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Solaris
- The Definitive Edition
- Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
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Editorial reviews
This fine, new, direct-to-English translation of Solaris allows listeners a new opportunity to marvel at the way Stanisław Lem managed to pack so much into such a compact story. As well as being a gripping sci-fi mystery, his novel stands as a profound meditation on the limitations of knowledge and the impossibility of love, of truly knowing another: how a vast, cold galaxy can exist between two people. In how many relationships does the other turn out to be a projected hologram? At the book's heart is the dark and mysterious planet of Solaris: working out what it means is half the fun of the book. One thing is clear: the possibility it offers of alien contact represents "the hope for redemption", a Schopenhauerian longing to be rid of the endless cycle of want, need, and loss. In one passage, the main character notes with a touch of envy that, "automats that do not share mankind's original sin, and are so innocent that they carry out any command, to the point of destroying themselves". The motivating forces that have traditionally sustained mankind - love, relationships, belonging - are exposed as so much space debris. In a book that contains one of the most tragic love stories in modern literature, the idea of a love more powerful than death is "a lie, not ridiculous but futile".
Alessandro Juliani is a veteran of television's Battlestar Galactica, though here it's a young, pre-parody William Shatner-as-Captain Kirk that his performance sometimes evokes: the same cool, clipped delivery and occasional eccentric choice of emphasis. If he occasionally under-serves the book's dread-filled poetry, his character studies clearly carry the wounds of their earlier lives: at first, his Kris is an opaque tough guy, coolly removed from the unfolding, terrible events, until he touchingly gives way in the end to an overwhelming sense of loss. His performance as Snout is a mini-masterpiece in feral intensity, an intelligence crushed by the immense weight of limbo. As Harey, caught in "apathetic, mindless suspension", he manages to make his voice unfocussed and passive, as if distilling the bottomless sadness of her self-awareness of her own unreality. It's also a strong tribute to his performance that he can carry the pages and pages of philosophising, argumentative theology, and semi-parodic scientific reports without coming across as didactic. What could easily drag the story to a standstill is, in this recording, compellingly conveyed as an essential part of Lem's heartfelt investigation into the painful limitations of human knowledge. — Dafydd PhillipsPublisher's summary
At last, one of the world’s greatest works of science fiction is available - just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation - complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Lem’s provocative novel comes alive for a new generation.
In Solaris, Kris Kelvin arrives on an orbiting research station to study the remarkable ocean that covers the planet’s surface. But his fellow scientists appear to be losing their grip on reality, plagued by physical manifestations of their repressed memories. When Kelvin’s long-dead wife suddenly reappears, he is forced to confront the pain of his past - while living a future that never was. Can Kelvin unlock the mystery of Solaris? Does he even want to?
Critic reviews
"Juliani transmits Kelvin’s awe at Solaris’s red and blue dawns and makes his confusion palpable when he awakens one morning to find his long-dead wife seated across the room. Juliani’s performance is top-notch." ( AudioFile)
Featured Article: The best audiobooks about aliens for curious humans
Throughout the history of storytelling, we humans have been curious about the possibility of worlds beyond Earth and its inhabitants. Thanks to our endless fascination with extraterrestrial life, there is a mountain of literature, from novels to memoirs, exploring the potential outcomes of interacting with creatures from other planets. Without further ado, here are 20 of our favorite listens about alien life.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Disappointed
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The Star Diaries
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Overall
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Gulliver in Space
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Area X
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Dive into the mysteries of Area X, a remote and lush terrain that has inexplicably sequestered itself from civilization. Twelve expeditions have gone in, and not a single member of any of them has remained unchanged by the experience - for better or worse.
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Book 1: intriguing! Book 2: Zzzz. Book 3: WTF!
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Beyond the Aquila Rift
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Beyond the Aquila Rift: It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.
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Great story, mediocre audio book.
