The Story Archive

Solaris

Stanisław Lem · 1961 CE · Novel · Polish · Contemporary

A psychologist arrives at the station orbiting a planet covered by a single thinking ocean and finds one crewman dead, the others evasive, and people in the corridors who cannot possibly be aboard. His own visitor is a woman out of his past, assembled from his memory of her and unable to leave his side. Lem wrote the standing rebuttal to first-contact stories in which the alien turns out to be legible, and disowned both films of it.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
Science FictionPsychologicalMystery
Theme
Memory & TimeIsolation & AlienationGuilt & ConscienceLove
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The DoubleGhostShapeshifter
Plot structure
MysteryMeditationOpen Ending
Symbol / motif
The SeaThe MirrorThe Ghost
Conflict
vs Selfvs Nature
Mode / tone
ElegiacIronic
Culture / tradition
Polish

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