What would be the result if some other popular sci-fi and fantasy writers were to try their hand at Solaris? All sorts of great books! The ever-reliable Grzegorz Uzdański has been investigating, and here’s what he has found.
Ursula Le Guin
Kris the scientist can’t sleep because of agonizing nightmares sent by a malevolent cosmic ocean. Exhausted, he goes to the seashore and utters the ocean’s true name – which turns out to be Kris.
Philip K. Dick
A woman named Harey wakes up on an alien planet beside her lover, Kris. She soon starts to suspect she’s not who she thinks she is. Quotations from cabbalistic tomes and encoded commands from mysterious supervisors keep appearing in her head. In a dazzling vision she realizes she is just a hallucination in Kris’s mind, forced into it by a tired ocean that has spent years longing for death.
J.R.R. Tolkien
To defeat a sinister intelligent ocean, Kris must destroy its most perfect creation – a gloomy humanoid – by tossing it into the waves of that same ocean. To defend itself against this fate, the cunning humanoid assumes the shape of Kris’s long-lost love; meanwhile the bent and twisted Snaut comes trailing after him…
J. K. Rowling
A little boy named Kris doesn’t know that as a baby he fell into a ferocious ocean on the planet Solaris and was the only person in history not to have drowned. As a memento of this encounter his hair curls on his forehead in an unusual wave-like shape. When he reaches the age of 11, a bionic owl named Harey brings him a summons to the School for Scientists on Solaris…
G.R.R. Martin
A noble scientist named Kris arrives on the planet Solaris to solve the riddle of the cosmic ocean. He discovers that a fierce struggle for power and influence is being fought at the research station. He tries to get involved in it, but is killed. Then lots of other people die too (the ocean brings some of them back to life to kill the remaining scientists) and a dragon flies in.
Frank Herbert
Kris Kelvin drinks a sip of water from the mysterious ocean on the planet Solaris. He has a vision that shows him the past, the present and the future of the Universe. Then he changes into a large sea bass and conquers the cosmos.
Andrzej Sapkowski
Outer-space monster hunter Kris gets orders to deal with an ocean that’s broadcasting hallucinations to the residents of the planet Solaris. Just as he’s about to strike it with a Hadron sword, the intelligent ocean turns out to be the victim of the people, who for thousands of years have been making money by designing mutant versions of Solaris talking lakes.
Nora K. Jemisin
Teenage Harey discovers that she’s one of the water-listeners – people who can hear the plasma ocean from their planet and can manipulate its waves. Others are afraid of people like her, and spurn them. Harey is placed under the supervision of a gloomy water-listener coach named Kris…
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Embittered Kris is a gaslighter – he dives illegally into a sombre ocean on the planet Solaris. Lying hidden in its depths are some mysterious but powerful artefacts, which Kris fishes out and then sells. But his frequent encounters with the cosmic element come at a price…
C. S. Lewis
Four children – Kris, Harey, Snaut and Sartorius – go through the wardrobe and find themselves on the planet Solaris, where they’re greeted by a friendly talking ocean.
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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