You'll never look at alien oceans the same again!
Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem
I don't want to relegate these posts to book reviews, per say (because honestly, there's more than enough people doing that, and doing it much better than I ever could, for me to bother attempting a serious review), but more my general thoughts and opinions about the work. I will give no score, but I will indicate my suggestion to read it or not. So, let's begin, shall we?
Some time back, I was searching the interwebs (or, interwebz) for book recommendations. I've been on a heavy sci-fi kick the last few years, so that's where my searching lead me. I found a few "must read" sci-fi books lists, and this was on one of them (if I could possibly remember where I found it, I'd link to it. It was probably more than a year ago, if not longer). I read the words, "sentient ocean", and I was in. I've been wanting to find this book for a while. My wife and I, a few weekends ago, went to our favorite used books store, called, well, Used Book Superstore (here's a link: http://www.usedbooksuperstore.com/). They used to have five locations in southern NH and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, all but two of the Mass locations remain. However, they are the two best of those five anyway. They always have crazy discounts, and most books are between $1.99-$4.99. Okay, enough advertising for them.
Anyway, we went to the one in Burlington, Mass, and found nothing. We decided to try the one in Danvers, which is only about twenty minutes away. As I thought I was setting myself up for more disappointment, I saw this: (!!)
Automatically, a fairly crappy bookstore(s) visit turned into an awesome one. I snatched this up, and I couldn't wait to read it. Finally, last week, I started it. Since my memory is abnormally lousy, I usually have a tough time recalling everything I've read in a book. So I decided I'd keep notes about this book. This decision also made it easy for me to write up these book thoughts.
I'm a slow reader, but this book is short, and it goes fast. I read it in a week, which is pretty good for my slow ass. Overall, I liked this book. It was imaginative, weird, confusing (more on that in a moment), and thoughtful. It was actually much different than I thought it was going to be. It's not a bunch of scientists just shooting the shit with the ocean for 211 pages (which I thought it might be), it's far different. The sentient alien ocean, which is (most likely) the only creature living on the planet Solaris, doesn't talk in a traditional sense. It doesn't do anything in a traditional sense. It's very difficult for the human scientists to wrap their minds around this thing. It's so alien, very little is known of it. By the end of the book, both the scientists and reader gain little information about exactly how the ocean works. This is fine with me, I enjoy letting my imagination fill in the blanks. Not everything needs an explanation, and some things just don't have an explanation (at least one that can be understood by human minds).
I'm not going to summarize the book here. Even though it's a short book, my summary would be needlessly long and probably slightly incoherent, as I'm wont to pop in with innumerable parenthetical notes every other sentence. You can find better summaries elsewhere (I'm great at getting people to leave my page), but I'll briefly talk about two chapters that confused me. The first was chapter eight, entitled, "The Monsters". In it, Kelvin (the main character) reads, at length, from a book in the station's library about the ocean, and it's various forms and structures. The basic gist of the chapter is that the ocean, through long, fantastic processes, creates huge, alien structures that line the planet/ocean. They all have strange names like, "mimoid", and, "symmetriad". It was one of the longer chapters in the books, and it dragged a bit. Lots of flowery language and (for me, at least) tough-to-imagine scenarios with alien geography. I suppose you could look at that as further proof as to just how bizarre Solaris, and it's inhabitant ocean, is, but I find it just a bit annoying.
This book has lots of chapters where Kelvin reads books and disseminates info from them to the reader. The other chapter that I had a hard(ish) time following was chapter eleven, "The Thinkers". This one has Kelvin reading more books/pamphlets from the library. This time, they are about so-called, "Solarists", or people who closely follow/study the happenings of the strange planet. It goes through several theories that scientists throughout the ages have had about Solaris, and it just becomes too much. It gets boring, and it's a dry read. I found myself reading without really absorbing. Almost reading for the sake of getting through, to the next chapter.
Other than those two chapters, the rest of the book was a delight. It makes you think about life other than human life. It makes you think about how much we just don't know about literally everything, besides ourselves and human life. And even that, we aren't too sure of. I'm interested in reading more from Mr. Lem, and hopefully I have an easier time locating them than I did with Solaris.
