Stanislaw Lem’s first-contact novel Solaris (1961) is the Polish writer’s most celebrated and enduring legacy. It features an ocean planet that conjures up life with no apparent purpose, at best perversely reflecting human wounds and desires. Unintelligible, alien, and therefore not easily communicable, the ocean in Solaris could be an archetype of inhuman intelligence: indifferent, foreign, and creative in its distorted reflection of humanity. A quick Google search reveals that multiple... Read this story
