Review: Solaris

Solaris by Stanisław Lem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At a conceptual – and probably historical – level, this is a masterpiece.

A scientist who’s worked to repress his past, a past that involves a lover who killed herself when he left her to pursue his career, is assigned to observe a planet far away. That planet, Solaris, has evidenced signs of consciousness for two generations of scholars. Awkward as that sentence sounds, it’s accurate: it’s the planet itself, a conscious ocean, that is the alien presence.

Scholars who’ve already studied it made all sorts of news in their time, but by the time Kelvin arrives, Solaris study has become old news. It’s so alien, so frustrating to would-be human communicators that they have largely given up. Largely, but some want to provoke the alien intelligence by bombarding it with microwaves.

In response, the planet finds a way to produce physical projections of people the scholars (all men) are haunted by. For Kelvin, it’s his dead girlfriend.

As a result, the best of this is the best of what science fiction does. At the edge of what we know of the world, we see a character confronting his deepest self. It’s haunting to watch him as he realizes he has something like another chance with Harey, a chance he realizes is fictional, is dependent on denying that he knows Solaris is responsible for it.

When I reflect on what I know of the history of sci-fi, I can’t imagine, say Star Trek or Dune, without this. It’s a lesson in what the genre can be made to do, and I gather it was a direct inspiration for much of what followed.

All that said, I haven’t marked this as a spoiler because we get to see most of it in the first several pages. That is, we get most of the best of this right away, conceptually.

Actually reading it, going through the different chapters and the unfolding of Lem’s exposition, is a little less enjoyable. The science exposition here – where we have Kelvin paraphrasing the work of academics who’ve come before him – can drag. And, powerful as some of the human scenes are, they don’t always have the narrative power of the best of this. The truth is, almost nothing happens here other than what I see getting revealed, or at least hinted at, in the opening pages. And, good as Lem can be, it’s hard to be riveted by every page in something that is both abstract and inert.

Do consider reading this, though. It’s my second Lem in about a year. I enjoyed The Star Diaries – which are brilliant but uneven – and now I am startled to find the same mind behind both of them. That one is clever and funny, and it’s full of action and adventure. I enjoyed reading it much more than this, but I’m enjoying the after-taste of this one more. I’ve known Lem by reputation for some time; it’s a pleasure to see how he delivers.


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