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Space Books Media Book Reviews

Solaris 92

Posted by timothy from the it's-a-floor-wax,-dessert-topping,-OS-and-book! dept.
The wide-ranging, erudite Duncan Lawie goes where few Slashdot reviewers have gone before, exploring books on the fringes of Science Fiction and wacky speculation in the interest of expanding your mind and his own. This time, he reports on Stanislaw Lem's classic work Solaris, first printed in English 30 years ago, and in Russian nearly 40. Read more to find out if it sounds like your kind of page-turner.

Solaris
author Stanislaw Lem
pages ~200
publisher Harcourt Brace (USA)
rating 7.5
reviewer Duncan Lawie
ISBN 0156837501b
summary Deeply thoughtful, vastly different science fiction from beyond the English language.

*

The height of Stanislaw Lem's science fiction production was in the 1950s and 1960s though he has continued to produce lucid, powerful work since. Writing in Eastern Europe (in Polish), his influences were vastly different from those of Commonwealth and American authors of the same period. Access to his work in English first came years after it was written, some of them via another language. This has resulted in a delayed effect as his influence on the science fiction of the West fed in over the course of a generation. Despite - or perhaps because of - this, Lem is one of the most important science fiction authors of the twentieth century writing outside the English language and his works, including over a dozen novels and several short story collections, have been published in over 30 languages.

Solaris is one of Lem's early works of mature science fiction, differing significantly in focus from the Russian film based upon it and perhaps totally unrelated to Sun Microsystems' Unix. It tells of an episode in the continuing quest by humanity to understand an alien planet. This planet orbits two stars and yet maintains a regular path. It is a ocean-world and science believes that it is the action of this mass - which is not water -- which controls the planet's motion. The planet, which itself is called Solaris, has been studied by science for generations and a large part of the book is concerned with a form of literature review, telling the history of the highs and lows in that research and relating dozens of theories generated through the decades. The style is such that the book manages to relay all this scientific opinion without indicating any genuine support for any particular theory, though most observers seem to accept, to varying degrees, the idea that the ocean may be "alive."

The narrator, Kelvin, is a Solarist by training and has come from Earth to obtain his own first hand experience of the planet. In this period of declining research, he arrives at the research station to find it in disarray; the station leader dead and the other occupants utterly preoccupied with matters they will not explain and which Kelvin cannot understand. The development of Kelvin's character is central to the book. His history is related in tandem with that of Solarist research as he attempts to come to terms with himself and with events on the station. Kelvin is the rational man of science, attempting to understand the apparently incomprehensible. His story recapitulates the scientific journey to the heart of incomprehension as he attempts to handle the impossibly real experiences the planet seems to be imposing on him. Beyond this bulk of complexity, there is a clear perspective on Kelvin's position in the final pages which shows how far this ghostly story has come, and how far our species has yet to travel.

Given the origin of its author, and the vintage of the novel, it is hardly surprising that Solaris is so far removed from the American tradition of science fiction. The mood of the book is passive and thoughtful, building a paranoiac atmosphere through understatement and calm description. The alien environment of the planet is described in the language of science and yet manages to remain largely incomprehensible. The book appears to avoid any kind of extreme; no event so great as triumph or disaster is ever described as such. This approach can make it difficult to care about the characters but it sustains the quiet, brave despair at the heart of the novel. Perhaps in this it is a reflection of the Eastern European experience of the communist regime of the period? Science has failed to comprehend Solaris so utterly that it seems humanity must be in retreat. Even as the book closes there is no certainty regarding Solaris beyond phenomenology - or has the book displayed something of the spirit of the planet? Solaris is one of the most alien places in science fiction, at least for the Western Anglophone reader, whilst Solaris goes right to the heart of the questions that good science fiction should be exploring.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
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  • While I liked Lem's Solaris, and consider him a master in the field (particularly liking memoirs found in a bathtub, and those robot stories), I like his prequel to Solaris much better. Look for ir, it's call Sunos.

    Thanks

  • Admit it. (Score:4)

    by Outlyer ( 1767 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @03:32AM (#690729) Homepage
    Ok, hands up... how many people saw the title and thought this was a book about Sun's OS?
  • I confess. And 30 years ago? For a minute there I was really impressed with Sun's QA.
  • ...and wacky speculation in the interest of expanding your mind and his own.

    Are you sure this wasn't written by Timothy Leary?

  • > and in Russian nearly 40

    What?! Solaris was written 40 years ago (1959-60), but Lem was by no means russian, but polish!

