Solaris

The Definitive Edition

By: Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston - translator

Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

At last, one of the world’s greatest works of science fiction is available - just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation - complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Lem’s provocative novel comes alive for a new generation.

In Solaris, Kris Kelvin arrives on an orbiting research station to study the remarkable ocean that covers the planet’s surface. But his fellow scientists appear to be losing their grip on reality, plagued by physical manifestations of their repressed memories. When Kelvin’s long-dead wife suddenly reappears, he is forced to confront the pain of his past - while living a future that never was. Can Kelvin unlock the mystery of Solaris? Does he even want to?

©1961 Stanislaw Lem. Translation © 2011 by Barbara and Tomasz Lem (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Few are [Lem's] peers in poetic expression, in word play, and in imaginative and sophisticated sympathy." (Kurt Vonnegut)

"[Lem was] a giant of mid-20th-century science fiction, in a league with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick." ( The New York Times)
"Juliani transmits Kelvin’s awe at Solaris’s red and blue dawns and makes his confusion palpable when he awakens one morning to find his long-dead wife seated across the room. Juliani’s performance is top-notch." ( AudioFile)

Solid Classic Science Fiction

Solaris was a different reading experience for me as I watched both movies before reading the book. The book, 1972 film, and 2002 film are about a small group of scientists studying Solaris while living on a space station above the planet. There are primarily only four characters in the book: Dr. Kelvin, who just arrived from Earth to study the Planet; two scientists already aboard the station, Snaut and Sartorius; and Harey, Kelvin’s former girlfriend.

I know that Stanislaw Lem was not a fan of the Steven Soderbergh movie, which I thought was fantastic, but not entirely true to Lem’s book. I also really liked Tarkovsky’s Russian film, which is very true to the book. Lem’s book is primarily about the difficulty of communication between humans and an alien species, which is a sentient ocean on the planet Solaris. The characters are focused on communicating with the planet and understanding its mechanisms and motives. Soderbergh’s movie is more about human relationships, particularly about love and loss, with the intelligent ocean on Solaris playing with the minds of the humans aboard the station. Another thing I enjoyed about the Soderbergh movie is the soundtrack. Ambient and eerie, it captures the tone of the story perfectly and sounds like an extended B-side of Radiohead’s song "Kid A".

But this is supposed to be a book review. Overall, I liked this book. The narration was excellent, he gave each of the four characters their own distinct voice and delivery, and there was never any question who was talking. The story was slow-paced, but quite a mind bender. The parts that dragged for me were when Lem wrote extensively about the the history of human observation of the planet. He had our hero, Kris Kelvin, sit down with some scientific history books and we read along with Kris about historical observations and strange goings-on in Solaris’ ocean below. After a while my brain would wander, only to be brought back to the station when Kelvin finally put the books down.

I also had one nit-pick. Lem wrote that reports from Solaris were beamed to earth through the constellation Orion. Um, actually constellations are not really stars grouped together, they just appear that way two-dimensionally from earth. The stars in Orion are actually not anywhere near each other. Orion isn’t a location in space and, furthermore, it wouldn’t look like “Orion” from a planet in another solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, like Solaris was. Lem could’ve used the Orion Nebula or one of the stars like Rigel or Betelgeuse if he wanted to reference a specific celestial location recognizable to his human readers.

Overall, I enjoyed this science fiction classic, but I liked the movies better.

Philosophical and Thought Provoking, but Deeply Unnerving

There is a reason this book is considered one of the masterworks of science fiction. This is not your bog standard, guns and lasers "science fantasy" nor a grand, Star Maker-esque space opera but a personal, psychological, borderline horrifying experience told through one man's eyes. He sees the extent of inhumanity, the sheer otherness of a truly alien being, and it changes him. I won't go into further details because this is really a story to be experienced, rather than read about secondhand. This story is not light and it does not have a happy ending per se, and it leaves unanswered more questions that we came into it with, but still worth the read, especially considering the time out of which it came, being written in a USSR era Soviet Bloc State (Poland) and despite that it ages very well. 9.5/10

Fascinating story, beautifully performed

Solaris has been poorly translated into English – and therefore misunderstood – almost since its original publication. The text used here, and the narrator's performance, is a full remedy for this deficit. Excellent work, thoroughly gripping.

