Solaris: Sci-fi and the 'Other'

I've read two sci-fi novels this year that dealt with human contact and the limits of human knowledge, a theme I can only assume that is at the heart of much science fiction writing. Incidentally (or maybe not so), both novels - Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky) and Solaris (Lem) - were adapted by Andrei Tarkovsky.

A few days ago, I finally completed Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. It was a relatively difficult read for two reasons. One, it frightened me, the pussy that I am. I couldn't read the book post-sundown, especially towards the later hours of the night, because the idea of waking up and finding a physical manifestation of a long-forgotten memory in my room, staring at me, was just.. crazy. After a while, I soon forgot the reason for fright and allowed the fear to descend into an abnormal irrationality ("Oh no, there is someone behind me, right now.. a presence in the room.. a.. ghost"). I've been told, not very encouragingly, that if I watched Tarkovsky's adaptation of the novel, I'd piss in my pants. The second problem has to do with the text containing rich details pertaining to physics and science in general. It can be said to have developed the argument that the text was heading towards but I felt it could have been done in lesser words and much, much less density. Of course, I will readily admit that Problem#2 could very easily be due to my incompetence as a reader. But the details make reading tedious and slow, and if one is able to grasp the gist of the message without having to go through pages of semi-futuristic ramblings on science, then there is a good reason why it should not even be there.

Solaris is a planet body of water - an intelligent ocean, if you must. Kris Kelvin, the human protagonist, arrives at a space station called Prometheus that has been constructed for the purpose of establishing contact with the intelligent life-form. A few hours, almost a day, upon arriving at the space station, Kelvin wakes up to find a woman who looks exactly like his dead wife sitting on the edge of his bed. She behaves almost exactly like her, has the same habits as her, talks like her. Only she is not her. The other scientists aboard the ship have their own ghosts to deal with as well.

I like that the book deals with questions like truth, and how one negotiates the content of truth. Is the replica of his wife really his wife or another woman? What are the markers of identity? What is the truth content of such an encounter?

Then there is a question of limitations that I am more interested in: the "intelligent" ocean, an ocean with a conscience, that is able to replicate people or things by probing into memory, and the scientists' ability to understand only insofar as they are able to anthropomorphize. Why should understanding Solaris the planetary-system become a test for humans? A quote from the book is, "...it was not simply a question penetrating Solarist civilization, it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the limits of human knowledge". To a large degree, this is what the book - and majority of science fiction, I think - is about: the limits of human knowledge. Where a constructed cognition ends and a vast sea of mystery begins, a mystery we can hardly hope to understand. Man's attempt to force his breed of understanding upon what is ultimately unknowing and unknowable. Human laws, after all, are not cosmic laws. What we understand is, perhaps, not how it is meant to be understood (think Truth, capital T). I understand that human laws are enabling as well - within our microcosm, we try to understand what we can - but therein lies the paradox: how far can meaning be ascertained before one realizes that he's stretching taut the fabric that allows meaning-making to function?

We can only hypothesize, and that too only so far. There are limits, tangible and real, no matter how many new words or theories or ideas science comes up with. Perhaps it is the new-age-ish student of arts in me speaking, but there is a time it stops and instead of trying to force a particular brand understanding, one should be an open channel and allow cosmic understanding, no matter how mysterious or unexplainable - for, perhaps, it will continuously elude human comprehension - to flow though.