A review by captainfez
Solaris by Stanisław Lem

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Apparently this wasn’t the first time I’d read Solaris.

After I’d finished this Kindle edition – one with the Lem-approved translation, executed by Bill Johnston – I discovered an older, dog-eared copy of the work on my shelves. I must have read that version from the time in university when I had a Russian partner who was interested in getting me into Russian literature, to the extent that I wrote some essays for her. (On Goncharov, I think? I can’t quite remember.)

Anyway, being unable to remember treading those star-paths before seemed to be very in keeping with the work itself, and I assume Lem would approve.

The novel details the journey of a scientist, Kris Kelvin, as he travels to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. His mission? To understand what the fuck’s going on up there. The other scientists he’s dropping in on have been acting strangely (to the point of
suicide
) and the plug’s about to be pulled.

Oh yeah, and the planet is home to a sentient ocean that likes to build fractal architecture and garden models in its spare time.

When I was at school, thanks to facts discovered later, Solaris was widely regarded as a planet endowed with life—but with only a single inhabitant…

It also likes to send replica versions of your most painful or dearest memory up to visit you, which is how Kelvin gets to meet his dead wife again, a sort of intergalactic RealDoll reliant on closeness to exist.


While there’s a certain element of Cold War paranoia at work – the floating in my tin can vibe of the times – the story isn’t really about space bugs or high opera. It’s about the possibility – or more appropriately, the impossibility – of communicating. Ostensibly it’s about communicating with the living ocean below the station, but really the novel looks more closely at interpersonal communications, and ultimately at the way we communicate with ourselves through memory and experience, no matter how much we distract ourselves with star-striving, exploration and achievement.

To read the rest of the review, consider visiting https://captainfez.com/2023/01/03/book-and-movie-review-solaris/ 
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