  • I saw the Russian movie version on the night in premiered in New York City, 1976, in a 2,000-seat theater. There were, I think, about 20 of us in the audience. Also be sure to check out the Cyberiad, by Lem, and search out the "Beckett-ian" tale of Mymosh the Self-Begotten. It's where SF meets philosophy, and nobody does it better than Lem. NA
  • Besides being a good story, Solaris also has a secondary interest. Timothy points out how it differs from what we might call typical scifi, which shows us the fairly narrow definition we use. Or that publishers use, more to the point. I think a lot of good books are left unnoticed because they don't fit easily into a recognizable category.
  • I like the one between Sunos and Solaris, called The Regents of California.

    uNF! [mrzer0]
  • The brief description of the book at the top of the page had me a bit confused. "The fringes of Science Fiction and wacky speculation" certainly sounds like it could describe Sun's operating system, but I'd never seen an OS described in terms quite like that. (Well, except for Windows, but most Windows descriptions I've seen used more profanity than that.) It wasn't until I saw the timeframe that I realized the book couldn't be referring to an operating system.

  • Me too. And, err, isn't this an example of prior art? Well, a use of the name anyhoo. Watch out Sun... ;-)

  • The film is interesting too.. (Score:3)

    by mpk ( 10222 ) <mpk@uffish.net> on Friday October 20, 2000 @03:58AM (#690738) Homepage
    The Russian film [imdb.com] based on the book is definitely worth a watch if you can get hold of it, and if you have the patience - it's sometimes rather slow-moving, to say the least, and runs to over 2.5 hours in some cuts.
    It's worth seeing largely because it's such a startlingly different portrayal of a future in space to those doing the rounds in the West at the time. The space station orbiting Solaris is a comfortable-looking place that's very unfuturistic, and the trip to an alien planet, with the inevitable separation from family and friends, is told from a far more human viewpoint than in most science fiction. It's a movie about people, not about technology.
    There are echoes of this technique in later movies. For instance, 2010 [imdb.com] covers Floyd's preparation for the trip to Jupiter, and the impending separation from his family, in great detail, with the actual journey being skipped almost entirely.

    It's a strange, starkly beautiful and intriguingly different film. Worth seeing if you get the chance.
  • OK: Somebody rate him up as funny! (you never have the points when you really want them)

    It does, however make some sense of SUN's naming of their (then) new OS when they switched from a BSD based SUN-OS to a SYSV based Solaris.

    For long-time SUN-OS/BSD users it was going to be a new world... somewhat like the old one, but with underlying differences that sometimes made it outright strange to comprehend -- on top of which was grafted the vestiges of the old, reliable world.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:03AM (#690740)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Solaris rocked!

    It was the coolest place, because they had no clue that a bunch of lambs like us had infiltrated it. Of course, it all goes straight to hell at the end of disc 1, but still, it was pretty cool while it lasted.

  • ... and what I do like most: you can read it again and again and just like in "pulp fiction" or "twelve monkeys" its different every time beacuse you have a totaly new perspective ...
  • Tarkovsky's movie [allmovie.com], also named Solaris, is one of the rare cases where the movie is superior to the book itself (IMHO). For me the movie is a masterpiece.
  • S. Lem is one my favorite authors, his stuff seems so grown-up compared to most American Sci-Fi. I need to go back and re-read Solaris, it's been about 20 years since I read it last. Does anyone know if he is still alive?
  • So? Lem was very popular in the USSR. I don't know when exactly it was published in Russian, but "almost 40" sounds right.
  • I've red it when I was around 14 back in Russia. I feel that Lem has a lot to offer to English-speaking world out there, and with a little help from Slahsdot, it may finally happen. While the review is very positive, it doesn't do justice to the book. Read and you will see. Other good books by Lem include "Invincible" and "Eden". "Invincible" [amazon.com] is more traditional, but "Eden" [amazon.com] is almost as dark and alien as "Solaris". There are other books by Lem that deserve mention, too (Go see the list at Amazon). Some of his early writing smacks of Communism, but he grew out of that stage eventually.

  • lem rules (Score:3)

    by pohl ( 872 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:22AM (#690747) Homepage
    Lem is, by far, my favorite writer of science fiction. I must admit, though, that Solaris is not among his works that I like the most. Cyberiad and Mortal Engines are my two favorites. They are collections of short stories written in classic fable style, except they're set in a universe where the dominant form of life is robotic, and they all think that organic life is squishy, disgusting, and frightening. The language in these works is beautiful, rhythmic, and down-right amazing considering that they've been through translation from Polish. No geek should die without having read Cyberiad first.

    I also liked Memoirs Found in a Bathtub a lot, and His Master's Voice. Shit, just check out this author.

