Solaris [Paperback]

I hope this doesn't make it seem that Solaris is some terribly gloomy, ponderous philosophical discourse. On the contrary, it is a tale with many beauties: the evocative descriptions of the effects of the blue and red light from Solaris's twin suns; the ballet of generation and decay and regeneration enacted by the amazing mimoids, symmetriads and asymmetriads; and the development of the strange love between Kelvin and Rheya. And there is the wry humour of the history of Solarist research and theory, a compendium of creativity, crankiness and curiosity that mirrors on the cultural level the problem of our individual need to feel a real communication with others and how we project ourselves, our images and desires and obsessions, onto the world.

There is a well managed air of suspense and threat too. Lem has not forgotten the necessity of making the reader want to know what happens next.

This book contains much descriptive material, but I feel that it is on the whole essential to the philosophical underpinning of the story. Without detailed images of the planet's incredible structures and processes the narrative would lose its point altogether. Both Solaris and Rheya would be senseless, empty images. However, the philosophical discussion between Kelvin and Snow at the end seems a little adventitious. It deals with some interesting if not genuinely original notions of a lonely God who has lost control of His creation, drawing parallels with Solaris and humanity, but I would have preferred these ideas to have been hinted at subtextually rather than given a full exposition. On the other hand, there is something achingly poignant about the ending.

As always with the finest genre fiction, Solaris transcends the stylings and tropes of SF and proves to be a compelling, highly readable classic of world fiction.

Lem's book is everything good science fiction is, 14 chapters succinctly written that explore notions of memory & science; this is one instance of space fiction (not my fave area in SF) that comes across brilliantly. It is hard to go into the book without giving too much away, Solaris functioning like the best works of science fiction- using the genre to look at our place in the universe. The book having a timeless quality to it- as Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (I know that uses dates from the beginning of the 21st century, but conqeuring Mars has not yet been done) or Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Sentinel- which became 2001: A Space Odyssey (to which this book can be related- though it was before Kubrick's 1968 film).

From what I've seen & heard about Soderbergh's Solaris (2002), it was met with indifference by the US public after poor marketing (another example of this is evident when looking at the cover of this reissue, I'd plump for the 2001 Faber issue, which is a few quid cheaper & has a wonderful blue/stars cover); the film was remodelled around test audiences (whose opinion lead to the ellipsis of some sex scenes, which is a depressing thought when the film stars one of the most beautiful women in the world, Natasha McElhone!). Clooney appears to be miscast as Kris Kelvin, psychiatry at odds with his handsome features- & I'm not sure how much sense the US version will make, stuck somewhere between Hollywood & the influence of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation (reissued on DVD last year, brilliant- though rather long & a bit pointless in parts, like 2001...).

The films exist, but I'd go back to the source novel to bask in the glory of Lem's vision: this book reminding me of those lucid dreams you have & the feeling deep down that you know it's just a dream (but you never want to leave). An excellent science fiction novel, one that easily ranks up there with such great works of the genre as We, The Drowned World, Cities in Flight, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Sirens of Titan & The Man Who Fell to Earth...