Standing at the window with unseeing eyes, I had not noticed
the coming of darkness. A thin ceiling of high cloud glowed a dim silver in the
light of the vanished sun, and obscured the stars.
If she disappears after the experiment, that will mean that
I wanted her to disappear – that I killed her. No, I will not see Sartorius.
They can’t force me to cooperate. But I can’t tell them the truth, I’ll have to
dissemble and lie, and keep on doing it . . . Because there may be thoughts,
intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know nothing, because I am a
murderer unawares. Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other
civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and
secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself
has sealed. Was I to abandon Rheya there out of false shame, or because I
lacked the courage?
And there’s the core of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, harking
back to the hard science fiction that used to be in vogue, when, as Scott Meyer
of Basic Instructions fame, men fought their own self-destructive tendencies
and sometimes apes.
Though I’m not sure Lem would have approved of even those
movies, as he decried the permeation of soft science fiction into the genre. As
if he had any more control over that than his hero, Kris Kelvin, has over his
own self-destructive tendencies or any apes that might have shown up.
I will say this kind of science fiction is more appealing to
me, because it’s a trait of humanity to explore outwards without looking
within. And it’s interesting to see an alien world so alien it’s nigh on
incomprehensible and not really bent on killing humans, or at least laying
traps where humans are killed despite their best efforts. The horrible Gentry
Lee/Arthur C. Clarke collaboration on Rama II comes to mind.
Not that I’m not a fan of soft science fiction, but I do
like a sci-fi story that sets me to ponderin’, and Lem’s Solaris certainly fits
in that category.
The core of the story is almost Luddite in the sense that
Lem implies we ought to take care of our own hidden demons before we go out
into the universe to encounter demons there. But given man’s innate curiosity
(and removing all budget constraints) it’s probably easier to go exploring
outward than to go inward. Especially if you’re James Tiberius Kirk.
I think what I like about science fiction in general (and
the original Star Trek series in particular) is that those demons do go into
space with us. And despite the science, sometimes those demons do win, as they
would at home as well. So to say Lem implies those demons ought to be fixed
before we explore is to malign Lem and science fiction in general. The genre is
an extension of man’s desire to conquer those demons, perhaps through encounter
of otherworldly risks and dangers meant to help unit man rather than once again
show the divides between us. That, of course, brings us toward the concept of
technoutopia, a writing genre that, as with all utopias, also deals with
mankind trying to overcome its self-destructive tendencies, whether there are
apes present or not.
Some sci-fi borders on the spiritual as well – Lem’s doesn’t
particularly, except in my interpretation. How better to understand the
unknown, it is implied, than to understand the unknown within ourselves? That
speaks deeply to my spiritual side and sets me to wondering: What will eternity
be like once I’ve conquered the demons I bring there?
This review is, of course, a gross misinterpretation of what
Lem tries to convey – that contact between humans and an alien species may
never occur, given the immense changes in the differences in physiologies and
psychologies of any two intelligent species. He writes (in the guise of
Gastrom, a Solaris intellectual heretic):
Gastrom’s conclusion was that there neither was, nor could
be, any question of ‘contact’ between mankind and any nonhuman civilization.
This broadside against humanity made no specific mention of the living ocean,
but its constant presence and scornful, victorius silence could be felt between
every line, at any rate such had been my own impression [said in the voice of
Kelvin, the novel’s protagonist].
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