What features of this chapter are reminiscent of a mystery story? In the original Polish, Snow’s name is “Snaut.” What do the many concrete details given suggest about the state of things in the station? Snow’s strange initial reaction to Kelvin will be explained later. As he enters the station suspended above the planet’s surface, note the many instances of wear, disorder and confusion. The ship that has brought Kelvin to Solaris is called the Promethus, a name associated with civilization and enlightenment in Greek mythology, but also with condemnation to terrible torment. Whereas conventional SF poses puzzles only to solve them, Solaris concentrates on the puzzling nature of reality and the limits of science. How many instances can you find in this chapter of failures to perceive, breakdowns in communication, etc.? This is to be the main theme of the book. The novel begins as the narrator, a scientist named Kris Kelvin, is descending toward the surface of the mysterious planet Solaris. We are some distance from Lem’s original words. Keep in mind that what you are reading is a translation from a French translation which was in turn translated from the Polish original. Perhaps Soderbergh remembered the anguish of Kelvin so clearly from his reading that he didn’t realize the need to convey it more vividly to an audience that would not share the same memories. This is one case where reading the book before seeing the film may help you to experience the intended effect better.

The pared-down 2002 version by Steven Soderbergh keeps amazingly close–for a Hollywood film–to Lem’s original themes and ideas, but its emotional inertness (particularly on the part of George Clooney) prevents it from having the full effect intended. (For more information about Tarkovsky and his film, see. The great Russian experimental director Andrei Tarkovsky made an important film based on the novel which is considerably more confusing that the book. There is a deep strain of irony which runs through this work, for all its occasionally grim moments. Solaris comes closer to being a traditional SF novel than most of his works, but its main thrust is still philosophical.

Western readers not familiar with this tradition often misread his works, expecting more action-oriented, technophilic fiction. Although he read Western SF when he was young, he soon found it shallow and turned for inspiration to the long tradition of Eastern European philosophical fantasy. During the Soviet era, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem was the most celebrated SF author in the Communist world.

Solaris author stanislaw