Way better than the movies. But very very strange.

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	• Solaris Stanislaw Lem Harvest Books, 2002 - 204 pages average customer review:based on 86 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Way better than the movies. But very very strange.

I tried to watch Solaris twice (old Russian version, new Clooney version) and fell asleep both times because the going was so slow. Yeah, sorry if you think that brands me as an action-movie-dimwit, but I just didn't like them. Anyway, I had read some Lem before ("Return from the Stars", I think), so I figured I'd give Solaris a try in book form.

The good news is that the book is actually pretty short and mostly moves along briskly. More significant is that Lem does such a great job describing contact, or rather the lack thereof, between humans and... whatever the ocean is.

However, Solaris is also very open ended and leaves you to your own interpretations as to its meaning. Nothing is made clear and you have to be prepared to take the book either at its inconclusive face value, or analyze its philosophical meanings in depth. There is no nice elegant plot and conclusion included in the package. If you tend to ask yourself big questions about the meaning of life and the universe, this is by far one of the best SF books to read. If not (like me), this is still a classic, but may leave you a bit frustrated at the end.

The only question I got out of it is how the ocean, supposedly so alien and unaware of us, can animate its mental projections. Does making a perfect simulacra, complete with memories and speech not imply that the ocean understands us pretty well? Or are the simulacra involuntary and autonomous items that it is not aware of having created? Certainly, Kris's wife doesn't understand what she is, though she gradually becomes aware she isn't human. Neither does she seem particularly interested in gathering useful information out of Kris (but what information would be left unknown at that point anyway?). Maybe she is more of a projection by Kris, in which the ocean is only an accidental facilitator, rather than an interested party?

Also, with this edition, what's with translating Lem from Polish to French to English??? Ever heard of Polish to English translators? It's not that the double translation is that bad, but you do occasionally feel its effect in some weird turn of phrases.

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Classic Stanislaw Lem

This amazing book explores our hearts and minds through the metaphor of an alien planet. When psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives on Solaris, he finds himself confronting a painful memory of his past lover, embodied in a real entity. He speculates that the vast ocean of Solaris functions as a massive neural center creating the embodiment of his (and other crew member's) repressed memories. Lem explores our beliefs and ability to understand our universe through inner exploration. Intelligently and sparingly written.

In response to his friend's plea, a depressed psychologist with the ironic name of Kris Kelvin (played with quiet depth by George Clooney), sets out on a mission to bring home the disfunctional crew of a research space station orbitting the distant planet, Solaris. Kelvin arrives at the space station, Prometheus, to find his friend, Gibarian, dead (by suicide) and a paranoid and disturbed crew, who are obviously withholding a terrible secret from him. It is not long before he learns the secret first hand: some unknown power (apparently the planet itself) taps into his mind and produces a solid corporeal version of his tortured longing: his beloved wife, Rheya (played sensitively by Natascha McElhone) who'd committed suicide years ago. Faced with a solid reminder, Kelvin yearns to reconcile with his guilt in his wife's death and struggles to understand the alien force manifested in the form of his wife. He learns that the other crew are equally influenced by Solaris and have been grappling, each in their own way, with their "demons," psychologically trapping them there.

Ironically, our hero's epic journey of great distance has only led him back to himself. The alien force defies Kelvin's efforts to understand its motives; whether it is benign, hostile, or even sentient. Kelvin has no common frame of reference to judge and therefore to react. This leaves him with what he thinks he does understand: that Rheya is a product of his own mind, his memories of her, and therefore a mirror of his deepest guilt ¯ but perhaps also an opportunity to redeem himself.

Lem packs each page of his slim 204 page book with a wealth of intellectual introspection. Through first person narrative, he intimately unveils the complicated influence of this arcane force on Kelvin. Lem explains it this way: "I wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images."

Such an incomprehensible entity would serve as a giant mirror for our own motives, yearnings and versions of reality. For me the contrast presented by such an arcane alien force emphatically -- but also ironically -- defines what it is to be human. It is only when faced with what we are not that we discover what we are. Later in the book, Kelvin cynically observes: "Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labrynth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed." In the film Gibarian sadly proclaims of the Solaris mission: "We don't want other worlds - we want mirrors."

