Solaris

“The wave-crest glinted through the window, the colossal rollers rising and falling in slow-motion. Watching the ocean like this one had the illusion—it was surely an illusion—that the Station was moving imperceptibly as though teetering on an invisible base; then it would seem to recover its equilibrium, only to lean the opposite way with the same lazy movement. Thick foam, the color of blood, gathered in the troughs of the waves. For a fraction of a second my throat tightened and I thought longingly of the Prometheus and its strict discipline; the memory of an existence which suddenly seemed to happen, now gone forever.”

This is Kris’s first viewing of Solaris’s ocean. Its color and structure impress and disorient him. He feels fear and despair, setting the stage for the other two scientists on the space station.

“According to the earliest calculations, in 500,000 years’ time Solaris would be drawn one half of an astronomical unit nearer to its red sun, and a million years after that would be engulfed by the incandescent star.

A few decades later, however, observations seemed to suggest that the planet’s orbit was in no way subject to the expected variations: it was stable, as stable as the orbit of a planet on our own solar system.”

Here, Lem describes the astrophysical conditions that made scientists interested in Solaris. The laws of physics dictate that Solaris should eventually be consumed by its red sun. However, the planet maintains its stability. Ultimately, some who study Solaris come to believe it is actively deciding not to move.

“For some time there was a widely held notion […] that the thinking ocean of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of ‘cosmic Yogi,’ a sage, a symbol of omniscience which had long ago understood the vanity of all action and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence.”

When scientists realized Solaris was self-regulating its position between its two suns, they deduced it had to be a living entity. As a result, they seek to test its intelligence and ability to communicate, if a relationship can be established with the ocean.