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Solaris is a classic sci-fi novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, published in 1961. Dr Kris Kelvin arrives on Solaris, an oceanic planet whose strange, complex phenomenon have been studied by scientists for many years. After an unauthorised experiment has a detrimental effect on the scientists exposed to it, the ocean responds to their mental and physical anguish by incarnating the scientists' memories, exposing the humans' innermost feelings, without revealing anything of its own nature. The impossibility of communicating with an alien consciousness so different from the scientists' own means that the research mission ends in failure. Solaris explores the theme of this difficulty in communication, as well as the nature of human memory and experience. The novel has been adapted in film three times, directed by Boris Nirenburg (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and lastly Steven Soderbergh (2002), though Lem criticised adaptations for focusing more on the romantic human relationships in the story than the unfathomability of an alien life.
