Jacob's review
Solaris
by Stanisław Lem
Jacob's review
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Jacob's review
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It's The Turn of the Screw in space.
This is the best of Lem's novels dealing with first contact, all of which are marked by a thoroughgoing pessimism of the human capacity to assimilate reality into its understanding. Lem does this by thrusting his cosmonauts into encounters with alien entities (life? intelligences? already the words you might naturally think to use are inadequate) and showing the worlds of the human and the alien to be incommensurable.
(They say that the English edition is a translation of the French translation of the Polish original. Michael Kandel's done excellent work with many other Lem novels; somebody really ought to commission him to do a direct translation. Also, both of the movie adaptations are worthy, but share few of the novel's themes.)
This is the best of Lem's novels dealing with first contact, all of which are marked by a thoroughgoing pessimism of the human capacity to assimilate reality into its understanding. Lem does this by thrusting his cosmonauts into encounters with alien entities (life? intelligences? already the words you might naturally think to use are inadequate) and showing the worlds of the human and the alien to be incommensurable.
(They say that the English edition is a translation of the French translation of the Polish original. Michael Kandel's done excellent work with many other Lem novels; somebody really ought to commission him to do a direct translation. Also, both of the movie adaptations are worthy, but share few of the novel's themes.)
