Polaris starts with a tense and mysterious situation but gradually slows to a dismal crawl. The book reflects on how humankind deals with the inexplicable, and leaves much unexplained (even the more trivial mysteries are never resolved). The main character is stubborn, short tempered, and brooding, which reduced my enjoyment as well. Thankfully, the book is short, so I perservered to the end, and I actually quite enjoyed the final chapter.

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. 

Here's the thing about Solaris: Lem is describing the biology, behaviors, and visuals of the ocean that wouldn't be out of place on the cover of a space themed dark ambient album, I'm having fun. He's describing the arcane, involved, and controversial academic scene surrounding it, I'm still having fun. We pivot to interpersonal drama and having to listen to the same irritating academic dudes ramble on or argue impotently or say racial slurs, I'm not having fun anymore.

If you're a pervert like me who's really into speculative biology and fun sci fi worldbuilding, there are a number of parts in this book that are a joy to imagine and roll over in your brain. There are concepts posited that are fascinating to consider, and once again, its striking imagery alone makes it clear for me why it is considered a classic.

Personally, I found the protagonist incredibly grating and annoying, along with pretty much every single other character (excluding the ocean), and there was just something about the pacing that I could not stand. I was having fun about half the time reading this, and the other half felt like pulling teeth. It gets a bonus for the brief moments of effective suspense and horror, along with the occasionally quite charming, deeply dated elements that in the year 2023 very much read as "retrofuturism".

This was such a subtle and mature read. For some reason, it wasn't as gripping as I expected (given that everything about this story is right up my alley), but the concepts were deft and the writing was beautiful. I still can't quite place why this isn't a full 5/5 stars (perhaps it is, with a little more mental digestion), but suffice to say that this story is technically perfect. 

Overall a tragic and mesmerizing account of the undescribeable, where the most intimate chambers of the characters' interior lives are laid bear and blur with something that is completely 'other'. Also one of the best descriptions of the truly Alien that I have encountered: the existence of a reasoning being whose motivations are forever beyond human understanding.

"So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox.."

"The beat of our hearts combines, and all at once, out of the surrounding void where nothing exists or can exist, steals a presence of indefinable, unimaginable cruelty. The caress that created us and which wrapped us in a golden cloak becomes the crawling of innumerable fingers. Our white, naked bodies dissolve into a swarm of black creeping things, and I am – we are – a mass of glutinous coiling worms, endless, and in that infinity, no, I am infinite, and I howl soundlessly, begging for death and for an end. But simultaneously I am dispersed in all directions, and my grief expands in a suffering more acute than any waking state, a pervasive, scattered pain piercing the distant blacks and reds, hard as rock and ever-increasing, a mountain of grief visible in the dazzling light of another world." 

I started listening to this audiobook alongside the paperback that I was given by my brother about 20 years ago. The translation is different and it was kind of fun until I gave up because my eyes were causing me issues (the reason I predominantly listen to Audiobooks). Each  paragraph meant basically the same thing, but the wording was slightly different, which felt a bit like reading subtitles when they don't quite match how I interpret the original language. Fun.. but a bit exhausting.

Out in the vastness of space there is most likely intelligent life, and this is the story of what happens when humans encounter alien life so vast and different to our own that communicating with it, or even being noticed by it, becomes a spur for entirely new fields of science and philosophy. The premise of the plot is that instead of life developing, pluralising, and leaving the ocean, it has stayed in the ocean and become it, organising into what appears to act like one ever-seething organism. This organism extrudes matter from itself in forms that scientists have been observing for decades, trying to make sense of the ever changing landscape.

When Kris Kelvin lands on Solaris, only to be told that his once mentor has recently died, he has to figure out what is going on. When he runs into another person, who should not be there, walking in the corridor, he starts to understand the warning of his fellow who begged him not to engage with any strangers.

This story is at times spooky, horrific and maddening, and lumbers at a frustrating pace through hypotheses and tests, as the scientists try to figure out the shapes and human forms that the planet is making for them, that (in Bradbury-esque fashion) seem to be patterned on their own deepest memories. Together they try to overcome their own stress and cabin-fever, and  strive to understand the nature of, and perhaps communicate with, the life-form of the planet.

In the discussion of morality, spirituality and godforms, it doesn't escape me that they speak of humans being limited by our animal perceptions of the environment around us, so that perhaps the only type of life we can truly communicate with has to be human-like.  Is the life on Solaris trying to interact with humans by sending humanlike synthetic things, or are we again in a trap of anthropomorphising and presuming that our own mythologies are fact?..