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Title: Solaris
Author: Stanislaw Lem
Translators: Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox
Published: San Diego: Harvest (Harcourt, Inc.), 2002 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 204
Total Page Count: 96,411
Text Number: 277
Read Because: interested in the book having seen the 2002 film, borrowed from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
century_eyes
Review: Psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface and finds the space station in decay. He and the rest of the small crew are haunted by inexplicably real figures from their past, disrupting their work and lives and calling into question everything they think they know about the planet. Solaris is plagued by clunky delivery—and while this isn't the most important aspect of the book, it's often its most visible. Exposition comes in isolated and unrealistically delivered infodumps as Kelvin leafs through and summarizes convenient historical and scientific texts about the planet—and while the content is interesting and adds depth to the story, the delivery adds nothing and makes it all too tempting to skim these sections. The writing style is universally stunted by overly precise word choice, which rather than intensifying the language tends to make it read like technical writing. (And, as always with books translation, I don't know where to place the blame for that.) These issues make Solaris dry, distant, and somewhat inaccessible; they also stunt the emotional landscape—but thankfully not too severely, because this is an emotionally intense book and that's one of its greatest strengths. Solaris places faulted, unpleasant people in contrived and uncomfortable situations, and documents the fallout with an unflinching eye; while characterization occasionally falls through, sending emotional motivation into wild ricochet and reducing characters to caricatures, more often than not the results are painfully, uncomfortably, tellingly human. The atmosphere meanwhile is distinctly alien, and it does a beautiful job of building that contrived, high-pressure setting. In fact, whenever Solaris does get around to present time and place—and plot—it's a compelling book. It's blunt in theme, but those themes are unusual and fascinating, and so the transparent metaphysical musings are more welcome than not—and the setting, characters, and events influenced by them make for great reading.
And so this is a book with problems, but still one worth picking up. It's a work of content without style, ambitious and refreshingly unique but cramped by clunky delivery, and while it has the potential to be great it's too often simply offputting. I come away liking it—very much, actually, because I don't see this sort of book every day and I appreciate what it tries to be. It feels longer than its 200 pages, there's some brilliance here, and it's surprisingly effective when it does succeed. But I recommend it with reservation: Solaris requires forgiveness and patience (fans of hard sci-fi may perhaps take better to its dry exposition), and even at its best its discomforting content means that it's never a joyful read—but it is a worthwhile one.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Stanislaw Lem
Translators: Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox
Published: San Diego: Harvest (Harcourt, Inc.), 2002 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 204
Total Page Count: 96,411
Text Number: 277
Read Because: interested in the book having seen the 2002 film, borrowed from
century_eyesReview: Psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface and finds the space station in decay. He and the rest of the small crew are haunted by inexplicably real figures from their past, disrupting their work and lives and calling into question everything they think they know about the planet. Solaris is plagued by clunky delivery—and while this isn't the most important aspect of the book, it's often its most visible. Exposition comes in isolated and unrealistically delivered infodumps as Kelvin leafs through and summarizes convenient historical and scientific texts about the planet—and while the content is interesting and adds depth to the story, the delivery adds nothing and makes it all too tempting to skim these sections. The writing style is universally stunted by overly precise word choice, which rather than intensifying the language tends to make it read like technical writing. (And, as always with books translation, I don't know where to place the blame for that.) These issues make Solaris dry, distant, and somewhat inaccessible; they also stunt the emotional landscape—but thankfully not too severely, because this is an emotionally intense book and that's one of its greatest strengths. Solaris places faulted, unpleasant people in contrived and uncomfortable situations, and documents the fallout with an unflinching eye; while characterization occasionally falls through, sending emotional motivation into wild ricochet and reducing characters to caricatures, more often than not the results are painfully, uncomfortably, tellingly human. The atmosphere meanwhile is distinctly alien, and it does a beautiful job of building that contrived, high-pressure setting. In fact, whenever Solaris does get around to present time and place—and plot—it's a compelling book. It's blunt in theme, but those themes are unusual and fascinating, and so the transparent metaphysical musings are more welcome than not—and the setting, characters, and events influenced by them make for great reading.
And so this is a book with problems, but still one worth picking up. It's a work of content without style, ambitious and refreshingly unique but cramped by clunky delivery, and while it has the potential to be great it's too often simply offputting. I come away liking it—very much, actually, because I don't see this sort of book every day and I appreciate what it tries to be. It feels longer than its 200 pages, there's some brilliance here, and it's surprisingly effective when it does succeed. But I recommend it with reservation: Solaris requires forgiveness and patience (fans of hard sci-fi may perhaps take better to its dry exposition), and even at its best its discomforting content means that it's never a joyful read—but it is a worthwhile one.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