    The only thing you might not like about Lem is that he deliberately sets you up for a big climax (whether it be action or resolution of a mystery) and then robs you of the reward every single frigging time. One can see the smile on his face, too. He knows he's doing it. If that kind of thing would bother you, stick with Cyberiad and Mortal Engines, because he doesn't pull that shit in his shorter works. Enjoy.

  • What?! Solaris was written 40 years ago (1959-60), but Lem was by no means russian, but polish!

    Lem, of course, is Polish, but his works were translated into Russian much earlier than into English.

    Kaa
  • I've met a few Polish people; they're responible for teaching me to swear in Russian.
  • For instance, 2010 covers Floyd's preparation for the trip to Jupiter, and the impending separation from his family, in great detail, with the actual journey being skipped almost entirely.


    ...which is not exactly surprising from a narrative standpoint, since he spends most of the trip in cryo-sleep. Seems to me that describing this in all it's detailed glory would be rather... boring?

    Other than that I agree with you.
  • Those interested in Lem may enjoy reading The Futurological Congress; it's considerably more accessible than Solaris.

    Think The Matrix but with more humor and less leather.
  • Yes, Lem is still alive. He Currently lives in Cracow, Poland. I don't thing, he is writing anything of SF right now, though.

    As about Solaris, there was a rumor some time ago that some guys in Hollywood figured out, a remake of the movie would be due.
    You can read about this here:
    http://www.k26.com/solaris/SOLARIS_INTRO/solaris _intro.html

    M.

  • Stanislaw Lem is one of the greatest Sci Fi writers of all times. His works do not concentrate solely on technology, but on the way people react to new environment and what they do to cope with it. He is al about our human failings. Eventhough he writes in Polish, he is easy to translate in English because his puns are in English. If you can find his books - by all means - read them. They are great. He has funny and absurd writings like the stories of the pilot Pyrx and Iion Tichi. If you believe in Murrphy's laws - just read some of this - you will be laughing out loud. The theme of the impossibility of contact with alien intellignce (not extraterrestrial - alien to our thinking) goes on in such books as "The Voice of God" and "Fiasco" where Pyrx dies. Other great eastern european Sci Fi authors are the Russian brothers - Arkadii and Boris Strugatski. If you consider yourself a geek - go and read your credo in "Monday begins on Saturday". This is the one book that exemplifies what being geek is all about and how do you hack life and the universe in general. And by the way 2+2 is SEVEN - even if drink the sky and turn the sea upside down. Don't listen to Trurl
  • And for the people needing some good laughter: The Futurolgical Congress. Worth reading, even though the ending is not that good, as it could be.

    M.

  • Link to (Score:1)

    by pfft ( 23845 )

    I think the planet Solaris plays a minor role of the book, the main point being made about the human psychological makeup. The final conclusion (as I read it) is something along the lines of "we cannot possibly hope to understand alien life, as we cannot even understand ourselves".

    For the interested, there is a Study Guide for Solaris from Washington State University [wsu.edu], which also links to some information about Lem.

    Finally a small off-topic point: my own favourite Lem book is Fiasco (1986). It has a somewhat different flavour from Solaris (more technology and less futile love), but it is still serious in its tone. (unlike the more playful Cyberiad).

  • Stanislaw Lem is much underrated. I read this book over 25 years ago and I'm surprised about the response. Many of the ideas were new, or at least presented in a new way. But over the years many SF authors have used the basis in other plots so I doubt I would be as happy reading it for the first time as you were.

    All the same: any book you enjoy is a good book.

    Now where did I put my copies of The Joy of Quantam Mechanics and Everything You Wanted To Know About String Theory (But Were Afraid To Ask)?

    David
  • Kandel's translation of The Cyberiad is one of the best translations I have ever read. I had difficulty trying to figure out what he had put in to translate the humor ("Sampson, shorn, sulks silently...") and the darkness.

    Since I read neither Russian nor Polish, I asked my husband to read the Russian, and a friend to read the Polish, and then the English. It was as good a translation as I thought! Hooray!

    Kandel also has published work of his own., including In Between Dragons, a fable of the worlds that books create, and Captain Jack Zodiac, one of the best pastiches of both space opera and post-apocalyptic fiction. Sadly, both are out of print.

    If you read Lem in English, you owe much of the texture to Kandel. He edited the recent Nebula Awards Showcase 2000 [barnesandnoble.com] book with Gregory Benford and Michelle Brook. Read as much of Lem as you wish, but remember the translator.

    Oh, yeah. That other really good translation. Ann Rice's Interview with a Vampire reads much better in French. If you can snatch up a copy of Entretien avec un Vampire, grab it!

