I cranked through Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris in a 24-hour period—ah, the benefits of vacation.

I liked the book quite a bit, though it has a serious gender bias. The men all stand for the serious, rational, scientific; the women represent the wiggy, emotional, exotic. Part of Solaris, at least in my reading, is deconstructing these categories but there’s an essentialist feel to the portrayal of the sexes that makes the book feel a bit dated. If you had to boil Solaris down to a single word (not that you would ever have to, but still), that word would be “unknowability.” In short, scientists from Earth discover a planet that’s inhabited by a single lifeform in the shape of a sentient ocean, and it’s a lifeform that scientists just cannot ever come to understand. The question seems to be, “Could humans ever come to grips with something truly alien?” and the answer seems to be, “No.”

There’s also a constant questioning of reality, i.e. what’s real and what’s a dream. In that sense it’s quite a bit like Philip K. Dick’s work in that it interrogates matters of identity, perspective, the nature of truth, and other fun stuff. And maybe it’s a preconcieved bias, but the book felt very un-American to me. Lem was a Pole and wrote the book in French, so that might have something to do with it, but considering it was first published in 1961 it seems pretty far ahead of its time.

Anyway, definitely a book worth its reputation. I put requests for the film versions by Tarkovsky and Soderberg in Amy’s Netflix queue. If I’m a good boy for the rest of vacation, I might get bumped up the list.

Current Mood: Not All There |
Currently Listening To – The Beatles – “Rubber Soul”