Solaris and a few thoughts

Stanislav Lem’s novel Solaris is a fascinating and interesting novel about the mysterious ocean (or is it?) that is capable of reproducing material, living, or dead. I found it intriguing, mostly because of the claustrophobic way of describing the situation on the space station above Solaris.

What I liked the most about the novel were conversations between the main character and his wife and Snaut, a colleague on the station. On the other side, I wasn’t too fond of Lem’s ‘scientific’ descriptions of the planet, and the history of the science called ‘solaristics’ because I didn’t find them fascinating or relevant enough.

Near the end of the book I read a captivating passage where Kelvin’s speculating of ‘an imperfect god’. He said that a man does not strive to reach the goals in life. He gets them from the time he lives in, he can embrace them or refuse them. In order to be able to “be free to search goals”, man must be alone, on his own.

I liked these lines; they made me think about God and religion. It actually went hand in hand with my belief that all religion in the world should be personal and individual. No mass gathering, no mass praying, no mass believing. Every man should have his own belief for himself and should be content with it, without the need of being part of a large group believing the same. After all, isn’t God (and believing in him) enough for every believer? Of course, I am mentioning this, because I believe people have almost always used religion to start wars. Hatred between people has very often a source in religion. Those wars, that hatred and misery of the world could not be possible if the masses were not gathered and activated.

Anyway, Solaris was a pleasure to read, and I can recommend it to anyone who likes an intelligent sci-fi drama with the notions of emotional elements of love, loss, and guilt.