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fairymodmother 's review for:
Solaris
by Stanisław Lem
This is a strange review because I have to give it 3 stars as an average, even though my thoughts are that a lot of this is 5 stars and slightly more of it is like 1.5 stars. Please note my review is for the English translation from the 1970s French version, which is considered to be one of the worst translations. I advise finding the modern English translation if that's your native language, or attempting to find it in Polish if you're able--from what others have said the original (Polish) version is much stronger.
CONTENT WARNING:
Things to love:
-First contact. The story and musing around what first contact will likely be like, given that it's highly improbable we'll find another sapient species that looks like something we'd recognize as sapient, is fascinating.
-Why people suck. A bit misanthropic, but there's a pretty cutting and powerful look at why humans are so bad at being good neighbors in our solar neighborhood.
-Cool science. Given that this was published in 1961, the ideas about what the future would look like are...actually pretty darn close. 8 years before a man walked on the moon, this guy had space stations. I also loved the thoughts around a planet with two suns. (Moons? Two light sources anyways).
-Creepy. The first few chapters are really great. Soooo scary. A very adult "worst fear."
The parts that sucked all the marrow from those great bones:
-The made up academia. Perhaps this was like in "City of Dreaming Books" where it was very clever if you were following Polish science journals in the 50s and 60s, but I wasn't, so bits of really cool worldbuilding and atmosphere were just entirely swamped by what read to my eye as pedantry.
-The emotional blankness. I almost entirely blame the translation on this, but that's all I can do. We never have "reactions" only "actions." Someone will yell, someone else will yell "why! don't say that!" and this is the only insight we have into the characters being upset. We can read in what it would be like to be alive in a situation like this, but the feelings we are fed are themselves so ambivalent that I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to feel longing or horror or disgust or absolute despair. I could make a case for any, but trying to look for those bits of humanity really sucked the human element out of the book.
-The sudden end. Again I'm almost certain that something is lost in translation, but I didn't understand the significance of the experiment, and I wasn't ready for us to be discussing loss at long last.
A very uneven read with enough meat that I'm glad to have read it, but I'm not sure I'd ever recommend this except to those with a specific interest. 2.5 rounded up.
CONTENT WARNING:
Spoiler
racism, suicide, loss of a loved one, self harm, mild goreThings to love:
-First contact. The story and musing around what first contact will likely be like, given that it's highly improbable we'll find another sapient species that looks like something we'd recognize as sapient, is fascinating.
-Why people suck. A bit misanthropic, but there's a pretty cutting and powerful look at why humans are so bad at being good neighbors in our solar neighborhood.
-Cool science. Given that this was published in 1961, the ideas about what the future would look like are...actually pretty darn close. 8 years before a man walked on the moon, this guy had space stations. I also loved the thoughts around a planet with two suns. (Moons? Two light sources anyways).
-Creepy. The first few chapters are really great. Soooo scary. A very adult "worst fear."
The parts that sucked all the marrow from those great bones:
-The made up academia. Perhaps this was like in "City of Dreaming Books" where it was very clever if you were following Polish science journals in the 50s and 60s, but I wasn't, so bits of really cool worldbuilding and atmosphere were just entirely swamped by what read to my eye as pedantry.
-The emotional blankness. I almost entirely blame the translation on this, but that's all I can do. We never have "reactions" only "actions." Someone will yell, someone else will yell "why! don't say that!" and this is the only insight we have into the characters being upset. We can read in what it would be like to be alive in a situation like this, but the feelings we are fed are themselves so ambivalent that I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to feel longing or horror or disgust or absolute despair. I could make a case for any, but trying to look for those bits of humanity really sucked the human element out of the book.
-The sudden end. Again I'm almost certain that something is lost in translation, but I didn't understand the significance of the experiment, and I wasn't ready for us to be discussing loss at long last.
A very uneven read with enough meat that I'm glad to have read it, but I'm not sure I'd ever recommend this except to those with a specific interest. 2.5 rounded up.