Solaris

Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Solaris, the Futurological Congress, His Master's Voice, Eden, Fiasco, Return From the Stars, a Perfect Vacuum, Observation on the Spot, the Astronauts, the Invincible, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, the Investigation, the Magellanic Cloud, Golem Xiv, the Chain of Chance, Peace on Earth, Hospital of the Transfiguration. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Solaris (1961), by Stanisaw Lem (19212006), is a Polish science fiction novel about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species. In probing and examining the oceanic surface of the world named Solaris from a hovering research station the oblivious human scientists are, in turn, being studied by the sentient planet itself. In due course, Solaris scientifically probes for and examines the secret, guilty thoughts of the human beings who are analyzing it. Solaris has the ability to manifest their secret, guilty concerns in human form, for each scientist to personally confront, while the self-aware planet studies their responses to its psychological experiments. Solaris is pervaded by a powerful, poetic sense of the physical remoteness of outer space. The sense of loneliness that this engenders is among Lems philosophic explorations of mans anthropomorphic limitations. First published in Warsaw in 1961, the 1970 Polish-to-French-to-English translation of Solaris is the best-known of Lem's English-translated works. Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial (alien) life on a far-distant planet. Solaris, with whom Terran scientists are attempting communication, is covered with an ocean that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism. Kris Kelvin arrives aboard the scientific research station hovering (via anti-gra...http://booksllc.net/?l=en