Solaris

I read Stanisław Lem’s Solaris (the new Bill Johnston translation, grade-A uncut straight from the Polish), and enjoyed it for the most part. Not available in paper, so I finally used this Kindle gadget thing.

This is a book for ideas. The writing isn’t too special on its own, on a sentence and paragraph level. I could have done with less of the spinning off into academic/history tangents, but I suppose they have their purpose. Reminds me of Borges a bit, that spirit of developing gobs and gobs of history and references. I think the spirit is more ironic here, underscoring how the knowledge of Solaris that humans gathered and theorized for generations really amounts to so little.

Now I really want to watch both movies again. I read a lot of this while listening to the soundtrack for The Fountain, which makes a good pairing.

Another Lem book I really, really liked was Imaginary Magnitude, which, as a collection of… stories?… offers a lot more variety and more opportunities to have your mind blown.