Great thoughts about existence

Great thoughts about existence suffering , what it means to be a god .great narration . Loved it .

New translation, fabulous narrator

I own the Kilmartin-Cox translation in print, so at first I was a little critical of this one; I felt the somewhat stilted, dated writing of that translation dovetailed quite nicely with the alienness of the planet for which this story is named, even if Lem himself didn't like it. However, this translation nixes some jarringly nasty descriptions of art least one character, and is considered by Lem's descendants to be more representative of the original novel. Overall, the more contemporary language is probably a benefit to modern listeners.

This is my first listen to Alessandro Juliani, and I was repeatedly struck by his skill at narration. He has a lovely voice and uses it to great effect, with clear, effortless-sounding diction, and no odd pronunciations of book words that I can recall. His woman's falsetto is one of the most pleasant I've heard from male narrators as well. Toward the end of the book, a couple characters who started off sounding quite different do begin to sound more similar both to each other and to Col Tigh (iykyk), but it isn't an issue by that point in the story.

The text is solid

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem receives four stars from me. I think it might be a five star book but at this point, I'm still a little confused on things and may need a second reading.

This was an audio book read by Alessandro Juliani. This was my first book read by Juliani, and I was not as happy with his performance as I'd like to be. It comes down to the voice he choose for one of the characters, and the interpretation of that character. I could not determine what he was basing the quality of the voice and the added grunts and sighs. I felt that his interpretation was not accurate. However, the other voices he did I thought were nice. I liked his reading in general.

The book.
The book is rather introspective and mysterious. I found that what I liked about it was the sense of foreboding and fear that the book creates. I always felt unsure and unsettled (which I might say is the intent). I never understood why the character worked together the way they did, why Kelvin accepted the status quo of working the way they did, or who the black lady was. (I could have missed that in the reading, so I'm going to say that this is a listener error.)

Overall I enjoyed the text very much, enjoyed the uneasiness of it, enjoyed the characterization of the ocean. I think I'll read it again in time.

Recommended: I think I recommend the book; I'm not sure about the audio version however.

A comment on negative reviews

I tend to read reviews before I buy a book if it's something I'm not sure about. I've been wanting to read Solaris for ages, so I didn't bother with reviews when this became available. If I had read the reviews, I might have skipped it. While many are positive, there are also a number of negative reviews with some pretty consistent criticisms.

In response that there are long periods of technical description that serve no purpose to the story: I can understand where that sentiment is coming from, but I think these sections are necessary and serve the story in the following ways. For one, they perpetuate the mystery of the planet. Whenever this would happen, I would try to imagine what they were describing. If you've ever stared out at the ocean in awe of the size and mystery of it, this is the type of feeling these sections evoke. It also acts as foreshadowing. The first part that describes the unique properties of Solaris also sets the stage for the paranoia and strange encounters the main character deals with when he first lands on the station. The following descriptions of strange phenomona on the planet hint at the bizarre circumstances on the station, etc. It's subtle, but for me it definitely shaped the way I thought about what was happening in the story. If it wasn't there, one might think this was a ghost story, or a hallucination.

In response to the criticism that the characters do not react realistically, or like scientists: While this is true at times, I think the reviewers are dismissing the environment that these people are in. Like I mentioned above, the characters are experiencing such bizarre events that the first thoughts one might have are that they are hallucinating or dreaming. Two characters have been living like that, the other is suddenly thrust into it. I don't think it's fair to criticize their reactions as being unrealistic when what they are experiencing is irrational.

Also, I wish I could give 6 stars to the narrator, Alessando Juliani. He gave a magnificent performance, especially with the wife, Harey. I'm always nervous when male narrators attempt female voices, but this was done masterfully.

This story is about humans trying to interact with something that is so utterly alien that we can't even understand how it exists. It's about relationships, specifically the complicated one between Kelvin and his wife, but also between humanity and Solaris. Can you even assign motives to such a being? Is it even alive? I was genuinely surprised by the finesse and emotional depth of this book. I was also frequently swept up in the majesty and fear of the living ocean as described in the book. It was a truly unique experience, and a real treat to listen to. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

As good as it gets

If one could rate Lem's descriptions of the planet Solaris and its ocean as stylistic invention, I would have to give the author 5 stars. In Snuff, one of Terry Pratchett’s characters asks another who we presume is Jane Austen (personification) how she could be “a successful author if all the words in the language have already been invented and only their order could be different.” Well, that is kind of the magic of good writing isn’t it? Lem concocts words from those that are familiar but that is not his magic. It is how he strings these inventions into the strings of narrative and description that add a vision to and beauty of a story that I found hard to compare to anything that I have recently read or listened to.