  • ...Why did my screen just turn black? And what's that it says ... *squints* You ... shall ... be ... as ... JonKatz? No, wait, that *can't* be right...
  • While the ending exercised a very queer grip on me and made me remember the film as one worth staying up for, I am unable to forgive it for the interminable footage of Our Hero travelling in a Japanese Taxi through tunnels, tunnel, My God! the tunnels! Tunnels upon tunnels upon Japanese tunnels, aiiieee, the tunnels have no end! No more! I'll tesll you all I know!

    Seriously, the sequence lasted 20 minutes or something, I could imagine the theaters emptying. After that it picked up again. It was as if a crazed nipponese tunnel fetishist had swapped out one of the reels.
  • It is very refreshing to read about Stanislaw Lem, as he is very obscure while at the same time is certainly one of the most important and influential science fiction writers of all time.

    In the review, the author doesn't mention that much of Lem's work makes a powerful allegorical statement about our technological society, usually criticising it. This explains many strange turns of events and symbols in his work.

    Also, another masterful work by Lem is 'Return from the Stars,' where an astronaut returns from a long mission to find the world changed permanently - the will to explore has been bred out of Earth's citizens. I loved that book.
  • Off-topic,-1,die etc... but...

    I read a review of a book about 5 or so years ago, it was about a book by some guy who may have been a scientist, it was sci-fi, and about people living inside a sun or something... i asked someone recently about this and he lent me Snowcrash, which was ok i guess but i dont think it was that.

    Any ideas? It was supposed to have made sense from a scientific point of view, but the author wasnt anyone i`d heard of at the time (ie Asimov, Clarke etc)

    a.
  • Mind you, that the director of the movie is Andrei Tarkovski -- a very interesting figure in Russian cinematography. You may want to check out Stalker [imdb.com] as well, and then read the original book by Strugatski brothers, called The Roadside Picnic (here [rambler.ru] is entire text of the novel in English, and here [rambler.ru] in Russian).

  • Re:Stanislaw Lem is SF best kept secret (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are you trying to be funny? Even in translation, Lem's work is positively Shakespearian compared to the sports hacks you mention.
  • Lem's stuff is brilliant,that which I've read, and I'm sure he'd be far more well known had he not been from eastern Europe. Which is a shame. More of his books should be reprinted as they're quite hard to find.
    Someone mentioned Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (sp?) - Their novel "Roadside Picnic" has been reprinted (in the UK, at least) in Gollancz's new classic SF range - the return of the yellow jacketed SF books I used to seek out at the library when I were a lad.


    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

  • It takes the insight of a genius (and Stanislav Lem was of course one) to see the future. Only now I understand that by the enormous machine that claimed that 2 + 2 was 7, was in fact a Transmeta Crusoe board fixed inside an IBM RS6000 case.

  • Re:Admit it. (Score:4)

    by jms ( 11418 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @05:31AM (#690766)
    In Solaris, Kelvin's days are spent in a futile effort to understand a planet with strange characteristics and irrational features that combine logic and chaos into an alien mixture that defies human understanding.

    I have largely the same feelings whenever I port software to a Sun system.

    - John
  • I think "Eden" may be the most clear statement of Lem's thinking on this theme. Not to be missed if you thought "Solaris" wasn't too inaccessible.
  • I agree that Solaris is good, although my favorites are The Cyberiad, Eden, and The Invincible. One of his works that I really enjoy that hasn't been mentioned yet is Fiasco; I thought the speculative gravity-based technology in that story was wonderful.

    One thing about Lem I've always liked is that he can write a great Sci-Fi tragedy. I've noticed that the great majority of modern (Western) Sci-Fi is almost always written as heroic opera; even when it centers on an anti-hero, it's a truly heroic anti-hero, inevitably saving the world by the end of the story. Lem is far more unpredictable; he doesn't follow a set formula, and you can't always tell how the story is going to end. One of his tales of Pirx the Pilot (I can't quite remember the name; I think it's "The Albatross") always sticks with me; while the main character is Pirx, his role in the story is little more than as a witness to a spacecraft in the process of a catastrophic failure. Even though nobody wins in the end, the scenes drawn in the story of desperation and selfless sacrifice against a backdrop of hard vacuum are starkly beautiful.

    Rather than a fight against evil aliens or mega-corporations, Lem's heroes strive against the very world around themselves. They may succeed or fail at the tasks given them in each story, but their heroism (or lack thereof) is implicit in how they uphold their own ideals in the face of adversity, rather than in what they actually accomplish. Wonderful stuff.


  • The only good thing about going to college was my Sci-Fi East and West course. It examined cultural differences between the east and the west via their science fiction. We had to read Solaris, and I loved it. Lem is a great writer. Anyone going to the University of Pittsburgh is recommended to take that class. We even got to watch The Fly, The Terminator, and Metropolis.

    c.

