"We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox"
I just now finished reading Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and this is my favourite passage from the book. It is an amazing novel. The story probes into the innards of the human psyche and is almost spiritual. There are a few portions when it gets too self absorbed and drags on about minute details of the subject matter that no reader can possibly be interested in. But otherwise it is very interesting especially the first half and the ending. The book is very different from the movie screenplay, but I guess that is expected.
Very few people know about this author. He is a polish author and the only sci-fi writer I know of from the erst while soviet block. There is a strange symmetry in that when in the 40's to 70's science fiction gained popularity among readers in the US and its allies, basically the English speaking world, there was a similar proliferation of sci-fi literature in the communist block. I had tried to get my hands on Lem's works when I was in India, but couldn't find it anywhere. I plan to read his other famous book The Cyberiad soon. But first I will read The Collected Stories by the titan among writers Arthur C Clarke who passed away earlier this week.
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