I love science fiction. It is certainly in my top three favorite genres. I probably read more SF/fantasy than any other. However, I always feel the need to fall back to the classics of literature for a fix of human depth, love and relationships, three ingredients that seem to be less than fully satisfying in SF. They were not lacking in Solaris. For some readers, these might have been for them a central focus. If the book was at all character-driven, for me, it would have to have been for as much the character of the human protagonist as it was for that of the alien. And what is so incredible, we know almost nothing about this indescribable alien except for how it manifests itself in the form of the protagonist's deceased wife.

The relationship between the protagonist and his deceased wife/alien-embodiment is beautifully and tenderly rendered. The relationship is a fluid one. In the beginning it is one so adversarial our hero tries to kill her embodiment and later he is willing to die for her [sic]. Both the descriptions and narrative could be tumultuous and serene at the same time. It is this fluidity, including if not especially of that of the changes in the ocean of the planet, that continually adds interest, suspense and mystery to the story. It has been a long time since I have really cared about a character in a book. In fact, it was years ago when I almost stopped reading beyond the first book of the Game of Thrones because all the good characters kept getting killed off and it was downright depressing. How astonishing that I cared at least as much for the alien of Solaris as I did for its hero.

The story is as much a thrilling ghost story and gripping psychological drama as it is science fiction. One need not be a nerdy lover of SF to appreciate Solaris. The book is hauntingly elegant and intelligently written by any standard. It is the story of love, love lost and remorse. It is an exploration of our humanity and the failure at times to find it.

The dialogue was totally credible and, with its sense of time and place, made the story that much more believable. Lem’s descriptions totally transported me to the quiet and loneliness of the orbit above Solaris and its sentient ocean below. While its emotive range never really conjured up much in the way of wit or humor, the story plumed the depths of my soul for almost every other emotion. This is not a story fraught with gratuitous violence and excitement for the sake of what sells many books. And yet, the story is exciting from the very beginning. I did not want it to end. While one was left with more questions than answers, the ending was most satisfying. In fact, it was perfect.

This story is half a century old and still, it not only holds up well in contemporary SF, it stands up head and shoulders above much of what is written today in any fictional genre. This is a masterpiece. I could not recommend a book more highly.

Thus Spoke Lem

I've heard of Stanislaw Lem but never read his work until now. Solaris is 50 years old but could have been written last summer. With the exception of some basic terminology, it's just as fresh as anything written by my other favorites, Robert Charles Wilson and Peter F. Hamilton. Wow! Wow! and Wow! Brainy stuff for thinking people. Shout out to Alessandro!: BSG rocked the world, my friend!-- Thanks for some all too rare great television. You read the book very well, especially Snaut. Here's hoping for more Audible gigs.

Critics Love it

The critics love it. They say it is profound. They say it is beautiful. It explores the depths of human existence.It stands the test of time.

That is academia speak for it sucks big time. Someone a long time ago, who was high up in academia and who never read a Science Fiction novel in there life, deemed this a classic. All of his minions did not want to seem stupid, so they agreed.

Call me stupid, but I found this a long boring uninspired story. There were some interesting questions brought up, but nothing Heinlein or Asimov have not discussed. The difference being that Heinlein and Asimov are readable. If you are not into science fiction and you love the classics then you can read this love it and pretend you have read science fiction. If you are a true science fiction fan, who loves the wonder of Arthur C. Clarke's writing, you will be very disappointed. This can also be very frustrating. It is one of those books where the main character ask questions, but never gets answers. Everyone is always put off one hour. "Why do you pick your nose with your left hand". Answer "I can't tell you now come back in an hour." An hour later "I don't know why I pick my nose with my left hand, I must be crazy."

I am not trying to be mean, just feel it is my duty to warn others from wasting there money. This is my second and last Lem novel.

I put the narrator on fast play and he still sounded slow. He reads this whole thing in a somber whisper.