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Solaris (novel)

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Solaris (Template:IPAc-en) is a 1961 science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem. It follows a crew of scientists on a space station research facility as they attempt to understand an extraterrestrial intelligence, which takes the form of a vast ocean on the titular alien planet. The novel is one of Lem's best-known works.<ref>Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, fourth edition (1996), p. 590.</ref>

The book has been adapted many times for film, radio, and theater. Prominent film adaptations include Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 version and Steven Soderbergh's 2002 version, although Lem later remarked that none of these films reflected the book's thematic emphasis on the limitations of human rationality.<ref name="LEM-20021208">Template:Cite web</ref>

Plot summary

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Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ocean of gelatinous material that turns out to be a single, planet-encompassing entity. Terran scientists conjecture it is a living and sentient being, and attempt to communicate with it.

Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, arrives aboard Solaris Station, a scientific research station hovering near the oceanic surface of Solaris. The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades, mostly in vain. A scientific discipline known as Solaristics has degenerated over the years to simply observing, recording and categorizing the complex phenomena that occur on the surface of the ocean. Thus far, the scientists have only compiled an elaborate nomenclature of the phenomena, and do not yet understand what they really mean. Shortly before Kelvin's arrival, the crew exposed the ocean to a more aggressive and unauthorized experimentation with a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Their experimentation gives unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans.

The ocean's response to this intrusion exposes the deeper, hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists, while revealing nothing of the ocean's nature itself. It does this by materializing physical simulacra (including human ones) based on the unpleasant repressed memories of the researchers, who visit the corresponding researchers. Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide, which constitutes a significant part of the plot. The "visitors" of the other persons are only alluded to.

All efforts to make sense of Solaris's activities prove futile. As Lem wrote, "the peculiarity of those phenomena seems to suggest that we observe a kind of rational activity, but the meaning of this seemingly rational activity of the Solarian Ocean is beyond the reach of human beings."<ref>Stanisław Lem, Fantastyka i Futuriologia, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1989, vol. 2, p. 365</ref> Lem also wrote that he deliberately chose to make the sentient alien an ocean to avoid any personification and the pitfalls of anthropomorphism in depicting first contact.<ref name="LEM-20021208"/>

Characters

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  • The protagonist, Dr. Kris Kelvin, is a psychologist recently arrived from Earth to the space station studying the planet Solaris. He had previously been cohabiting with Harey ("Rheya" in the Kilmartin–Cox translation), who died by suicide when he abandoned their relationship. Her exact double is his visitor aboard the space station and becomes an important character.
  • Snaut ("Snow" in the Kilmartin–Cox translation) is the first person Kelvin meets aboard the station, and his visitor is not shown.
  • Gibarian, who had been an instructor of Kelvin's at university, killed himself just hours before Kelvin arrives at the station. Gibarian's visitor was a "giant Negress" who twice appears to Kelvin; first in a hallway soon after his arrival, and then while he is examining Gibarian's cadaver. She seems to be unaware of the other humans she meets, or she simply chooses to ignore them.
  • The last inhabitant Kelvin meets is Sartorius, the most reclusive member of the crew. He shows up only intermittently and is suspicious of the other crew members. Kelvin gets a glimpse of a straw hat that may be Sartorius's visitor.
  • Harey ("Rheya" in the Kilmartin–Cox translation, an anagram of "Harey"), who killed herself with a lethal injection after quarreling with Kelvin, returns as his visitor. Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions after confronting her, Kelvin lures the first Harey visitor into a shuttle and launches it into outer space to be rid of her. Her fate is unknown to the other scientists. Snaut suggests hailing Harey's shuttle to learn her condition, but Kelvin objects. Harey soon reappears but with no memory of the shuttle incident. Moreover, the second Harey becomes aware of her transient nature and is haunted by being Solaris' means-to-an-end, affecting Kelvin in unknown ways. After listening to a tape recording by Gibarian, and so learning her true nature, she attempts suicide by drinking liquid oxygen. This fails because her body is made of neutrinos, stabilized by some unknown force field and has both incredible strength and the ability to quickly regenerate from all injuries. She subsequently convinces Snaut to destroy her with a device developed by Sartorius that disrupts the subatomic structure of the visitors.

Criticism and interpretations

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The novel is the best known elaboration of Lem's trope of the impossibility of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, present in many of Lem's novels, including his first, The Man from Mars, and his last, Fiasco.<ref>Wojciech Orliński, Co to są sepulki? Wszystko o Lemie [What are Sepulki? Everything about Lem], 2007, Template:ISBN, p. 54.</ref>

In an interview, Lem said that the novel "has always been a juicy prey for critics", with interpretations ranging from that of Freudianism, critique of contact and colonialism,<ref name="Othering">Template:Cite journal</ref> to anticommunism, proponents of the latter view holding that the Ocean represents the Soviet Union and the people on the space station represent the satellite countries of Central and Eastern EuropeTemplate:Citation needed. He also commented on the absurdity of the book cover blurb for the 1976 edition, which said the novel "expressed the humanistic beliefs of the author about high moral qualities of the human".<ref>Lem's FAQ</ref> Lem noted that the critic who promulgated the Freudian idea actually blundered by basing his psychoanalysis on dialogue from the English translation, whereas his diagnosis would fail on the idioms in the original Polish text.<ref>Lem's commentary on Solaris</ref>

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English translation

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File:Solaris, various editions 02.jpg
Various translations of Solaris, including the English one

Both the original Polish version of the novel (published in 1961) and its English translation are titled Solaris. Jean-Michel Jasiensko published his French translation in 1964 and that version was the basis of Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox's English translation (Walker and Company, 1970; Faber and Faber, 1971).<ref>Kellman, Steven G., "Alien autographs: how translators make their marks", in Neohelicon (2010) 37:15 (online).</ref> Lem, who read English fluently, repeatedly voiced his disappointment with the Kilmartin–Cox version.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2011, Bill Johnston completed an English translation from the Polish. Lem's wife and son reviewed this version more favorably: "We are very content with Professor Johnston's work, that seems to have captured the spirit of the original."<ref name="theguardian.com">Alison Flood, "First ever direct English translation of Solaris published", The Guardian, 15 June 2011</ref> It was released as an audio book and later in an Amazon Kindle edition (2014, Template:ISBN). Due to legal issues, this translation did not appear in print until 2024, when Conversation Tree Press published a fine press edition of the book.<ref name="theguardian.com"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Reprints

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Adaptations

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Audio

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Audiobooks

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Theatre

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Opera

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Cinema

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Solaris has been filmed three times:

Lem himself observed that none of the film versions depict much of the extraordinary physical and psychological "alienness" of the Solaris ocean. Responding to film reviews of Soderbergh's version, Lem, noting that he did not see the film, wrote: Template:Cquote

Cultural allusions and works based on Solaris

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See also

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References

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