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challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
El hecho de que el ser humano tiende a antropomorfizar a seres extraterrestres definitivamente es un tema arraigado a la psique, tenemos aliens, monstruos, todos a nuestra escala, con nuestros sentimientos, mentalidad, características exactamente iguales a las de nosotros...
Este libro me hizo crear una concepción nueva de lo pequeños que somos los seres humanos, de lo egocéntricos que somos, ni siquiera nos conocemos a nosotros mismos y tratamos de investigar a otros seres, otros mundos.
El desarrollo es extremadamente exhaustivo, el autor definitivamente armó un sistema científico sobre el planeta Solaris que iba sobre mis capacidades mentales (I'm just a girl 🥹), pero eso pudo asentar mucho más el tema, explicaciones humanas a realidades fuera de nuestro control, más de cien años de libros sobre el planeta con teorías nada que ver.
Hay mucho que hablar sobre este libro! Eso me encantó, me hizo pensar sobre filosofía, sobre psicología y sobre mi historia como ser humano. Lo recomiendo si te gusta la ciencia ficción.
Este libro me hizo crear una concepción nueva de lo pequeños que somos los seres humanos, de lo egocéntricos que somos, ni siquiera nos conocemos a nosotros mismos y tratamos de investigar a otros seres, otros mundos.
El desarrollo es extremadamente exhaustivo, el autor definitivamente armó un sistema científico sobre el planeta Solaris que iba sobre mis capacidades mentales (I'm just a girl 🥹), pero eso pudo asentar mucho más el tema, explicaciones humanas a realidades fuera de nuestro control, más de cien años de libros sobre el planeta con teorías nada que ver.
Hay mucho que hablar sobre este libro! Eso me encantó, me hizo pensar sobre filosofía, sobre psicología y sobre mi historia como ser humano. Lo recomiendo si te gusta la ciencia ficción.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood
Moderate: Sexism
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Solaris, despite being centered around a mysterious alien "ocean," is about the human condition and insatiable desire to make contact with the unknown. Humans are defined by a need to make sense of the universe, and in the novel, the characters (and much of the supplementary, worldbuilding science sections) are driven by this very need. Half of the book revolves around the history of the ocean and humanity, which got very boring and dry after a while. I think the purpose of including these sections was to emphasize that humans have been trying to understand this alien world for a very long time through humanity's understanding of science, but the execution got lost in the weeds. I appreciate that the mystery is never solved and we (and the protagonist, Kelvin) are left dissatisfied with the scientific findings. We never truly understand what is going or what the "ocean" is, and the novel asks us to find peace with this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt
Moderate: Death, Blood
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Loss never truly heals, we carry it with us always.
This book is conceptually-driven, which is great for sci-fi and those sections really worked for me (What does it mean to make first contact with a being so vastly different from yourself that there is no consensus on whether it is alive much less has a conciousness? How would you even know?), but it is also inextricably anchored in human emotion. Maybe the characters and relationships are kept a bit blank purposefully so that you can overlay your own experiences, but I felt distanced instead. The emotional segments didn't feel fully impactful because I didn't feel like I knew enough of the history between Kelvin and Hareyor the development between Kelvin and Solaris!Harey. Ultimately I felt the pain, isolation, melancholy, and regret... but faintly. I wanted to feel it more.
Every character is stuck inside their own heads, haunted by their own traumas, an impermeable wall between themselves and others that keeps them from healing, echoed by their isolation inside Solaris station... and ultimately echoing my reading experience being unable to connect with Kelvin. Fuck, is it genius after all?
Also, this feels nit-picky of me, because the passages were so brief when compared to the whole book, but the way women's bodies were described made me uncomfortable (racially stereotyped and objectifying). It felt unnecessary... the descriptions weren't sensual (not like the beautiful description of peach fuzz on a cheek) nor even sexual, just lurid in an otherwise quite chaste novel. I couldn’t see what those two passages--one describing Gibarian's memory woman's breasts and buttocks, the other describing Harey's nipple seen through her dress-- contributed and felt the book would have been the same had they been left out.
Besides that, I loved the gorgeous visuals. Lem creates an alien landscape of colour and shape where the mind inescapably finds familiarity in the strange. Before reading I found the cover art with the ocean that mimics bedsheets rather strange, but it clicks for me now.
Curious to know how exactly this translation differs from the one translated from the french version, but I didn't love it enough that I want to read both.
Excited to watch the movie (movies? at least the Tarkovsky) now.
