to be human, how the method of communication drives the nature of the communication and what keeps us making good ethical decisions in a world devoid of a traditional god. A great book but it’ll creep you out for a while.

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.

El “what if…” te atrapa por completo y al terminar la novela, no puedes dejar de pensar en esa posibilidad.

A holiday read? Maybe?

One of the best science fiction novel I have ever read. Gripping, it also prompts serious thoughts on what it means to be human.