  • Perhaps you're referring to Larry Niven's Ringworld books? I know they don't live "in a sun" but they do live in a world that totally encircles their sun (kind of a minimalist Dyson Sphere).
  • I got hooked on Stanislaw Lem after stumbling on his short story collection "The Cyberiad" (translated from the Polish by Michael Kendal). The stories deal with two constructors, Trul and Klapaucius, as they try to "out-invent" each other with their cybernetic brews (from laser-eyed beasts to poetry-spouting bards, not to mention the machine that could create anything in the universe that begins with the letter n.) Both Trul and Klapaucius are themeselves robots, living in a Universe seemingly populated only by cyber-forms. Yet they are all remarkably human in their foibles.

    The stories draw on folklore, philosophy, and mathematical thought in creating a universe that is amusing and humourous, but at the same time profoundly disturbing. One cannot help draw parallels between what's happening in the pages, and current affairs (of the world in general, and the cyber-industry in particular.) These stories seem just as relavant today as they were in 1967, when they were first published. A must read for all cyber-drones
    :^>
  • Lem, of course, is Polish, but his works were translated into Russian much earlier than into English.

    Also, "Solaris" was made into a movie. In Russian, IIRC.

  • Lem's Solaris is adequately reviewed above. The Russian film version, IMO, definitely ranks inferior to the book: way too long (3+ hours) and told in strict chronological order. Flashback scenes from the text are shown entirely before the remainder of events, IIRC. The recent movie _Event Horizon_ borrows heavily from Solaris, and deserves watching if you don't mind splatterpunk horror movies.

    Lem's _Return From The Stars_, _Fiasco_, _Cyberiad_, _Prix the Pilot_, and all his other long fiction deserves the mention it gets here. Still, for my money, his short stories are much better. Go read _Imaginary Magnitude_, with its tales of transhuman MI philosophers and their meta-languages. Go read _One Human Minute_, with its precognitive bacteria, X-ray pornography, and the prescient short "Weapon Systems of the 21st Century." All of these far outshine his longer works.
  • Actually, I though Solaris was boring. I found "Memoirs found in a Bathtub" much better. My hope is that the translation was poor. With some of the imagery he used, I wonder if he was influenced by Cordwainer Smith [cordwainer-smith.com]
  • The now defunkt band FAILURE has a song called Solaris on their Fantastic Planet album. It is about the book/film. Oddly enough, the song contains a sampling from one of Tarkofsky's(sp) other films: the Sacrifice.

    :ryc

    "I'm on a mission to escape from what my life has been"-failure

    http://failure.org

  • Was I the only one who had the same feeling at the end of Kubrick's 2001, after endless shots of Bowman's (? - it's been almost 30 years) iris, shot in various colors? (I was 9 or 10 and just getting into photography at the time, and all I
    could think was that it was like some kid had
    just learned about sepia and other "false-color"
    printing, and was running hog-wild: "look what I
    can do!" in fifty different color combos)

    I imagine they took that tedious section out in later re-releases and video. It was utterly pointless. At least Solaris' tunnel scenes meant something (lo-o-ong drive)
  • Sounds like Flux by Stephen Baxter: microscopic humans engineered to live in the mantle of a star, though their cultural level has deteriorated to something rather Renaissance-ish. Fun read - good characters, good adventure, ok science, not terribly deep.
  • I read Fiasco, the main thing I remember aside from the gruesome emergency spacecraft lifesaver (which propels a tube down your stomach so quickly you lose all your teeth) is that it is just unrelentingly grim. Like Philip K Dick, Lem is also popular in the UK, where we apparently like to hear stories of things going, in the vernacular, ''pear shaped''.
  • I have enjoyed a number of Lem novels. The Tarkovsky movie was brilliant, but much like 2001, it was very different in approach to the original novel. (I had also read that Lem didn't particularly enjoy it..) I dig the fact that Lem seems to be one of the VERY few authors who understood and fully appreciated Phillip K. Dick. I consider Dick and Lem quite similar, with Lem being perhaps the superior author. To not recognize what both these authors chose to write about would be to miss out on some of the most intelligent literature of the time. (60s-70s) I'd love to own the Stanislaw Lemnibus; Does anyone know if there is such a thing?!

  • Yes, good stuff (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Although I wouldn't recommend "Solaris" as somebody's introduction to Lem. Like many of his works, "Solaris" is kind of a ponderous read. (I've only read English translations, does the original Polish plod along like that?). I would reccommend the Robot stories and the Pirx stories first.
    It seems like one of Lem's big themes is that human understanding is finite and there are just some things that we (currently) can't grasp. Aliens are well, alien - see "Solaris" and "Eden" for example. And the whole series of computer history "lectures" where man can't comprehend the end product of the evolution he initiated.

