Solaris is a strange and haunting novel. As in only the best classic science fiction, the anachronisms of a novel written in the 1960s and set in the Solaris is a strange and haunting novel. As in only the best classic science fiction, the anachronisms of a novel written in the 1960s and set in the far future only add to the uncanny, lost-in-time atmosphere. Likewise, there is a flatness to the characters—whether human or, well, not exactly human—that should be a flaw but isn’t. It is easy to imagine a contemporary author digging into the past trauma that the inhabitants of Solaris station are forced to confront, and yet the blank, sketchy quality of the backstory enhances the unreality so essential to the mood of the novel.
Instead of anchoring the novel in his characters emotional lives or personal histories, Lem ballasts his story with a series of dry digressions on the nature of the planet Solaris and the history of the academic field, Solaristics, devoted to its study. As someone who compulsively uses complex and arcane histories and the working out of abstract intellectual problems as a way to anchor myself emotionally, to process the overwhelming strangeness and fundamental lack of control that characterize human life, I related deeply to this aspect of the novel. This material is dry, yes (though it is sort of funny, too, as a satire on academia) but it would be a mistake, I think, to see it as standing outside of the novel’s emotional core.
Solaris cannot be understood—anymore than humanity can. As in the study of humanity—history, economics, sociology, literature—Solaris has generated a wealth of incredibly rich, but also conflicting and often futile research and thought. As in the study of humanity, the effort to treat problems in Solaristics as fundamentally scientific, as verifiable in the way that a problem in physics or chemistry is verifiable—is futile but not necessarily fruitless—foolish, yes, but also profound.
The book offers us plenty of answers, ample resolution; more answers, even, than we want or need—and then it dares us to trust them. Go ahead, it asks, believe—what do you have to lose?...more
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