Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

I will be joining you for this one, hopefully starting next week.

Ewa - I'm always fascinated by how books can be changed and appear so differently in different translations. Unfortunately I can't speak, let alone read another language so I'm in awe of others who can do this! Thank you :)

Glad to have you with us Georgina on this read!

It is special that we have Member Ewa_ from Poland and was willing to help us with this special project of ours thrown her way!
We are grateful for sure!!

I'm so delighted that you find my work so enlightening and helpful. I thought today about my personal feelings toward both translations, and I like the second. During the whole original book, I was in the head of the main hero. I was afraid, lost, and scared when he was. So, I think the second was more descriptive, which influenced the book reception in a way I had expected.

Lesle wrote: "Glad to have you with us Georgina on this read!

It is special that we have Member Ewa_ from Poland and was willing to help us with this special project of ours thrown her way!
We are grateful for ..."

It was my pleasure! :) I wouldn't think about it without you!

Ewa_ wrote: "I'm so delighted that you find my work so enlightening and helpful. I thought today about my personal feelings toward both translations, and I like the second. During the whole original book, I was..."

I will value your thoughts as I read :)

Lesle wrote: "Ewa_ wrote: "I'm so delighted that you find my work so enlightening and helpful. I thought today about my personal feelings toward both translations, and I like the second. During the whole origina..."

I'm waiting with great curiosity about your thoughts after reading it!

I felt like Lem was giving us a severe criticism of human behavior. We go off trying to understand an alien world without having understood ourselves first. Maybe this ocean is forcing those characters to know themselves. How could we communicate with an alien mind before understanding our own? I say a little more about this in my review, but basically it seems like the humans in this story are paying the price for humanity's hubris.

The fantasy part with the past girlfriend Rheya is hard for me...not sure about this read

Kris is having a chat with the ocean. His being/girlfriend is gone now. He decides to stay.

I read the Kilmartin/Cox translation. I don't know what I was missing but it was perfectly readable. There was a lot of imaginary science some people would find tedious but I don't mind that.

Armin wrote: "We are used to see aliens in popular culture as similar entities to humans. So, who's to say that they should have physical bodies like humans, and why can't they exist in different forms, shapes, and communicate on different levels?"
I love some nonhuman aliens.
Interestingly, I think I read about a theory similar to this. That before actual cells evolved the ocean was a sort of "prebiological" soup.

Did anybody else think (view spoiler)[he was going to jump into the ocean in the end? (hide spoiler)]

I was thinking that too.

Book Nerd wrote: "Did anybody else think [he was going to jump into the ocean in the end? "
Yes, actually I was asking myself the same thing.

I did as well Book Nerd!

This is my year to discard most books I am not going to like much so after the first chapter or so I ditched it. This is another book I'd have liked as a teenager, but am not interested in now. It's one of those books that makes me feel like btdt--not sure if I read it as a teen or if it just reminds me of something else. I have forgotten most of the books I read growing up.

I'm just over half way through, reading a different translation from my first read of it. I'm getting a lot more out of this book the second time around.

I've just finished the book-it was a fascinating read.
I can't imagine ever living on a space station, at least this one. It seemed to be bleak and dirty and depressing.

Ewa_ wrote: "I'm waiting with great curiosity about your thoughts after reading it!..."

I had to put some thought into this Ewa_
This is not a genre I read.

I felt as if Lem was leaning more towards a scientific approach than a Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Some of the areas I had to read several times and still went over my head. He has an extremely inventive mind. If this was my type of read I think I would give it 5 stars. Just out of respect for the man and what he was trying to accomplish. It did have me puzzling over the ocean having a being like existence. I can actually sense that as being a possibility.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Lesle wrote: "Even his best-known novel, Solaris, is available in US bookstores only as an English translation of a French abridgement of the Polish original...."

This information makes me feel better about having such a hard time figuring out what Lem was doing thematically. I came to some conclusions in my review but I wasn't convinced I really understood. I'm telling myself that if I had access to the entire work, instead of an abridgement, I would have seen more signals from Lem and felt more sure about his philosophical thrust. Notwithstanding this, a very stimulating read. And the Russian film version is just a piece of art, even though I couldn't sit through the whole thing in one go because of its length.

John_Dishwasher wrote: makes me feel better about having such a hard time figuring out what Lem was doing thematically...."

I am not sure if Ewa_ has an opinion on this.

My thought was he was trying to state there is much more to our mind (and what it is capable) than we are aware of.

Lesle wrote: "Ewa_ wrote: "I'm waiting with great curiosity about your thoughts after reading it!..."

