Novel
Solaris
Stanisław Lem · 1961
Synopsis
The psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the station that has been studying the planet Solaris for decades, a planet covered by an ocean that seems endowed with rational activity. He finds it in disarray: Gibarian, his former teacher, has just taken his own life, and the two other scientists, Snaut and Sartorius, are wary and troubled. On waking, Kelvin sees Harey appear, the woman he loved, who died ten years earlier. While he tries to understand these visitors, the station comes up against a being that escapes all human science.
Context
The novel appeared in 1961. Its first French translation, by Jean-Michel Jasienko, appeared from Denoël in 1966; the English translation by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, in 1970, was made from the French, and it was not until 2011 that Bill Johnston's, made from the original, appeared. The book was adapted for Soviet television in 1968, then by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972.
Who it is for
A novel in which the narrative alternates with long, almost scientific expositions on the history of solaristics.
Prizes and reception
The best known of his novels and the most famous expression of his theme of the impossibility of communicating with an extraterrestrial intelligence.
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