Lem's existentialist leaning is provided throughout the book and even alluded to in the name he chose for the space station: Prometheus. In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind for which Zeus chained him to a rock and sent an eagle to eat his liver (which grew back daily). It is interesting that Soderbergh chose to send Prometheus to a fiery crash and named Kelvin's dead wife, Rheya, after the Greek goddess, mother of Zeus and all Olympian gods. In a late passage of Lem's book, a devastated and sorrowful Kelvin formulates a personal theory of an imperfect god, "a god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure . . . a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose ¯ a god who simply is."

Reviewer, Rick Kisonak, asserted that Lem's "novel is an icy meditation on man's place in the universe and the mystery of God. It poses countless metaphysical questions and makes a point of answering none of them. While I agree with some of Kisonak's reasoning, I think he has missed the point of Lem's book. If one continues to read from the passage Kisonak quoted above ¯ as Kris Kelvin transcends from what he "thinks" in his intellect to what he feels and "knows" in his heart, to accept his (and humanity's) destiny with humble fatalism: life ends but not love.

In matters of faith and love, here is what Kris has to say in the book: "Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? . . . In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation . . . I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past." In the end of both movie and book, Kris Kelvin lets go of his fears and lets his spirit rise in wonder at what astonishing things Solaris (and the universe) will offer next.

Lem's complex tapestry of multi-level prose challenges us by refusing to impose his personal views; yet comes to the conclusion about the ethereal, mysterious and eternal nature of love. On the one hand, love may connect us within a fractal autopoietic network to the infinity of the inner and outer universe, uniting us with God and His purpose in a collaboration of faith. On the other hand, love may empower us to accept our place in a vast unknowable and amoral universe to form an island of hope in a purposeless sea of indifference.

Whether love mends our souls to the fabric of our destiny; enslaves us on an impossible journey of desperate yearning; or seizes us in a strangling embrace of unspeakable terror at what lurks within ¯ surely, then, love IS God, in all its possible manifestations. This is unquestionably the message of the book. And it is one worth proclaiming.

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CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND...

Having seen the film that starred George Clooney and was based upon this book, and having found it wanting, I decided to go to the source. I am glad that I did, as it is certainly better as a book than it is as a film. It is also far more profound than the film, which concentrated on the love story.

This book is much more than that, covering many themes. It is, first and foremost, about contact with an alien entity and communication of a type beyond our comprehension. Is it friend or foe? Who can say, as the source of the communication makes its pitch based upon an individual's memories, some good, and some bad? What it is communicating remains unfathomable. Still, the book provides much food for thought.

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Exploring Solaris, from movies to book.

I'm kind of new to the story of Solaris, seeing the film with george clooney, that i really liked and then later seeing the drawn out russion film. Although i know most of the story centers around Rheya and Kelvin, the sci fi side of me wanted to know more about the planet of Solaris. The book does just that, i loved reading along with Kelvin, the main character, how he peruses the library on the space station regarding the first explorations and what they had found. Solaris after all had first been discovered and visited 100 years ago resulting in volumes and volumes of books and film. Also, the book goes into great length to describe the structures that are miles high that Solaris constantly makes and destroys and how some exploration teams had been the victim of staying too long in studying these structures. This background i feel is essential to understand solaris crowning achievement of makeing a human "clone" from memories. I have heard that the hollywood movie of Solaris had much more footage that was cut by listening to the director's commmentary. If this footage contained more background of the planet it would more closely follow the book which really makes it a more complete story. Solaris is great sci fi discovery of an amazing and unique planet, as unique as the description of Arakis (DUNE) with its sandy sees and rock islands. Still, not all is explained in Solaris. Perhaps the unknown left unknown is the best type of story in the end, we keep trying to think of what Solaris is all about, just as the explorers in the story will continue to do.

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Compelling, cerebral science fiction

Kris Kelvin goes to a space station where strange things have been happening. The planet the station orbits - Solaris - seems to be having a strange influence on the inhabitants of the space station and begins to have an effect of Kelvin.

Solaris explores what it means to be human. This is cerebral sci-fi. Fairly heavy going but worth the effort. The central idea of the novel, which I wont give away here, is awfully compelling and Lem conjures up a wonderful character in Kelvin's lover Rhea.

Solaris has inspired two very different films - Tarkovsky's early 70's effort, which will test your patience, and Soderbergh's recent effort, which is actually very good and retains the spirit of the book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Who's testing whom? When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. Scientists speculate that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, its purpose in doing so unknown.
The first of Lem's novels to be published in America and now considered a classic, SOLARIS raises a question: Can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?

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