Book Review
Jul. 28th, 2025 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariSolaris
by Stanisław Lem
This classic sci-fi novel is told from the point of view of Kris Kelvin, a scientist who has just arrived on the planet Solaris to check on and join the team working out of station suspended above the ocean that covers most of the planet. Kris and the others are there to study this ocean, which appears to be a living and perhaps sentient thing. Upon arrival, Kris finds one of the scientists to be recently dead by his own hand and the other two in a very disturbed state. In addition, there are clearly people on the station other than the scientists, people who cannot possibly be there. Soon after his arrival, Kris encounters his own "visitor", his dead wife Rheya. The visitors seem to have been generated by the ocean, but it is not at all clear how or to what purpose. Over the course of several weeks, Kris tries to figure out what is going on. He reviews the decades of studies done on Solaris and contemplates the ocean and the temporary organic structures that arise from it. He engages in some experiments and investigations with the other two scientists. He lives with the new Rheya, feeling his love for her resurface in spite of the mystery of her and her presence.
Solaris is a very contemplative novel which does not give the reader any easy answers, or even any definitive answers at all. An air of mystery and bewilderment, with occasional dread, pervades the novel and it is very effective. Lem explores the processes and limits of human understanding, both of ourselves and the universe around us. The lack of answers or full resolution is thus fitting.
by Stanisław Lem
This classic sci-fi novel is told from the point of view of Kris Kelvin, a scientist who has just arrived on the planet Solaris to check on and join the team working out of station suspended above the ocean that covers most of the planet. Kris and the others are there to study this ocean, which appears to be a living and perhaps sentient thing. Upon arrival, Kris finds one of the scientists to be recently dead by his own hand and the other two in a very disturbed state. In addition, there are clearly people on the station other than the scientists, people who cannot possibly be there. Soon after his arrival, Kris encounters his own "visitor", his dead wife Rheya. The visitors seem to have been generated by the ocean, but it is not at all clear how or to what purpose. Over the course of several weeks, Kris tries to figure out what is going on. He reviews the decades of studies done on Solaris and contemplates the ocean and the temporary organic structures that arise from it. He engages in some experiments and investigations with the other two scientists. He lives with the new Rheya, feeling his love for her resurface in spite of the mystery of her and her presence.
Solaris is a very contemplative novel which does not give the reader any easy answers, or even any definitive answers at all. An air of mystery and bewilderment, with occasional dread, pervades the novel and it is very effective. Lem explores the processes and limits of human understanding, both of ourselves and the universe around us. The lack of answers or full resolution is thus fitting.
