Solaris is a Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), published in Warsaw in 1961 and is his best known work in English translation. While the narration suggests that humans study the planet, the opposite seems to be the case, where the titular alien planet, Solaris, examines the secret and often guilty thoughts of human beings. These secrets and thoughts are given physical form on the research station which hovers above the pla...
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Solaris is a Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), published in Warsaw in 1961 and is his best known work in English translation. While the narration suggests that humans study the planet, the opposite seems to be the case, where the titular alien planet, Solaris, examines the secret and often guilty thoughts of human beings. These secrets and thoughts are given physical form on the research station which hovers above the planet. The novel is pervaded by a powerful and moving poetic sense of remoteness and loneliness.
The novel is about the ultimately futile attempt to communicate with an alien life-form on a distant planet. The planet, called Solaris, is covered with a so-called "ocean" that seems to really be a single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is so inconceivably different from human...
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