Reviews with content warning for Death - Solaris

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Solaris by Stanisław Lem

6 reviews

pdonovan's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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owenwilsonbaby's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

‘We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.‘

I thought this was just incredible. Although it’s short, I had immense difficulty getting through it because I found the world building and dense theoretical passages quite tricky to get through. The characters and the relationships that they form with each other were far more interesting. I thought a lot of Kelvin’s feelings towards Rheya were beautifully articulated. As a science fiction novel, I find it so compelling that Solaris chooses to explore grief, religion and academia in much profound depth than many of the scientific and speculative concepts it uses.

I definitely had some issues with it - the surprise anti-black racism relatively early in the novel caught me off guard. Although the racist description of the woman is a product of the time and context it was written in, I guess it disappointed me because in many other aspects the novel felt relatively contemporary. Some of the description felt as though it could have been written yesterday, and then the social attitudes of the author jumped out. Maybe that is a product of Kilmartin and Cox’s excellent translation - they make the narrative voice feel very contemporary. I don’t know. Just something that was on my mind.

In addition, I found it to be a little deliberately unsatisfying at times. I think this is because it’s primarily a novel that is about asking questions and searching for reasons for why things happen, and the conclusion of the novel - to me at least - seemed to be that there aren’t any, or the reasons that do exist are too hard for us to properly understand. This was sort of difficult to grapple with this week as I finished the book, because I have been struggling with some difficult news that has left me asking lots of questions, but I do think it was also therefore a useful and calming read. Whatever we’re going through, it’s out of our hands.

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erebus53's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I started listening to this audiobook alongside the paperback that I was given by my brother about 20 years ago. The translation is different and it was kind of fun until I gave up because my eyes were causing me issues (the reason I predominantly listen to Audiobooks). Each paragraph meant basically the same thing, but the wording was slightly different, which felt a bit like reading subtitles when they don't quite match how I interpret the original language. Fun.. but a bit exhausting.

Out in the vastness of space there is most likely intelligent life, and this is the story of what happens when humans encounter alien life so vast and different to our own that communicating with it, or even being noticed by it, becomes a spur for entirely new fields of science and philosophy. The premise of the plot is that instead of life developing, pluralising, and leaving the ocean, it has stayed in the ocean and become it, organising into what appears to act like one ever-seething organism. This organism extrudes matter from itself in forms that scientists have been observing for decades, trying to make sense of the ever changing landscape.

When Kris Kelvin lands on Solaris, only to be told that his once mentor has recently died, he has to figure out what is going on. When he runs into another person, who should not be there, walking in the corridor, he starts to understand the warning of his fellow who begged him not to engage with any strangers.

This story is at times spooky, horrific and maddening, and lumbers at a frustrating pace through hypotheses and tests, as the scientists try to figure out the shapes and human forms that the planet is making for them, that (in Bradbury-esque fashion) seem to be patterned on their own deepest memories. Together they try to overcome their own stress and cabin-fever, and strive to understand the nature of, and perhaps communicate with, the life-form of the planet.

In the discussion of morality, spirituality and godforms, it doesn't escape me that they speak of humans being limited by our animal perceptions of the environment around us, so that perhaps the only type of life we can truly communicate with has to be human-like. Is the life on Solaris trying to interact with humans by sending humanlike synthetic things, or are we again in a trap of anthropomorphising and presuming that our own mythologies are fact?..

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petitemass15's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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nere's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

Monday, August 1, 2022 (reread)

"We see ourselves as Knights of the Holy Contact. That’s another falsity. We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.”

Summary & a note on translation

Solaris is as much psychological horror as it is science fiction and an introspective look at human space colonization. It’s claustrophobic, engrossing, and poetic. I can see why many might trifle or even outright dislike this book if it’s picked up with the wrong expectations. Full disclosure, despite this being science fiction this is not an explosive, action-packed, robot-fighting novel brought to an earth-shattering climax. This is a simmering slow-burn of a thing, that starts slow and only gets slower. (Despite this, I still cling to every word.)

Kris Kelvin is a psychologist who lands on the fictional planet of Solaris from Earth. He arrives to a sparse crew and an eerie situation—the mystery of which the reader, as well as Kelvin, are left to uncover in tandem. I won’t say much else since I feel it is better to discover it on your own.

Translations, I think, are only as good as their translators and unfortunately, the only English translation that is widely available for Solaris at the moment was translated from Polish to French and then English. As you can imagine, it results in a very stunted work losing much of the poeticism and linguistic intent of the original. If you can manage to get your hands on it, I highly suggest the only other English translation in existence currently: Solaris by Stanisław Lem, translated by Bill Johnston (2011). It’s a direct-to-English translation and though I don’t know a lick of Polish, in the brief comparison I did between the French translation and the Johnston one, the difference is stark. And for the better.

“Much is lost when a book is re-translated from an intermediary translation into English, but I’m shocked at the number of places where text was omitted, added, or changed in the 1970 version,” said Johnston. “Lem’s characteristic semi-philosophical, semi-technical language is also capable of flights of poetic fancy and brilliant linguistic creativity, for example in the names of the structures that arise on the surface of Solaris. I believe this new translation restores Lem’s original meaning to his seminal work.” (source: The Guardian)

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trazac's review

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adventurous challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I very much liked this book. I loved the madness of the conversations and the human like reactions to what was happening. It's hard to get into, and the middle of the book is very dense, but it's an interesting view of humanity.

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