Solaris is a fictional living planet depicted in the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris by Polish writer Stanisław Lem and subsequent adaptations into numerous other forms of media. An extraterrestrial life form consisting of a vast, seven hundred billion ton "colloidal envelope" stretching across the entire planet, it regularly forms numerous transient structures on its surface, such as continent-wide crystalline "symmetriads" that dissipate just as quickly as they form, which have been cataloged by scientists on the orbiting Prometheus. Coming to believe it is sentient, they have attempted to study it for over 100 years, creating the scientific discipline of Solaristics. However, their attempts to establish first contact are met with nothing, and the scientists, assuming that it surely would want to communicate with them if it was able to, begin to claim the planet is unintelligent and dying in response to its lack of interest in their advances. Solaris begins creating duplicates of people from the crew's memories known as Phi-creatures in response to an X-ray bombardment, forcing them to reckon with their psychological trauma, though whether Solaris itself understands the import of these beings is uncertain. The protagonist, Dr. Kris Kelvin, eventually sheds his anthropocentric values and visits the planet's surface to establish true contact, realizing Solaris' nature and deciding to remain on the planet to continue studying it.[1]
| Solaris | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Stanisław Lem |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| In-universe information | |
| Type | Living planet |
The planet Solaris was depicted in differing ways in the novel's film adaptations. While appearing as a mysterious, unexplained spatial phenomenon in the 2002 film adaptation, Lem clarified that the original Solaris was intended as a physical form of extraterrestrial life. Despite often being referred to as an ocean, including within the novel itself, Solaris is not aquatic in nature and is more akin to a chemical soup. The depiction of Solaris was praised by critics as a rare example of non-anthropomorphic alien contact in fiction - a creature that does not act, or even think in a way that humans can understand.[1]
Reception
editIn Worlds Apart, Carl D. Malmgren calls Solaris "one of the strangest novums that Lem has created and 'investigated'." Saying that "there should be no real debate" that Solaris is in fact sentient, he describes it as "Otherness on a grand scale". Calling it "unfathomable" with "invariably strange 'behavior'", he cites Mark Rose as calling it "the most radical [...] late treatment of the alien-contact theme". Describing it as "an alien encounter in the most extreme form", he explains that even more than Solaris itself, the story is focused on Solaristics and the limits of human scientific cognition.[1]
Despite clarifying that Solaris is not technically an ocean, he calls the term an "appropriate and suggestive" name given humans' tendency to anthropomorphize the ocean on Earth despite its otherness. The scientists' observations on the planet are colored by subjectivity, and are often conflicting. At various points in the novel, the Phi-creatures are called a malicious form of torture, an accidental creation, or a purposeful gift to fulfill the crew's desires. In the end, Kelvin is only able to achieve contact when he becomes a blank slate.[1]
Sad Planets describes Solaris as an "enigma", calling some of the book's most moving passages those that describe the planet itself, with no human presence.[2] Green Planets states that Solaris "resists both physical and epistemic human penetration", describing it as "an impervious mirror surface". Ironically, the planet itself appears to experiment on the scientists by reading their thoughts and creating the Phi-creatures.[3]
In 2022, a group of scientists cited the planet Solaris in a study that stated that such superorganism worlds might be the norm, with planets containing individual creatures like Earth - where symbiosis between organisms took billions of years to develop - being the exception to the rule.[4]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c d Malmgren, Carl Darryl (1991). Worlds Apart: Narratology of Science Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. pp. 41–51. ISBN 978-0-253-33645-3.
- ^ Pettman, Dominic; Thacker, Eugene (2024). "Shapes of Sorrow". Sad Planets. Polity Press. ISBN 9781509562374.
- ^ Canavan, Gerry; Robinson, Kim Stanley, eds. (2014). Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. pp. 227–228. ISBN 978-0-8195-7426-8.
- ^ Choi, Charles Q. (2024-02-20). "Alien life could survive in more places than we expect, a new theory reveals". Inverse. Retrieved 2024-10-31.