STANISLAW LEM "SOLARIS"

Stanisław Lem ( 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction,philosophy and satire.

He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies.^[2] He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon claimed that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world.

His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind's place in the universe.

They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns. Multiple translated versions of his works exist.

Solaris (1961) is a Polish science fiction novel about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species.

In probing and examining the oceanic surface of the world named Solaris from a hovering research station the oblivious human scientists are, in turn, being studied by the sentient planet itself. In due course, Solaris scientifically probes for and examines the secret, guilty thoughts of the human beings who are analyzing it. Solaris has the ability to manifest their secret, guilty concerns in human form, for each scientist to personally confront, while the self-aware planet studies their responses to its psychological experiments.

Solaris is pervaded by a powerful, poetic sense of the physical remoteness of outer space. The sense of loneliness that this engenders is among Lem’s philosophic explorations of man’s anthropomorphic limitations. First published in Warsaw in 1961, the 1970 Polish-to-French-to-English translation of Solaris is the best-known of Lem's English-translated works.

Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial (alien) life on a far-distant planet. Solaris, with whom Terran scientists are attempting communication, is is almost completely covered with an ocean that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism.

Stills from Solaris (1972 film), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Kris Kelvin arrives aboard the scientific research station hovering (via anti-gravity generators) near the oceanic surface of the planet Solaris. The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades, a scientific discipline known as Solaristics, which over the years has degenerated to simply observe and record the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the ocean. They've thus far achieved only the formal classification of the phenomena with an elaborate nomenclature — yet do not understand what such activities really mean in a strictly scientific sense. Shortly before psychologist Kelvin's arrival, the crew has exposed the ocean to a more aggressive experimentation with a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Their experimentation give unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans.

The ocean's response to their aggression exposes the deeper, hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists — whilst revealing nothing of the ocean’s nature itself. To the extent that the ocean’s actions can be understood, the ocean then seems to test the minds of the scientists by confronting them with their most painful and repressed thoughts and memories. It does this via the materialization of physical human simulacra; Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide. The torments of the other researchers are alluded to and sound even worse than Kelvin’s personal purgatory.

The ocean’s intelligence experiences and expresses physical phenomena in ways difficult for their limited earth science to explain, emotionally upsetting the scientists and psychologically putting them on tilt. The alien (extraterrestrial) mind of Solaris is so greatly different from the human mind of (objective) consciousness that attempts at inter-species communications are a dismal failure.

Lem gained international fame for The Cyberiad, a series of humorous short stories from a mechanical universe inhabited by robots (who had occasional contacts with biological "slimies"), first published in English in 1974. His best-known novels include Solaris (1961), His Master's Voice (Głos pana, 1968), and the late Fiasco (Fiasko, 1987), expressing most strongly his major theme of the futility of mankind's attempts to comprehend the truly alien. Solaris was made into a film in 1972 by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972;^[7] in 2002, Steven Soderbergh directed a Hollywood remake starring George Clooney.

Solaris has been filmed three times:

Solaris (1968 TV film), directed by Boris Nirenburg.
Solaris (1972 film), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film loosely follows the novel’s plot, emphasizing the human relationships instead of Lem’s astrobiology theories — especially Kelvin’s Earth life, before his space travel to the planet. The film won the Grand Prix at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.
Solaris (2002 film), directed by Steven Soderbergh, produced by James Cameron, emphasizing the relationship between Kelvin and his dead wife — again excluding Lem’s scientific and philosophic themes.

Solaris (2002 film), directed by Steven Soderbergh, produced by James Cameron.

Chris Kelvin is played by George Clooney, and Rheya by Natascha McElhone. Borrowing heavily from the Tarkovsky film, this version of Solaris is a meditative psychodrama set almost entirely on a space station, adding flashbacks to the previous experiences of its main characters on Earth. A psychologist still dealing with the loss of his wife, Chris Kelvin receives a disturbing video message from a friend and scientist, Gibarian, asking for his help. He agrees to go on a mission to Solaris as a last attempt to recover the crew. Arriving at the space station, he quickly learns that members of the crew have died (or even disappeared) under mysterious circumstances with the only two surviving members reluctant to explain the cause. After shockingly encountering his dead wife alive again, Chris discovers that Solaris has been creating physical replications of people familiar to each crew member. Chris struggles with the questions of Solaris' motivation, his beliefs and memories, and reconciling what was lost with an opportunity for a second chance.