I had to put some thought into this Ewa_
This is not a genre I read.

I felt as if Lem was leaning more towa..."

Thank you for sharing! I'm glad that you read it :)

I understand that it's not your genre. As I've said, I had to come back to it after a few years to appreciate the idea of the book. I needed to read it a few times. I was tired and amazed by it.
I also thought that he would jump into the ocean :)
I like the feeling during the reading when he is scared and unsure of what happens around him. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I like it. It shows that there are things greater than us that we don't know or understand. Like people in "Interstellar" where it was beyond human understanding.

I will have to remember that Ewa_ too. Maybe come back to it again I might just have a different experience.

Interesting read. I read the Kilmartin/Cox version and from the earlier comparisons, I have to believe it was at least somewhat clunkier due to the dual translations, but I won't be finding out personally. I really enjoyed the ocean as a sentient creature/structure with the ability to reproduce copies of memories or subconscious thoughts. That is a crazy, scary idea.

While I enjoy the sci fi genre, his descriptions of various scientific events or theories were either obscure or made up, but didn't seem to matter in the story, so I eventually started tuning them out. So many words describing various shapes/activities the "ocean" made, most of which had little bearing later on in the story.

I was also frustrated by the time inconsistencies in the first portion of the book. On arriving at the station, within the "hour" (eventually hour and a half) for him to return to Snow, he accomplished so many activities, it just rang false to me. Again, I wonder if this is partly caused by translation errors.

Did anyone read Sphere by Michael Crichton? It's been decades, but this reminded me of that since that also had a psychotherapist as the MC. I wondered why Kris didn't seem to have better control over his own feelings/ reactions given his occupation.

Liane
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this one.

I still am in a wondering stage.

Liane wrote: "Did anyone read Sphere by Michael Crichton? It's been decades, but this reminded me of that since that also had a psychotherapist as the MC. I wondered why Kris didn't seem to have better control over his own feelings/ reactions given his occupation."
I reread Sphere recently and I definitely saw a lot of similarities. As well as to a lot of other sci-fi I've read. This book was obviously influential.
I guess psychologists are as crazy as the rest of us. :)

I have had Sphere on my bookshelf for ages, I'll have to dust it off and see how I get on.
I didn't notice the time inconsistencies either, but I was reading the Johnston translation, that said, I may have just missed it.
I finished a little while ago and I really enjoyed this. I really liked the academic feel of the science parts - I am always impressed when someone can come up with the scientific processes and theories around how their imagined worlds work, it boggles my mind!

I remember enjoying Sphere but I watched the movie back when too and my memory may be merge the two what with the 20+ years since I read/saw. Still I agree that there was likely some influence by Lew on later writers.

I find it interesting that sci fi/fantasy has often been labeled youth oriented, when so many of my math/tech oriented friends (middle aged or better now!) still gravitate to it as relaxing and interesting. For my sake, I start googling when I see a named theorem I am unfamiliar with, just like I look up words I don’t know in well written classics.

Thanks for prompting this read and the discussion of translations above has been so interesting!

I still haven't read Sphere, although I've read other books by that author. It's just moved onto my to-read list, for sometime this winter.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on that, Rosemarie.

I'll let you know, Liane.

Liane wrote: "I wondered why Kris didn't seem to have better control over his own feelings/ reactions given his occupation...."

Having something like that from your past suddenly come back into your life on a faraway space station would freak out anyone, I'd say -- Maybe someone who tries to see the mind objectively most of all. :) In the movie version the actor plays it more evenly.

I finished this today. It seemed a clever idea, but the impact of the story seemed spoiled by the long explanations.

I really enjoyed this book. I like what Shannon said about we are trying to make sense of the alien. I thought Lem used some really nice descriptive language throughout which is not common in science fiction novels I have read. He also has a balance between the science and the emotional side. I found it intriguing that Harey could function so much like a human. His final discussion of the ocean is fascinating.

I think when I go to re-read this at some point it will be a much better read for me. I think his descriptions of the ocean are very interesting and could be believable.

I'm a little late to never being late but I've finally gotten around to reading Solaris despite having it recommended to me for the better part of the last 15 years or so. I'm really glad I found this group and discussion because the book has just been living in my head since I finished reading it and I just feel like I need to get some thoughts out.

Lem's book is truly beautiful in just how contemplative it is. There is a lot crammed into a relatively few pages. I truly think that the rumination on conscience and what it means to be alive as well as our flaws in understanding...Essentially everything through the lens of ourselves, humanity, is powerfully impactful.