    I read some of the Strugatskis' stuff a long, long time ago. I don't recall them being such slow going as some of the Lem stuff, but they weren't exactly gripping page turners, either. I think maybe Slavic writers just aren't real beach reading.

    BTW, Hollywood is remaking the movie "Solaris", supposedly going back to the book as a source, not the Russian (?) production. I can't see how anyone (Hollywood in particular) could make an interesting adaptation of the book to film.

    Lem likes playing with ideas, but about half his stuff wouldn't qualify as a light read. If you couldn't stand "Neuromancer", "A Clockwork Orange", A.E. van Vogt or E.E. Smith, you might find something like "Solaris" pure drudgery.

  • Also highly recommended is The Cyberiad [amazon.com], subtitled Fables for the Cybernetic Age. Hilarious and also often profound, Lem's fables are the perfect bedtime stories for the thinking geek.

    miles

  • Well, yeah, it is grim. :) But as it is (to a certain degree) a parody of the arms race during the cold war (something that comes up in a lot of Lem's work), and I think the mood is suitable.

    Actually, Lem's quick-freeze "vitrifax" machine used to save the guy's life on Triton has a basis in science fact: one of the problems with "cryonic" suspended animation is that when human tissues are cooled below the freezing point of water, the ice crystallizes and cracks. When you thaw the tissue again, it is damaged beyond repair. But when water is cooled extremely rapidly, it can apparently become "vitrified" ice; the liquid form goes over to the solid form without the normal process of crystal formation.

    I don't know all the details, but I'm sure Lem was pointing to that technique with his mechanism.

  • There is an interesting article by Bruce Sterling about Stanislaw Lem at http://www.well.com:70/0/Publications/authors/Ster ling/Catscan_Stuff/catscan_two.txt& lt;/a> . It is trenchant in just the manner that Sterling's catscan columns and "Cheap Truth" newsletters were. [well.com]

    I love Lem's work. It derives from such a completely different tradition from Anglo SF and remains so beautifully written. Only Phillip K Dick wrote anything like it in Enlgish. My only criticism is the English translation, which wasn't from the Polish, but translated from the French translation.

    I read it in French, and for those capable of doing so, I recommend it over the English version.

    One of the things I see in this book is the question of whether we could ever identify a non-human intelligence if we found one. Just how alien is alien? Is Solaris intelligent? It certainly isn't human. This question is never answered, and it remains an open question today. Can we build an artificial intelligence without basically building an artificial human? Is any definition of intelligence possible without making reference to purely human abilities?

    You won't find the answers in Lem's work, but you will find the question repeated over and over.
  • Iain M Banks is god, but watch for my first novel 'The Universal Engine' when it appears in ten years or so.

    Elgon
  • Lem described the concept and possible problems of virtual reality as early as 1964, in his book 'Summa technologiae'. He also devised means of how to find out whether have been trapped in a virtual reality (better, in a reality more virtual than the one you usually live in, since that might be virtual, too): Say that you have hidden something somewhere. Go and see if it's still there. It's unlikely the builders of your virtual reality would know about it. Of course, the virtual reality (the computer behind it) could make up an excuse for the thing not being there. He concludes that in the end, there will be virtual realities smart enough to fool pretty much anybody. Of course he didn't call it virtual reality. He used the invented term 'phantomatics'.

    schani
  • Lem is outstanding writer, unfortunately not very well known in USA. All of his major works are translated into English. I recommend his 'reviews of non-existing books': 'Imaginary Magnitude', and 'Absolute Vacuum', two rather brilliant works. One of my favorites is 'Futurological Congress' - about society more and more relying on drugs as a 'quick fix' of ANY problem. Makes amuzing (and also scary) reading.
  • I have read every Lem book I've ever been able to get my hands on (in English). Solaris is a great book, deep and thought provoking. I can't pick a favorite Lem book, because they seem to all be pieces of a larger whole. Like Philip K Dick, there are themes that are visited over and over again and explored in different ways while still being entertaining without the larger picture. The big reward for me was seeing the bigger picture and related themes as I read his books. I also agree whole-heartedly with an earlier post that his books are infinitely re-readable. This is particularly true if you've read many Lem books. I haven't found too many authors that have this kind of effect on me, so if anyone knows of any more, please let me know. (The list right now is Lem, Dick and Rudy Rucker - providing Rudy writes another dozen books :)
  • This movie is directed by A. Tarkowski, one of the best Russian movie directors. It is different from Lem's book. I believe there is Tarkowski web site somewhere, and there was a discussion 'Movie vs book'. Tarkowski made it very personal. In any case, I glad to hear this topic came up on a slashdot. This staff (both Lem and Tarkowski) is very different from american-made.

