Instead of reviewing the story and then launching into some deeper thinking about what Lem may be telling us I want to just delve into two main themes I found myself thinking about. The first is what most think is Lem’s main message – if we one day make contact with an alien life form will we ever have any hope of actually communicating with it in any meaningful way?

In the book there are two large passages that imply the futility of such an idea. The first large passage of scientific review gives us a history of Solaristic studies that are described in terms of volumes and thousands of pages. Yet, at the end of over a hundred years plus years of such studies there is no consensus as to whether the planet is alive or not. Of course by the end of the book we do know the planet is alive in some way but not exactly how or in what way. Again, now that the current Solarists know the planet is alive can they possibly know in what way its intelligence works? Can they communicate with it?

The second large passage of scientific review in the book describes the history of the study of the different oceanic and cloud-like formations Solaris makes. Again, in one hundred plus years of study all the Solarists have been able to do is categorize the formations by what they do but really have no insight into what they mean. Keeping in line with the point Lem is making in the book the character of Kelvin is beginning by this point to recognize the futility of trying to determine any “meaning” in them and indeed by the end of the book there is never any indication as to what Solaris is manifesting in such formations.

Is the appearance of the visitors a form of communication? I think this question merits attention because on the surface it seems that Solaris is trying to do something but then this activity begs the question – what is it trying to do? Is it trying to communicate? Or is it too performing an experiment?

I was somewhat disappointed by some descriptions I found on the Internet as to the nature of the visitors. The overwhelming view that people seemed to have was that Solaris was intentionally dredging up the worst repressed memories the researchers had. In truth Lem never really reveals to us just what Solaris is doing but I think that underscores his point about communication with alien life forms (that it wouldn’t be comprehensible). Even though the experiences seemed traumatic for the crew members it cannot be said that that was the ocean’s intentions. Snow even suggests at the end of the book that the visitors might have been “presents” of a sort.

Returning to the two scientific reviews in the book I want to discuss a second although lesser theme in the book. Lem is not only describing the frustrations he predicts will come with contact with alien life but he is also making fun to some extent of academia and in particular scientific experimentation and its limits. After all, the first passage describes thousands of pages and numerous volumes of theories about whether Solaris is alive or not and what is the end result of all that? They don’t know! Likewise in the second review of literature the history of Solaristics has managed to document and categorize the complex formations Solaris makes but yet in the end all that categorization really says nothing.

Let’s think about the state of research currently and ask ourselves a question. What do we really know about anything? For example, in the topic of neuroscience we map out different brain activities, neural patterns associated with different modes of thinking, different types of behavior, correlations between patterning and different chemical states, and so on. But in the end of billions of dollars and countless hours of research what do we really know? Have we really explained anything or have we just made more and more categorizations and descriptions of phenomena that we will never really understand?

In many ways our own subjective intelligence and how it works is as alien to us as Solaris is to Kelvin and company. We know it is there and that it displays “forms” if you will but we really know very little about it or what it is. And though it is highly unlikely that we will ever really know what our consciousness “is” we will continue to want to research and categorize it no matter what traumatic or disturbing things are dredged up in response to our probing. I find it telling that at the end of the book after everything that has happened with the visitors Snow is ready to continue probing Solaris with more experiments!