Reading it has made me feel something I can't quite put into words, I'm not sure if it's just the sadness of an excellent book coming to an end. It's a heartbreaking story without anything akin to a villain or bad guy, there are simply people and an incomprehensible alien entity.

There's so much to speculate about the 'character' of Solaris (that is admittedly ultimately rendered moot simply by the fact that we do not and cannot understand it, certainly not until we understand the nature of our own consciousness and even that is unlikely to be enough). I don't believe Solaris was at all malicious in its intent when it created the 'guests' for the scientists aboard the station, but I also find myself wondering just what it was trying to accomplish (if anything) with that act. It's difficult for me to accept that this was an attempt by the ocean to understand humanity, simply due to the truly sad nature of not-Harey (and presumably, to a lesser or greater extent the unknown guests of the other scientists). What we were presented with wasn't some alien lifeform taking on a human shape and blending in to try and see what it means to be human or anything of the sort. not-Harey WAS human in nearly all ways and yet eventually aware that she wasn't. It was more like the ocean had created a brand new, entirely different creature, disconnected from the ocean itself but also disconnected from humanity simply by the imperfect process of creating a being from human memories. The guests weren't agents of the ocean, they weren't there to harm or punish (though this could certainly be a valid interpretation given the x-ray bombardment that triggered the appearance of the guests, however here I find myself thinking what was happening with the oversized baby the ocean had created many years prior, where it seemed in that case like there was 'active' control happening there, like a different creature's mind embedded in an entirely new body) the guests could also have been 'gifts' from the ocean, as is considered in the book.

I feel like it's all perfectly encapsulated towards the end, with the conversation between Kris and Snaut regarding the 'incompetent god'. Kris had gone from wanting to bombard the planet as punishment to essentially understanding that Solaris likely understands us as little as we do it. Through one process or another it had replicated the subjects of the traumatic memories of the scientists. Imperfectly, possibly purposelessly and maybe even entirely unintentionally. It could just as equally have been a carefully considered act as well as simply another one of the planet's unknown processes. And it did so not at all knowing the consequences of such an act. Lem has crafted this un-understandable entity perfectly, not as some cheap 'I can't be bothered to explain this' gotcha but as quite possibly the most accurate and realistic account of a first contact scenario that hasn't even happened yet.

I'm awfully sorry for rambling so much. I love this book.

I felt quite the same, @Hauntedcroak, that Solaris didn’t seem malicious (probably) in making the non-humans & that their true purpose is un-understandable to us (at this time). And I agree that the story does stay with you. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Hauntedcroak wrote: "I'm a little late to never being late but I've finally gotten around to reading Solaris despite having it recommended to me for the better part of the last 15 years or so. I'm reallyts glad I found t..."

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm so glad you had a chance to read the book with us. And I agree with your assessment of the ocean. It truly was a first contact between the humans and an utterly different entity.

And we love it when members ramble!

Hauntedcroak wrote: "the guests could also have been 'gifts' ..."

That is about how I took that too. The intent was they were given to make them happy, to give them pleasure of sorts. I did not take it in a negative way.

You made excellent points in your comments as well. That is one reason I think re-reading later will be better for me. Maybe watching one of the movies will help as well?

I definitely think watching one (or even more) of the movies could help though I've heard they're very much human-centered which I think is a funny kind of irony in a way given Lem has shown how we as a species are rather focused on ourselves even in matters of a cosmic scale. Almost as if that was lost on the people adapting the movies.

That or it was cheaper than to try and show the strange phenomena that occur on Solaris.

I agree with @John_Dishwasher that one of the themes here is our inability to be heroic. That's a great insight. We see Kris trying to read up on the study of the ocean to get a better handle on the vast amount of research that has been done. While humans had made some discoveries about it, they also had met tragedy (one group dies while exploring the ocean). The "guests" present another mystery to the ocean which they can't explain.
I also agree with @Hauntedcroak that the discussion about the 'incompetent god' leads nicely into our realization that no one really understands the ocean completely.
Interestingly, Kris finds one scientist, Muntius who says "Solaristics . . . is a substitute for religion in the space age. . . . the goal for which we are striving, is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints (150)." Religion, here, and the study of the ocean don't come to solid, scientific conclusions. Lem seems to touch on quite a few themes in this short work which offers an opportunity for reflection.

Hauntedcroak wrote: "I'm a little late to never being late but I've finally gotten around to reading Solaris despite having it recommended to me for the better part of the last 15 years or so. I'm really glad I found t..."

Yes, there is something mystic in this book. Un-understandable but at the same time seeming pregnant with meaning. Your comments are wonderful.