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Moth was a beautiful planet, the only one with wings - two great golden clouds suspended in space around it. Here was a wide-open world for any venture a man might scheme. The planet attracted unwary travelers, hardened space-sailors, and merchant buccaneers - a teeming, constantly shifting horde that provided a comfortable income for certain quick-witted fellows like Flinx and his pet flying snake Pip.
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Worldship: Udo the Digger
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Udo's biggest problem isn't being a digger (that's low class), or staying drunk (that's damn expensive), or avoiding the Dwergaz (they're monsters), or even pissing off the supposed Gods. It's that his reality...well, it isn't what he thought. And now, he can't even afford to drink because his so-called friend Nicz is cutting into his business, digging up tin, iron, and copper. So Udo forms a new plan: clay. After all, clay jars are used to store everything: meat, herbs, and, his personal favorite, ale.
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I am confused.
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Expendable
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Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.
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FU@@ING EXPLORERS
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Genuinely Creative
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James Patterson is a gay accountant living in Keyes, Oklahoma - deep in the Bible Belt - the religious heartland of America. He's also the first person to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to understand our world, and that makes him the most important person on the planet.
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Not a romance.
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Conquest
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Spoiled Teenager or Sci-fi?
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Amazing story!
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On September 28th, a geologist working in Death Valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area. On October 1, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago.
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Great Story, Wonderful Listening, But the Editor?
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Beware the 13th sign!
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The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. From author Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction—comes a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions.
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Hard to categorize, hard to put down
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It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational.
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A Must Read
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In the Ocean of Night
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It is 2019. NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy it, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal….
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Like some Space with your Soaps?
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By: Gregory Benford
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What listeners say about Solaris
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Campbell
- 06-16-11
Haunting and Intelligent
I was intrigued by this book and the movie versions, but had not made the jump until it came up here.
I was not disappointed. This is a beautifully written and intelligent story. I was drawn in right from the beginning. The narration is outstanding - although it is really a performance - it is more like a wonderful radio play. The story does end somewhat abruptly without a neat resolution - that is the intent - the story is thought provoking. I loved it, although it is also disturbing in parts. I agree with the reviewer who said it could have been written last week, apart from minor issues. These do not detract from the story at all. This book will be read for many, many years to come. It is a classic.
This is Audible at its absolute best. This story will not be for everyone, but it deserves a very wide audience. Highly recommended.
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26 people found this helpful
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- Farpoint Girls
- 11-25-11
From a fringe science fiction fan -
As with many science fiction books, the focus is on the science and not the character development. None of the people felt real. The story was competently told, but with so much scientific complexity, that at times I got lost in the details. I still kept listening, as I really wanted to know what would eventually happen, and the ending left me somewhat satisfied. Perhaps a hard core science fiction reader would have understood it all better.
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4 people found this helpful
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- carmen
- 01-06-13
Is it all in his mind
Would you listen to Solaris again? Why?
yes it was a very well written story.
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
I am not a fan of stories about people who may or may not be going crazy because they are so bored. I live that life already. Well, but not in space.
Which character – as performed by Alessandro Juliani – was your favorite?
He did a fabulous job narrating this story. I might say his narration kept it interesting for me.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
In space, everything can hear you scream.
Any additional comments?
Actually this ended up being a pretty good mystery story. I also liked the way the story was told. Being Sci-Fi there is a certain amount of belief suspension required but this was a story about figuring out what was real and not real within this world that Stanislaw created. Alessandro Juliani must live sci-fi because he completely submerged himself into this world and narrated it beautifully.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 06-28-12
Prodigious Work of Imagination
Would you consider the audio edition of Solaris to be better than the print version?
No, but given the complexity and abstraction of some of its themes, surprisingly close to the written version. However, in contrast to the 2 filmed versions of "Solaris", this unabridged and entirely new translation (which has the author's approval) contains the entirety of the discourse on the scientific and philosophical concepts and issues. There might be a tendency to skim through such passages, with their references to imagined studies and theories, but Juliani's reading of this material invests it with the power of someone fired by intellectual pursuit.
What did you like best about this story?