Some time back, I was searching the interwebs (or, interwebz) for book recommendations. I've been on a heavy sci-fi kick the last few years, so that's where my searching lead me. I found a few "must read" sci-fi books lists, and this was on one of them (if I could possibly remember where I found it, I'd link to it. It was probably more than a year ago, if not longer). I read the words, "sentient ocean", and I was in. I've been wanting to find this book for a while. My wife and I, a few weekends ago, went to our favorite used books store, called, well, Used Book Superstore (here's a link: http://www.usedbooksuperstore.com/). They used to have five locations in southern NH and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, all but two of the Mass locations remain. However, they are the two best of those five anyway. They always have crazy discounts, and most books are between $1.99-$4.99. Okay, enough advertising for them.
Anyway, we went to the one in Burlington, Mass, and found nothing. We decided to try the one in Danvers, which is only about twenty minutes away. As I thought I was setting myself up for more disappointment, I saw this: (!!)
Automatically, a fairly crappy bookstore(s) visit turned into an awesome one. I snatched this up, and I couldn't wait to read it. Finally, last week, I started it. Since my memory is abnormally lousy, I usually have a tough time recalling everything I've read in a book. So I decided I'd keep notes about this book. This decision also made it easy for me to write up these book thoughts.
I'm a slow reader, but this book is short, and it goes fast. I read it in a week, which is pretty good for my slow ass. Overall, I liked this book. It was imaginative, weird, confusing (more on that in a moment), and thoughtful. It was actually much different than I thought it was going to be. It's not a bunch of scientists just shooting the shit with the ocean for 211 pages (which I thought it might be), it's far different. The sentient alien ocean, which is (most likely) the only creature living on the planet Solaris, doesn't talk in a traditional sense. It doesn't do anything in a traditional sense. It's very difficult for the human scientists to wrap their minds around this thing. It's so alien, very little is known of it. By the end of the book, both the scientists and reader gain little information about exactly how the ocean works. This is fine with me, I enjoy letting my imagination fill in the blanks. Not everything needs an explanation, and some things just don't have an explanation (at least one that can be understood by human minds).
I'm not going to summarize the book here. Even though it's a short book, my summary would be needlessly long and probably slightly incoherent, as I'm wont to pop in with innumerable parenthetical notes every other sentence. You can find better summaries elsewhere (I'm great at getting people to leave my page), but I'll briefly talk about two chapters that confused me. The first was chapter eight, entitled, "The Monsters". In it, Kelvin (the main character) reads, at length, from a book in the station's library about the ocean, and it's various forms and structures. The basic gist of the chapter is that the ocean, through long, fantastic processes, creates huge, alien structures that line the planet/ocean. They all have strange names like, "mimoid", and, "symmetriad". It was one of the longer chapters in the books, and it dragged a bit. Lots of flowery language and (for me, at least) tough-to-imagine scenarios with alien geography. I suppose you could look at that as further proof as to just how bizarre Solaris, and it's inhabitant ocean, is, but I find it just a bit annoying.
This book has lots of chapters where Kelvin reads books and disseminates info from them to the reader. The other chapter that I had a hard(ish) time following was chapter eleven, "The Thinkers". This one has Kelvin reading more books/pamphlets from the library. This time, they are about so-called, "Solarists", or people who closely follow/study the happenings of the strange planet. It goes through several theories that scientists throughout the ages have had about Solaris, and it just becomes too much. It gets boring, and it's a dry read. I found myself reading without really absorbing. Almost reading for the sake of getting through, to the next chapter.
Other than those two chapters, the rest of the book was a delight. It makes you think about life other than human life. It makes you think about how much we just don't know about literally everything, besides ourselves and human life. And even that, we aren't too sure of. I'm interested in reading more from Mr. Lem, and hopefully I have an easier time locating them than I did with Solaris.
I'd recommend this book. Just pay attention when you read some of the info-heavy chapters.
