This enigmatic classic of science fiction is a dark psychological drama with a very distinctive take on contact with extraterrestrial life.
Aliens as depicted in popular fiction and cinema tend to fall into two categories: monsters that may pose an existential threat to the humans, or a mirror of the humanity itself, with a few more facial bumps, different biology and social structures, yet ultimately relatable and recognisable. But what if we came across a life form so alien and incomprehensible that it could never be understood through the human lens?
Planet Solaris has a population of one, a vast “ocean” that covers its entire surface and is powerful enough to stabilise the planet as it orbits two suns. You’d normally expect a story of alien contact to be about the discovery of the planet, but its protagonist, a psychologist named Kelvin, was born a few decades after the fact. In the meantime, Solaris spawned a frenzy of scientific research and speculation, including incidents so outlandish they were dismissed as mere hallucinations. None of these took the humanity any closer to uncovering the nature of the living ocean, how it perceives humans and whether it registers them in any meaningful way at all.
The novel establishes an unsettling, disorienting tone right away, throwing the reader into the story without any preamble. Kelvin arrives at the research station hovering above the oceanic surface, to find one crew member dead and two more in a clearly disturbed state of mind, suspicious and withdrawn. He finds out that, shortly before his arrival, the crew subjected the ocean to an intense and unauthorised bombardment with X-rays. The results of the experiment were unexpected and deeply traumatising: everyone onboard became haunted by a visitor created by the ocean from their most repressed and painful memories.
Kelvin receives a visitor of his own, his wife Rheya who had committed suicide years ago after a lovers’ quarrel. His initial shock and revulsion have as much to do with guilt as Rheya’s non-human nature (I liked the small but creepy details such as the lack of buttons on her dress). Kelvin’s feelings shift as the novel progresses and he comes to see this artificial Rheya as a being in her own right, starting off as a mere amalgamation of his memories but then growing more self-aware. I have to say that Lem is better at handling science than romantic elements, but Rheya is still a fascinating and tragic creation, in a long line of sci-fi creations exploring the boundary between human and non-human.
Kelvin’s personal dilemma took more of a central spot in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation, and probably even more so in the American version, but the mysterious ocean of Solaris is the undisputed focus here. All throughout the book, Kelvin returns to the vast ocean of scientific literature written about Solaris, detailing the long history of research and the ocean’s unique, shifting topography. It’s perhaps not the most elegant way of providing exposition and world-building, and some of these chapters are admittedly very dry and dense. Still, I feel that the novel wouldn’t have the same impact without them, and many of its descriptive passages can’t help but capture the imagination (I’d love to watch a Solaris documentary along the lines of nature documentaries they play at the IMAX). There’s also a hint of mocking humour in the book’s portrayal of the scientific community that comes off as not too different to the organised religion with its own warring sects.
The book has a terrific sense of atmosphere, something like a fever dream or an eerie nightmare that’s impossible to wake up from, with nothing to anchor the reader back in the normality. In the end, the ocean remains as frustratingly distant and alien as ever, the meaning behind its actions beyond the human understanding. Lem’s mix of the personal and the scholarly is not always an easy going, but this story about the limited nature of humanity, its inability to step outside of human perspective, its hunger for knowledge and its refusal to give up made for an engrossing read.
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