The oddity of it all, from the perspective of an English-reading listener, with its existential ruminations on science, the meaning of life, consciousness, faith, fate and love. It is nonetheless compelling in its depiction of a future at once recognizable and novel. The intricacies in the descriptions of geology and pathology of the planet Solaris, and the discussions and deconstructions of an entirely imagined history of the science of Solaristics, is an extraordinary demonstration of Lem's ability to imagine a world and universe different than ours. But there are at most 5 active characters in the book, and their interactions and motivations within this wholly alien context (and Lem's writing within the Soviet system at the time it was published which adds to the sense of oppressive strangeness) draw the listener relentlessly into a philosophical discourse about man's place in the universe and his limitations and those of his inventions.
Any additional comments?
Lem depicts an alien consciousness, if that is what it can be called, that is impenetrable, unknowable and unreachable. So this is not your ordinary "first contact" story, nor a world-in-peril story, but an examination of deeper' philosophical themes. Part of a man's confronting the reality that he may not be the center of the universe is a need, not easily met, of justifying himself.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Philip
- 07-24-11
Seven hours of unadulterated joy
Definitely one of the best science fiction novels ever written. Wonderfully read — full of feeling, clear and precise diction and the characters given genuine personality by the narrator. This is the first-rate performance-reading that this outstanding book deserves.
If you are not a science fiction fan, please do not be put off by this book's labeling. More than perhaps any book in the sci-fi category, Solaris is a novel which deserves to be read outside of its genre. At the heart of it is a story of love and remorse. The science fiction and the Solaris of the title are only vehicles for Lem to investigate our humanity in the face of the inexplicable universe.
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- Susan
- 05-29-12
A timeless piece
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. Considering when it was written this story offers a wonderful premis to consider the meaning of life and human behaviour in a world well beyond what has previously, or currently been imagined.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
I found the ending frustrating, but on reflection, it fitted the philosophical dilemmas that pervaded the story.
Have you listened to any of Alessandro Juliani’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have not listened to Alessandro Juliani before and look forward to hearing more of his performances
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
What are we afraid of?
Any additional comments?
I loved the writing style of this book, so much descriptive detail, but found it slow in parts. This would be my only critical comment of the experience of Solaris.
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- David S. Mathew
- 08-15-16
Between Physics & Dreams
An outstanding performance of one of the greatest Science fiction novels to have come out of Europe in the past few decades. Few novels can examines both the theoretical difficulties of extraterrestrial communications and the futility of human desire with equal skill, but Lem pulls it off.
Stanislaw Lem is considered a national treasure in his native Poland and once you've experienced Solaris you'll understand exactly why. Very highly recommended.
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- Robert
- 11-27-11
Moody and Profound
A planet-sized organism probes its human investigators in ways that they can barely understand. The novel puts you close to an oceanic being and goes deeper and deeper into philosophy. This is one book I will keep on my iphone permanently.
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- Endura
- 12-13-23
Superior Translation, Narration Deserves Awards
I read the first English translation years ago, and thought Solaris was "good", but wasn't blown away by it per se. However, upon realizing there was an allegedly far superior translation made more recently than the one I had read, I jumped onto this version to see what I'd potentially missed.
The biggest change from one translation to the next is almost entirely made of the subtle differences in mood and atmosphere. The book reads much differently as a result, and has an at times vague and oppressive anxiety that is being lived by the main character. While these were not always comfortable feelings, this gave the story MUCH more depth and "texture" to the story, as well as the general vibe of the entire book.
As for the execution of audio version.. all I can say is that this narration deserves awards and is probably one of the most expertly narrated audio books I've ever heard. If I rated "Overall" and "Story" as 5/5 stars, I'd give "Narration" a 6/5 stars if I could.
Do not skip this one, it is Eastern Bloc sci-fi at its absolute finest, and one of my favorite sci-fi novels of all time.
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- turbopro
- 08-17-16
hard sci, but soft fi
Meh. It started out excellently, but got soft in the middle, then mushy at the end. I was hoping for something special.
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