Stanislaw Lem Solaris 1961 Stanislaw Lem 1921 2006

Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)

Stanislaw Lem, 1921 -2006 • Polish writer of SF and philosophy • Wrote 22 works of SF between 1946 and 1986; fiction and non-fiction deal with philosophical and existential themes • “the most widely read science fiction writer in the world” (Theodore Sturgeon, 1976)

• First SF work was The Man From Mars (1946); his last was Fiasco (1986) • Key theme is the human inability to comprehend the alien or unknown • Used SF to critique the actual world and literary conventions • Disliked American SF, except for Philip K. Dick, but was the subject of a paranoid letter Dick wrote in 1974

Philip K. Dick on Lem, 1974 • • • “For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. ” “Lem's creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated). ” “It is a grim development for our field and its hopes to find much of our criticism and academic theses and publications completely controlled by a faceless group in Krakow, Poland. What can be done, though, I do not know. ”

• Lem was expelled from the Science Fiction Writers of America for his dismissal of American SF • Also dismissive of new media (e. g. TV, Internet) as being full of “evil and stupidity” • Characters waver between an optimistic view of human potential and a pessimistic view of human limitations • Saw the literary potential in the SF genre even as he dismissed its excesses • Solaris was translated into English from a French version, not directly from Polish • The only one of Lem’s works to be filmed in English

Nature of the Solarian Ocean • • “a primitive formation – a sort of gigantic entity, a fluid cell. . capable of exerting an active influence on the planet’s orbital path” “a plasmic mechanism. . . possibly without life as we conceive it, but capable of performing functional activities – on an astronomic scale” Or “a geological formation. . . with the unique ability to stabilize the orbit of Solaris” “autistic ocean” or “ocean yogi”– or none of the above?

Solarist Studies • Critique of Enlightenment ideas of knowledge • Reply to the tradition of “infodumping” in SF writing • Provides background to the main action but raises more questions than it answers • Gendered portrayal of scientific discourse: all the scientists in the novel are male (2002 film sidesteps the gender issue by adding a female scientist)

The Scientific Discourse of Solaris • Parody of academic discourse • Influenced by Kafka & Borges • Anticipates actual-world theories, e. g. the Gaia Hypothesis, the Uncertainty Principle • May also be “a veiled attack on Marxism and its claim to have replaced religious mystery with a science of human history” (www. jeetheer. com/culture/lem. htm) • Lem’s early fascination with scientific literature and ‘official’ documents

• Influence of surrealism: Andre Berton named after surrealist Andre Breton • “The recruitment of scientists to any particular field of study in a given age has never been studied as a phenomenon in its own right”

• “Grastrom set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achievements of science, the most advanced theories and victories of mathematics represented nothing more than a stumbling, one- or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us. . . there neither was, nor could be, any question of ‘contact’ between mankind any nonhuman civilization”

• “How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another? ” • “the preconceptions of Earth offer no assistance in unravelling the mysteries of Solaris” • “Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science”

Anthropomorphism • “We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. ” • “There’s nowhere we can’t go; in that belief we set out for other worlds, all brimming with confidence. And what were we going to do with them? Rule them or be ruled by them: that was the only idea in our pathetic minds!”

• “We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might already have had names of their own” • “Man does not create gods. . . The times, the age, impose them on him”

The Visitors, Mimoids, etc. • Dream / hallucination / reality / hyperreality • Embodiments of repressed emotions (fear, guilt, etc. ) • Reactions of each individual scientist to his respective visitor • Self-preservation motive? • Who’s experimenting on whom? For what purpose? • Counterpart theory; eternal recurrence

Purposes of the formations? • • • Natural processes, or byproducts thereof? Communication by direct access of memory? Self-preservation, or revenge? “O fair Aphrodite, child of Ocean”– Snow on Rheya “It implores us to help it die with every one of its creations” “The first phase of the despairing God”

• The child in Berton’s report: “they were methodical movements. . . performed one after another, like a series of exercises; as though someone had wanted to make a study of what this child was capable of doing” • “Operation Man” • Mimoids – mimesis – sensory processes? Drawn from memory too? • “a ‘computer’ of the living ocean”

• “the morbid creation of a mind under the influence of poisonous gases from the atmosphere” • “psychic dissection for the purposes of a sort of recreation, an experimental reconstruction” • “a super-copy, a reproduction which is superior to the original” • “I am not a human being, only an instrument. . . To study your reactions. . . We emerge from your memory or your imagination. . . an instrument of torture which loves you and wishes you nothing but good”

Lem’s Philosophical and Scientific Writings • • • Evolution Extraterrestrial intelligence “intellectronics” – artificial intelligence “phantomology” – virtual reality World-building / possible worlds “cyborgization” – includes genetic engineering as well as human/technology hybridization

Excerpt from Summa Technologica (1967, trans. Frank Prengel) • It is true that we cannot know anything with certainty or precision in both history and evolution. This does not mean, however, that we cannot find out or guess anything at all. Maybe it is a game of chance, but we can still investigate the potential for development here and there. These prognostic chances will never become certainty. They necessarily remain possibilities with an undetermined realization probability. But to recognize the outlines of distant possibilities is better than nothing. • Exploring possibilities means building mental models of nonexisting things.

Derivative Works • Has been filmed three times: in Russian in 1968 and 1972; and in English in 2002 • Also inspired a German opera, a Polish play, and a British radio play • Prologues of Kelvin’s life on Earth in 1972 and 2002 films • De-emphasis on Solaris itself, focus on its effects on the human characters • Differences in visuals • Influence of Tarkovsky on Soderbergh? • Influence of Kubrick’s 2001 on both major films • Lem’s opinions of the films: “Crime and Punishment in space” (1972); “Love Story in space” (2002) • Influences of sociopolitical and/or economic concerns

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film

Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 film