Editing Solaris (novel) (section)

==Plot summary==
''Solaris'' chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the [[extraterrestrial life]] inhabiting a distant alien planet named [[Solaris (fictional planet)|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 memory|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 (science fiction)|first contact]].<ref name="LEM-20021208"/>