Solaris: The Definitive Edition

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!