Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (2016-03-03) Paperback Bunko

Fell in love with original film, never looked back, the book was the next step. Good old Stanislaw lem.

good condition Exactly as described.

excellent book

Great!

Solaris is of course a classic, and it has to be said that the films take a rather different perspective on the story, concentrating on the interaction between the people on the station, all but ignoring the planet, which after all is the reason they are there. Lem, ever fascinated by science, not only describes the planet and its perplexing behaviour, but also constructs an entire history of a century of research and literature. A reflection is that the technological level of this future society is weirdly skewed from our perspective—all the literature mentioned is printed on paper, photographs are “blurry”, while humans have mastered gravity control they have no understanding of neutrino physics, and remotely-operated sensors are a recent breakthrough.The Chain of Chance is a detective roadstory of sorts—who is killing astronauts, why, and, in particular, how? The answer requires a staged vacation in southern Europe.A Perfect Vacuum is in the form of reviews of non-existent books, some of which sound as if they are ideas that could have been expanded into proper books by Lem himself, but which in this form allow him to play with the forms of reviews. That idea could in turn have been made more of, as it is, the reviews are quite straight-faced.A final reflection is that while the books were written in a Poland behind the Iron Curtain, there are no signs of this, the stories are based in a general Western setting, which perhaps is a stand in itself.

This is one of the few books I couldn't be bothered finishing. That's a pretty damning indictment but it's not all bad, far from it.The book is a collection of three of Lem's works of fiction. The first two are great, the final one is an arrogant piece of banal drivel.I bought this book because I wanted to read Solaris, having enjoyed the film. From what I remember of the film it is basically a love story. Unless I didn't understand the book (entirely possible, as Lem's writings are multi-layered), the love expressed within this book is a love of science, philosophy and debating. The central theme however is something scarcely ever contemplated by the sci-fi genre: when humanity encounters another intelligent lifeform, how exactly do we expect to be able to communicate with it? I enjoyed Solaris apart from the lengthy fake scientific theory sections and the endless descriptions of Solaris' sea. 4 stars.Chain of Chance is brilliant from start to finish. Lem essentially expands upon Terry Prachett's assertion that "million to one shots happen all the time" to create a gripping and unusual tale which is quite reminiscent of Kafka. 5 stars.Sadly, A Perfect Vacuum is fine as an idea for a fictitious magazine article (you wouldn't be able to call it a short story). It is a large collection of reviews for non-existent books with the first "review" being of A Perfect Vacuum. All very clever but ultimately merely a design to show off Lem's undoubtedly encyclopedic knowledge and literary expertise but which the average person (me) would be hard pushed to understand. Vanity in print. 1 star.