Solaris: The Definitive Edition

One of the best things about this book is I decided to read it instead of continuing to plod through Delany's Through the Valley of the Next of Spiders, so my love of Solaris might be influenced by my relief at not having to work so hard to attempt to enjoy a different book.

Having said that–what a wonderful book. Not without its flaws, but a fascinating take on what it means to be real, how we exist in relation to others, and how love can sometimes really fuck us up–all within a sci-fi wrapper that has such interesting facets as an entire planet that is basically some kind of brain, and a centuries-long attempt to communicate with an alien consciousness.

I had been familiar with the movie Solaris for years and thought it was reasonably interesting. Then one day I had to visit Lviv in Ukraine for work (the hometown of the author, but at the time it belonged to Poland) and decided to give the book a try. Man, absolutely incredible. He describes an encounter with an alien culture the exact way I always thought it should be - incomprehensible.

But while he does it majestically well, this is not even my favourite part of the book. What is really enticing (and just too close to home) is the fact that no “specialist” could come to an agreement whether the “alien” was even conscious or not. Again, exactly how I always suspected it would be.

A must read to any science fiction fan.

atmosferă apăsătoare, tensionată, foarte bine conturată, pe muchie de horror; psihologie fină și o excelentă cunoaștere a firii umane; personaje bine conturate; sensibil, profund și emoționant.
pe de altă parte, niște dialoguri cu filosofie de cantină, nenumărate pagini groaznic de plictisitoare de pseudo-știință lipisită de imaginație; unele descrieri inutile lungi de pagini întregi.
totalul tot este mai aproape de 5 decât 4.

I am dumbfounded that this was published in 1961. I would've been impressed had you told me it was 1981. With that said, this is one of those books where I enjoy the discussion, analysis, and art more than the book itself. Such a great concept. I would love for others to continue this; there's so much more to do here. More, please.

I saw the Tarkovsky movie many years ago but his movies are so slow and dreamlike it was difficult getting into the story. I chased up the book but the English translation had come from the French translation and everybody bagged it out. This direct to English translation by Bill Johnston came out in 2011 and this was the one i read. Now I've got to go back to the movie, I'm sure it will make more sense.

It's a book that deals with mankind's inability to handle failure, and with no hero in sight.

Now, that was interesting.

It's a fascinating combination of what happens inside the MC, and the science of Solaris.
It's quite heavy of science, so if you don't like scientific theories of things that don't exist - or that we don't yet know exist - then you won't like this book.
I was a little bothered by the mindset of the characters that doesn't quite match mine. On the other hand, isn't that one reason why we read? :-D
Now I'm going to watch the two movies made of this book. I can think the movie makers had their own ideas about this.

7.5

The aliens we often see in scifi are, to some degree, not really alien. they are comprehendable. they have characteristics we can understand. behaviours we can see.
What about when humanity faces something truly alien? a life without one form? a sentient, unpredictable, uncomprehendable, confusing ocean covering an entire planet?

The book delves into how the crew of the solaris, as well as a technologically advanced humanity tackle coming face to face with this ocean, trying to establish contact. The unbreached barrier of contact with this ocean has been a major obstacle in humanitys pride and space-conquest, and the main objective of the solaris. The book explores this in an extremely creative and interesting way. Trying to piece together the puzzles of the strange happenings on the solaris together with the main character is extremely fun and sometimes quite scary.

Was not particularly a fan of many of the writing aspects. an over-abundant use of unnecessarily confusing words that are literally just “scientific” synonyms of words we use everyday had me whipping up google every page (at least). There are also some chapters of pure scientific jargon and infodumping which is extremely heavy and confusing.

Overall a worthwhile experience!

Short Review: This is a review of the 2011 translation of Solaris. As far as I can tell this is only available as an exclusive audiobook by Audible.com and as a kindle edition. It has been a while since I last read solaris. So it is hard to remember specific differences, other than the very obvious fact that the name of the female lead is different (corrected to the original). My best memory is that this language of this is more evocative. But it is also a book where I am glad to have the kindle dictionary built in.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/solaris/

First off I need to say I read the edition, while most common, is an English translation of the French translation that the author himself considered “poor” from the original Polish it was written in. The fact this exists is cuckoo and I'm sad I didn't know better to look for the 2011 Bill Johnston Polish to English translation.

I'm sure I've gotten the gist of it anyways. Lem hated traditional science fiction dismissing it as superficial. It's a similar complaint my wife has of Star Trek, dismissing it as adults dressed in pyjamas pretending they're in space. Hurtful.

Lem takes our anthropomorphized galactic view of bipedal creatures with eyes and mouth at recognizable positions where our only impediment to communication is learning the language and throws that out the window. Instead we get a sentient ocean with the power of “seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds and then bringing their dreams to life.” Communication in the form of near perfect human replicas pulled from the minds of the scientists sent to observe the planet. It's a baby God playing at creation, stumbling toward understanding. The ocean is poking at these planetary interlopers with tools that are in sharp contrast to the scientists resorting to blunt instruments, bombarding the ocean with x-rays modulated by human brain waves. We're cavemen in the face of this new lifeform and our century of human research is confined to leather bound volumes that speak more of superstition and creative interpretations than real scientific progress and understanding.

This massive disparity creates a pervasive sense of potential menace and uncertainty that begins to fray at the scientist's minds. They know enough to be a danger to themselves, which feels ever relevant.

So yeah, I grok the ideas explored here, but found the reading experience a bit plodding and felt like I could have gotten the same gist with a well sharpened short story.