Solaris: The Definitive Edition

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.