{"id":57,"date":"2005-01-19T16:57:56","date_gmt":"2005-01-20T00:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/01\/19\/stanislaw-lems-solaris\/"},"modified":"2007-05-19T09:53:01","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:53:01","slug":"stanislaw-lems-solaris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2005\/01\/stanislaw-lems-solaris\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanislaw Lem\u2019s \u201cSolaris\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sol\u00adar\u00adis<\/a> by Stan\u00adislaw Lem is sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion more in keep\u00ading with \u201c2001: A Space Odys\u00adsey\u201d than with most oth\u00ader types of sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion. It\u2019s more con\u00adcerned with explor\u00ading bound\u00adar\u00adies of thought and ima\u00adgin\u00ada\u00adtion than with pla\u00adcing humans in con\u00adtact with ali\u00adens who speak an under\u00adstand\u00adable lan\u00adguage and act with under\u00adstand\u00adable motives. The ali\u00aden body here is an entire plan\u00adet which through\u00adout the book acts with motives the humans can only guess at.<\/p>\n

The cov\u00ader of the book (which comes from the 2002 movie of the same name) would lead one to assume the book is a romance, which would be false. There is a little of the romantic in it, espe\u00adcially towards the end, but it\u2019s not a \u201clove in the uni\u00adverse\u201d book. <\/p>\n

The book\u00adclub had mixed feel\u00adings about \u201cSol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d, at least in part because the book is unevenly writ\u00adten. The pages upon pages of descrip\u00adtion of plan\u00adet\u00adary form\u00ada\u00adtions could prob\u00adably have been edited down sub\u00adstan\u00adtially (and in fact, even those who enjoyed the book skipped over most of the geo\u00adgraph\u00adic\u00adal descrip\u00adtions), while much of the rest of the book leaves you won\u00adder\u00ading due to lack of detail (which I assume was delib\u00ader\u00adate). To make the most of \u201cSol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d you have to be pre\u00adpared to con\u00adcen\u00adtrate, so it\u2019s not really suit\u00adable for air\u00adplane fod\u00adder (unless you have good head\u00adphones to block out the noise).<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Sol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d is about the unknown, and just how lim\u00adited human ima\u00adgin\u00ada\u00adtion is in under\u00adstand\u00ading truly ali\u00aden spe\u00adcies. One mem\u00adber of the book\u00adclub related that to how hard it is to truly know anoth\u00ader per\u00adson, and there\u2019s quite a lot of that in the book as well; the \u201chero\u201d does\u00adn\u2019t know what is hap\u00adpen\u00ading to the oth\u00ader humans on the space sta\u00adtion and they have no inten\u00adtion of telling him. The secrecy is intense and adds to the atmo\u00adsphere of lack of under\u00adstand\u00ading and lack of the cap\u00adab\u00adil\u00adity to under\u00adstand what is hap\u00adpen\u00ading. The\u00ador\u00adies abound as to the nature of the ali\u00aden life\u00adform, but none quite seem to fit. If you\u2019re feel\u00ading in a philo\u00adsoph\u00adic\u00adal mood, or look\u00ading for a spring\u00adboard to think about what it means to be human or even alive, you could do worse than read \u201cSol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion writ\u00adten some time ago always runs into some prob\u00adlems where the described future and the real present col\u00adlide. The sec\u00adtions where the hero is read\u00ading ref\u00ader\u00adence books (yes, real bound books) on the space sta\u00adtion, and com\u00adplains about how they did\u00adn\u2019t have room for all the import\u00adant books, is notice\u00adable to today\u2019s read\u00ader with exper\u00adi\u00adence of effect\u00adively infin\u00adite elec\u00adtron\u00adic stor\u00adage space. And to me the com\u00adplete lack of women as explorers in the giv\u00aden his\u00adtory of the plan\u00adet Sol\u00adar\u00adis, and the equally com\u00adplete lack of women sci\u00adent\u00adists or research\u00aders, dates the book even more. One of the book\u00adclub mem\u00adbers com\u00admen\u00adted that these two factors togeth\u00ader prove the author\u2019s point, that many things are unima\u00adgin\u00adable. Even if they become com\u00admon\u00adplace 30 years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A brief book\u00adclub review of Stan\u00adislaw Lem\u2019s \u201cSol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d. It\u2019s worth read\u00ading but you need to be in the mood for deep philo\u00adsoph\u00adic\u00adal sci\u00adence fic\u00adtion \u2014 this book is not air\u00adplane fod\u00adder at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}