  • Really good book, when I'm old and gray I hope to spend hours delving through all the pages of Lem's work.

  • Is this the first time a book written not originally in English is reviewed here?
    __
  • To me, the film Solaris was as boring as 200.1
    __
  • Of course, I mean "2001: A Space Odissey".

    200.1 is the reduced-to-one-tenth shorter version. No so boring.
    __

  • I read a review of a book about 5 or so years ago, it was about a book by some guy who may have been a scientist, it was sci-fi, and about people living inside a sun or something... i asked someone recently about this and he lent me Snowcrash, which was ok i guess but i dont think it was that.

    Could it be David Brin's Sundiver? A good read, and the first book of Brin's excellent "Uplift" series (though I've only read the first of the two trilogies).


  • If you want to see a movie that's echoes this movie to the point of ripping it off (badly) checkout the schlockfest that is Event Horizon.

    *Very* similar in theme, if only it wasn't so stupid and confusing.

    --
  • That link doesn't appear to be working, but th is one does [eff.org].
  • slashdot readers strike me as the kind of people who would appreciate Lem's writing the most.

    if you haven't read anything by Lem, you owe it to yourself to run to the nearest library or bookstore and get a copy of one of his books.

    if you happen to like Matt Groening's Futurama, then you might want to start with Cyberiad or any of the stories involving Ijon Tichy, particularly Futurological Congress

    if you're into "more serious" type of SF; if you like Blade Runner or 2001:A Space Odissey, then go with Solaris

    if you are the kind of person who is intrigued by the idea of reviews of nonexistent (not-yet-written? ;-) ) books (i am, for one), go for Imaginary Magnitude or One Human Minute

    in any case -- read something, you won't regret it!

  • Up until recently (the fall of Soviet Communism), Russian was taught as a second language in Polish schools from the fourth grade up as a matter of course. It was a typical Soviet tactic of digesting/subverting/dilluting other cultures and making them part of their own.

    The advantage of this was that the Polish people were well equipped to tell the Russians what we thought of them (or rather "their politics" of course as the are Good People), in their own language.

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • That was anti-pledge night. They promised to immediately stop the film when they received enough pledges. Eventually they did stop the film, but no one could tell whether that was the end or not.
  • natalie portman stats with an 'n' :)
  • See, there you go.. You got me thinking.. Bad idea..

    I'll tell you why Lem cuts off the climax the way he does, at least according to my theory...

    Then Communism came to Poland after WWII, it held a huge promise of equality, prosperity, Utopia made real... Fscking Guess WHAT happened then...

    A big gaping hole of a let-down!
    Our grandparents (Lem's generation) fought and died, and helped bring in the Communists based on that promise, and got their beloved nation hung out to dry for it.

    Lem's style is just a little bit of payback.

    Same with Vonnegut, who repeatedly paints the world as mean, insensitive, discompassionate and nonesensical. His influence? Being a 19 year old soldier, fresh from 'the farm', cleaning up charred bodies in the fire-bombed ruins of Dresden.

    Lem's experience of the world certainly coloured his work. Since Communism came into Poland, the cynical expectation of a let-down has become part of the culture.

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • Yes, the infamous "driving scene" is, in my opinion, the worst scene I've ever had to sit through. It's just a transitional scene, but it goes on, and on, and on... You keep watching, just because, throughout the entire 20 minutes of mind-numbing driving, you're sure it's "going to end now."

    I saw it with my brother-in-law at a theater that made a big deal about it being "uncut." This is one case where some cutting was desperately needed.

    Lem's works are great. Solaris left me with a lingering melancholy. A strange story, both in content and form.


    ChuckleBug

  • There are different kinds of SF.

    There was a scientific SF (Azimov, Clark), a militaristic SF (like some of the Heinlein's books); magical SF (Tolkien, Merritt, Le Guin, Moorcock (sp?) and many others); "faschist" SF, where hero saves a virgin from the alien scum ;-) (Lovecraft, Berrows, Lee Bracket (sp?), some of Hubbard's stuff); humorous SF (Harrison, Sprague de Camp, Henry Kuttner).

    Lem is the master of psychological SF; I can remember Alfred Bester and some of the Henry Kuttner (I like him VERY MUCH, try to find "Fury" and short stories) and Poul Andersson stories out of English-language SF writers.