This book is conceptually-driven, which is great for sci-fi and those sections really worked for me (What does it mean to make first contact with a being so vastly different from yourself that there is no consensus on whether it is alive much less has a conciousness? How would you even know?), but it is also inextricably anchored in human emotion. Maybe the characters and relationships are kept a bit blank purposefully so that you can overlay your own experiences, but I felt distanced instead. The emotional segments didn't feel fully impactful because I didn't feel like I knew enough of the history between Kelvin and Harey
Every character is stuck inside their own heads, haunted by their own traumas, an impermeable wall between themselves and others that keeps them from healing, echoed by their isolation inside Solaris station... and ultimately echoing my reading experience being unable to connect with Kelvin. Fuck, is it genius after all?
Also, this feels nit-picky of me, because the passages were so brief when compared to the whole book, but the way women's bodies were described made me uncomfortable (racially stereotyped and objectifying). It felt unnecessary... the descriptions weren't sensual (not like the beautiful description of peach fuzz on a cheek) nor even sexual, just lurid in an otherwise quite chaste novel. I couldn’t see what those two passages
Besides that, I loved the gorgeous visuals. Lem creates an alien landscape of colour and shape where the mind inescapably finds familiarity in the strange. Before reading I found the cover art with the ocean that mimics bedsheets rather strange, but it clicks for me now.
Curious to know how exactly this translation differs from the one translated from the french version, but I didn't love it enough that I want to read both.
Excited to watch the movie (movies? at least the Tarkovsky) now.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief
Minor: Racism, Blood, Fire/Fire injury
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I really enjoyed Solaris. This is the definitive translation (Bill Johnston’s) and the audiobook was excellently done, couldn’t recommend enough.
The novel starts as a psychological thriller, but gets slower over the course of the story, which I enjoyed. I felt like I had more time to sit with the characters and explore time (or the pace of the novel) as an interesting element.
The end is kind of strange and not immediately satisfying, but I think it is appropriate and interesting nonetheless.
This is definitely “hard” sci-fi — there’s a chapter that spent about an hour describing the ocean of Solaris and discoveries about it, which I found cool, but if you want something that’s more of a melodrama, this isn’t exactly it. That’s definitely and element, but I would say that it is balanced with a lot of world building (in terms of the “science” of the world).
I had to read this book for a class, so I’m a little burned out on it, but I would definitely recommend, especially if you’ve seen the Tarkovsky film — interesting to compare them (lots of differences).
The novel starts as a psychological thriller, but gets slower over the course of the story, which I enjoyed. I felt like I had more time to sit with the characters and explore time (or the pace of the novel) as an interesting element.
The end is kind of strange and not immediately satisfying, but I think it is appropriate and interesting nonetheless.
This is definitely “hard” sci-fi — there’s a chapter that spent about an hour describing the ocean of Solaris and discoveries about it, which I found cool, but if you want something that’s more of a melodrama, this isn’t exactly it. That’s definitely and element, but I would say that it is balanced with a lot of world building (in terms of the “science” of the world).
I had to read this book for a class, so I’m a little burned out on it, but I would definitely recommend, especially if you’ve seen the Tarkovsky film — interesting to compare them (lots of differences).
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Blood
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
‘We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.‘
I thought this was just incredible. Although it’s short, I had immense difficulty getting through it because I found the world building and dense theoretical passages quite tricky to get through. The characters and the relationships that they form with each other were far more interesting. I thought a lot of Kelvin’s feelings towards Rheya were beautifully articulated. As a science fiction novel, I find it so compelling that Solaris chooses to explore grief, religion and academia in much profound depth than many of the scientific and speculative concepts it uses.
I definitely had some issues with it - the surprise anti-black racism relatively early in the novel caught me off guard. Although the racist description of the woman is a product of the time and context it was written in, I guess it disappointed me because in many other aspects the novel felt relatively contemporary. Some of the description felt as though it could have been written yesterday, and then the social attitudes of the author jumped out. Maybe that is a product of Kilmartin and Cox’s excellent translation - they make the narrative voice feel very contemporary. I don’t know. Just something that was on my mind.
In addition, I found it to be a little deliberately unsatisfying at times. I think this is because it’s primarily a novel that is about asking questions and searching for reasons for why things happen, and the conclusion of the novel - to me at least - seemed to be that there aren’t any, or the reasons that do exist are too hard for us to properly understand. This was sort of difficult to grapple with this week as I finished the book, because I have been struggling with some difficult news that has left me asking lots of questions, but I do think it was also therefore a useful and calming read. Whatever we’re going through, it’s out of our hands.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Racism, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Murder, Alcohol