I know there's been comment on the movies, but I tried the Clooney version and turned it off midway. I felt it was so unfaithful that I didn't want it to impact my perspective of the book. To each their own, of course.

Liane wrote: "I know there's been comment on the movies, but I tried the Clooney version and turned it off midway. I felt it was so unfaithful that I didn't want it to impact my perspective of the book. To each ..."

The Russian one is a piece of art. But really long. It took me three sittings because I'm impatient. I found it on YouTube. Don't know why it's on there for free.

Here it is. With subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LutMH...

John_Dishwasher wrote: "The Russian one is a piece of art. But really long...."

Thank you John for the link. This film I had looked into by Andrei Tarkovsky that was at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix while there. He was not a Sci-Fi fan either so it was incredible to me that he would want to direct one. I also read that Lem was quite upset about the origianl film and disliked Tarkovsky's version.

I also read that the languid close-up shots of water and nature are pure Tarkovsky, recurring like musical motifs through his body of work, which sounds beautiful.

I'm trying to figure out the significance (or lack thereof) of the automatons in the story. They're scarcely mentioned throughout the book, initially very early on as it's an automaton that responds to Kris when he arrives on Solaris. Kris is then told that Snaut and Sartorius stored all but the 'flight control' automaton away but isn't really told why. He thinks about it very briefly later but doesn't really contemplate the purpose of it. The only other instance I can think of is towards the end where he imagines being picked up from the station aboard the Prometheus or another ship, and being greeted by multiple automatons (powered by crystals?). I think they're also mentioned once or twice briefly while Kris is reading about the history of Solaris and Solaristics but in no significant detail.

There is perhaps no greater meaning to this but I've been trying to at least figure out a purpose for storing the automatons away. My mind goes to how fiercely 'protective' both Snaut and Sartorius are of their guests. They're both also mentioned several times to be struggling against their guests although this seems more in order to contain them, as though they're dealing with rowdy children. To that end I wonder if they were maybe worried about the automatons recognizing the guests as intruders and attempting to harm them.

Alternatively it was maybe out of a different, paranoid kind of fear? Snaut was terrified of Kris when he first arrived, likely thinking Kris was another guest. It stands to reason that Snaut and Sartorius got rid of them simply for their own peace of mind, to reduce the amount of noise and hypothetical encounters they would have to deal with. Though it's funny in a way as Snaut seems to have accepted Gibarian's guest as just another fixture of the station as his reaction at Kris mentioning seeing her is one of indifference.

I'm not sure if there is much significance to this, really. It might well be that the mere mention of automatons was there simply to add another layer of futurism to this world and the act of keeping them completely out of focus and hidden was done to amplify that this story is ultimately, at its very core, about humanity. Or maybe I'm reading into it way too much?

I was wondering about the automatons myself-maybe the planet was affecting them in some way as well?

I finally got started on this one, 50 pages in. I have ~30 hrs to finish it before our book club meets to discuss it! I need to get busy. I like it so far but it’s not a quick read for me, even though it’s short.

In the Clooney movie, I don’t remember any discussion about the ocean, which seems odd. Or, it could be that I had no idea what was going on! I haven’t watched the Russian adaptation. I tried watching Tarkovsky’s Stalker movie and it was so slow and boring that we finally turned it off. I suspect that Solaris is similar.

That's odd, about the Clooney movie, since I think that the ocean is the most important character in the book.

I think the discussion of the ocean throughout the book gave it the science aspect of the fiction. I found most interesting the discussion of all the scientists and experts who had studied the ocean: it gave more support to the fact that the ocean and its effects were unusual. But I would guess Kris's exploring the library wouldn't translate well to film. I hope you enjoy the book Pam.

Pam wrote: "I tried watching Tarkovsky’s Stalker movie and it was so slow and boring that we finally turned it off."

"The Stalker" is a story from another book:
Roadside Picknick from Strugatsky brothers.

Armin wrote: "Pam wrote: "I tried watching Tarkovsky’s Stalker movie and it was so slow and boring that we finally turned it off."

"The Stalker" is a story from another book:
Roadside Picknick from Strugatsky..."

Armin - I realize that Stalker is based on a different book. Sorry, my wording wasn't clear! I was saying that I haven't seen Tarkovsky's Solaris movie but have seen Stalker, which I think is similar in its slow-paced (contemplative, perhaps) style. The Tarkovsky Solaris movie is 2:45 hrs! At my book group meeting yesterday, the group leader said you could start at the 40 minute mark to get where the book actually starts! We had a very good discussion about the book. I'm only half-way through it but have some ideas to think about as I read it.