    There were two Russian brothers, Arkady and Boris Strugatzky. Their prose is one of the best examples of the psychological SF; you can find texts of their works in Russian at:
    http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/STRUGACKIE/

    Also, English translations of some of their books are available at:
    http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/TRANSLATION/

    Long live Internet! ;-)
  • Since we are at the stage of recommending the books and authors, I would just add as worth reading Kir Bulychev (spelling more or less accurate). This is an author of great humor and parody. I discovered that this guy is the best at showing the reader a flavour of the russian soul. Basically the things his characters do, can only be done by russians and the kind of culture he creates can only be based on the strange reality of Russia (from my understanding).

    Anyway, his short stories (I like them the best) are great read for people having urge for some laughs. But still I don't know whether the translations are any good if there are any (I read him in polish).
  • Wow. About a month ago, I pruned my bookshelves, and got rid of almost all of my SF.

    I kept books by these guys:

    Stanislaw Lem
    Phillip K Dick
    JG Ballard
    Karel Capek

    And there are a other well-represented authors on the shelf who dabble in sci-fi once in a while: e.g.,

    Italo Calvino
    Jorge Louis Borges
    Haruki Murikami

    Looks like my tastes are getting a little pretentious as I get older. Anyone want to point me at other "literary" SF authors?
  • I had to kind of force myself to finish 'Solaris', wheras his other books are more easily devoured. Worth the effort though. In the short story collections, he blurs the boundary between fiction, fable and poetry to great effect.

    Then there's the one full of reviews of non-existent publications by non-existent authors. Brilliant stuff!

  • Lem will stand the test of time, like a box of twinkies or the first Van Halen album, lying in wait to have the dust blown off and be rediscovered by future geeks for eons to come.

  • I adored his first few books, but all that time in the warm California sun is turning him into a marshmallow. I couldn't even get half-way through his last one. He needs to move to New York, or Kansas City or something.

    Don't even get me started on William Gibson!

  • The funny thing is that a tribute to this scene occurs in a Japanese anime movie: "Patlabor 2: The Movie" directed by Mamoru Oshii. Halfway through this movie, there is a copy of the "tunnels upon tunnels" scene but it lasts for a minute.

  • I am Hungarian so I don't know whether Lem's 'Summa Technologie' is available in English or not. My Hungarian translation is based on the 2nd edition from 1966(!) and it deals with the 'future'. It's sub title is 'Science, Civilization, Future'.

    It is not sci-fi. It is philosophy, and not a very easy reading.

    Chapter VI is about 'Phantomology'. The base question of this chapter: '... how can a reality be created that is indistinguishable from normal reality, but obeys different laws?'

    Lem then examines the possibilities and the consequencies of such a reality. How can it affect our life and future.

    As computers were not commonplace then, this 'phantomology' is not based on computers.

    Nobody seems to know about this so I thought I mention it. I think at least some credit should be given to him!

  • It may have been "Sundiver" By David Brin.
    This was the simi-prequel for his "Uplift" series.
    It involved an expidetion into the sun and the POSSIBLE discovery of plasma based life there.

    I tend to think that it probabally was it Baxter book though, because it seemed closer to what you described.
    James
  • going by all the comments posted here from people saying he's their favourite sf author. Of course he is well known in science fiction, on account of being almost the only sf writer from the East of the Iron Curtain during the "Space Age" and subsequent boom in sf's popularity. Which begs the question - why does Slashdot post this kind of sf book review? The books chosen seldom rate a mention on genuine sf sites -- or, like this review, they're "old classics" that you might not have heard of (but then, how could they be classics): as in "Wasn't Dune great?" (yeah, when I was 12)
  • Copyright for authors (as opposed to corporations) is life plus 70 years. Other posters in this thread have indicated that Mr. Lem is alive and well.
  • Sounds like David Brin's "Sundiver". It's a good book that delves in Brin's later universe where the nature of the relationship between advanced species and their younger cousins is explored. He is aware of but doesn't really go beyond the anthropomorphizing of alien races. I'm glad he followed up with "Startide Rising", a classic. Too bad he didn't end with that, though.
  • Do a grep of "Stanislaw" in /usr/share/games/fortunes/* and you'll see a dozen or so excerts of his work. Here's my fav:
    Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
    -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
  • About 7 years ago he was living in Vienna Austria.
  • Yes, Dune is great when you're 12 year old. And then it's no more. That's the difference.
  • Perhaps in this it is a reflection of the Eastern European experience of the communist regime of the period?

    This is the most common cliche when American reviewers write about East European science fiction. Does every West European sci-fi book tell about capitalism? We had a long thread about Solaris on our mailing list just recently. The biggest debate was about the ending of the Tarkovsky's film when compared to the ending in the book. To begin, surf to the first message [mail-archive.com] on the subject (in the archive of our mailing list Commie).

  • Does anyone remember the Atari game Solaris?

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