Solaris [Paperback]

Stanislaw Lem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1987

The first of Lem’s novels to be published in americanca and still the best known. A scientist examining the ocean that covers the surface of the planet Solaris is forced to confront the incarnation of a painful, hitherto unconscious memory, inexplicably created by the ocean. An undisputed SF classic. Translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French, Polish (translation)

About the Author

Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many magazines, including the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works, including Solaris.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (May 15, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156027607
• ISBN-13: 978-0156837507
• ASIN: 0156837501
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #953,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanislaw Lem is the most widely translated and best known science fiction author writing outside of the English language. Winner of the Kafka Prize, he is a contributor to many magazines, including the New Yorker, and he is the author of numerous works, including Solaris.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lem's visionary depiction of contact, November 26, 2002

By 

Virgil "Virgil" (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solaris (Paperback)

One note readers should know beforehand is that the version of Solaris available in English is a translation from Polish to French and then translated from the French into English. For some irresponsible and bizarre reason, publishing house Faber and Faber who own the license have not authorized a direct from Polish translation of Solaris. The good news is that despite this the translators from the French have a good sense of literary style and did a fine job of making it readable and enjoyable, though obviously not as accurate a translation as could be.

At first glance Solaris seems hard science fiction. Set in the future after man has explored many systems the main character arrives at the space station orbiting the planet Solaris. Lem lets us know several things up front, the planet is suspected of being an intelligent life form and there is a long history of exploration, strange happenings and accidents that have occurred. By the time Kelvin arrives after almost two hundred years of study only a small team is left to record and study the planet.

More than hard science is really at the heart of this novel. There are musings on alien contact and the nature of what is intelligence. Is man really the measure of everything? As events occur, Kelvin the rational scientist succumbs to those most irrational of feelings, love and longing. Ironically, Kelvin, the person sent to investigate the occurrences among the crew is the one who is emotionally effected the most by the visitors that accompany everyone.

The genius of the novel is that the visitors are reflections or copy's of each individual in each person's memory. Every character is touched (or disturbed) on a level much deeper than a more conventional alien contact approach. Few readers will fail to imagine who from their own memories would take the form of their own visitor.

This is one of the most intelligent science fiction novels I've read in a long time. The story ends up not being about science but about what makes us human, what is intelligence and what may separate us from another life form. Moving, well written and highly recommended.

92 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incommunicability or Being In the World, September 30, 2002

By 

Thomas M. Seay (Palo Alto, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Solaris (Paperback)

This novel explores the theme of communication. Scientists explore a curious planet, Solaris, whose ocean appears to be an intelligent life-form. Scientists are sent to live on the planet
for purposes of establishing contact.

Contact is elusive however. What is to be the medium of communication? Even without the tool of verbal language,
humans can empathize and communicate to some extent with other mammals. We know that they share common instincts and emotions with us, such as fear, sex drive, hunger, etc. But what about something so "other" as this solarian ocean?

Finally indisputable evidence of contact arrives. Solaris is able to tap into the scientists brains and create exact replicas of significant persons from their past. These replicas look and act in the same way as the people they simulate. The main character Kelvin has before him Rheya, an ex-lover who had committed a suicide which he could have prevented.

This leads to another problem of communication: how to understand the intentions of this action? Has Solaris created the simulacra as a cruel joke, Or did Solaris do this to please the visitor? Is Solaris just doing it as a kind of experiment?
The scientists are tempted to judge the planet according to human behavior, but realize that would be folly.

Humans view others, not just Solaris, but any other species, or even any other human being through the prism of their subjectivity. To reach the other requires an incredible effort of will...it may be impossible. Kelvin is at once in love with the succubus and tormented that "she" is not really Rheya, in spite of the resemblance. The succubus is evertyhing that Rheya was to Kelvin because she is nothing but a collection of his memories. Fine, but who was the real Rheya? Just a scattered collection of a few bits of the real Rheya mixed in with Kelvin's own desires, fantasies, and fears. So this raises the question of how possible it is to go beyond ourself to another human being.

Another problem raised is that of self-communication. Another scientist in the book, snow, makes the point that humans only know about two percent of their thoughts and that Solaris probably knows more about them than they do themselves.

We humans do seem "walled off" and communicability at this stage of our evolution is pretty minimal. Science does seem a valiant attempt to get beyond our fears and fantaises, but as philosophers of science have proven, even our science is fraught with subjectivity. As for understanding ourselves, as Terence Mckenna say, the various schools of psychology sound like medieval hawkers.

Or is this seperateness all an illusion as Heidegger and some mystics claim? The difference between subject and object was reinforced by cartesianism. In that case, how to overcome the symptom of a seperated, isolated ego?

This is not the place to attempt an answer. However, this book will give you a lot to think about. I recommend that it be read at least two times succesively. You will probably miss many of the finer points during your first read. The time spent on careful readings of this book will reward you with many interesting ideas to ponder.

Thomas Seay

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling and thought-provoking, June 3, 2000

By 

Luke D Jasenosky - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solaris (Paperback)

To characterize Solaris as a "sci-fi" novel is unfair - it is a book of metaphysics, the perils of history, fears, acceptance, and life. As a previous reviewer stated, the limits of science are explored brilliantly, and as these limits appear, so does fear, both of the unknown and the ultimate uncertainty of what is accepted as fact. The book is not anti-science, though, and the reader comes away feeling that just because science has limits, it is science that can bring us to the starkest of encounters with the human mind. Lem does a wonderful job of creating a forlorn and ominous atmosphere aboard the station, and the first encounters of Kris and Rheya left me truly uneasy. In fact, the first half of the book has many elements of a horror novel, but these elements are presented in a technical, sanitary way that was new to this reader. Kris's explorations of the ocean and its meanings drive the plot, yet never does one accept this quest as an important part of the story - it is the canvas on which a man's encounters with the hidden elements of the universe is painted with a passionate restraint. It is a humane book of the very best sort that doesn't shy away from the terrors that consume us all.