12. Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
I can hear the naysayers already. "Solaris was already a movie! Three times!" Yes, this is true, and the last two of those chances were fair ones, directed by figures no lesser than Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven Soderbergh. However, Lem himself was dissatisfied with these adaptations, as they tended to be more about interpersonal drama than about a giant maybe-sentient ocean-planet-being maybe probing its visitors. When Soderbergh's version came out, Lem left a short but
rather critical essay on his website outlining his disappointment, which can be summed up in the last sentences:
...s "Solaris"' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not Love in Outer Space.
Maybe this means there's something a bit off about my brain, but when I read Solaris, I wasn't really interested in the dynamic between Kris Kelvin (the protagonist) and his dead wife, Rheya. I was much more caught up in the depictions of this "mighty" something. Lem spills a considerable amount of ink on the history of human study of the planet and the fantastic shapes and structures the ocean creates, probably even more than he ever does on the history between Kris and Rheya. Such a fantastic idea deserves to have its own movie. Admittedly, that kind of movie is going to end up being a moody and philosophical arthouse project than a billion-dollar box office smash, so I can understand why movie versions have always been so different from the books. Still, a nerd can dream.