SOURCE: "Stanislaw Lem's Fantastic Ocean: Toward a Semantic Interpretation of 'Solaris'," in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, July, 1992, pp. 192-218.

In the following essay, Geier analyzes the mechanisms of meaning offered by the ocean in Stanislaw Lem's science fiction novel Solaris.

It is a commonplace that human consciousness can refer to things it does not perceive directly.¹ Merely imagined or conceived objects can exist at varying degrees of distance from immediately perceived reality. Concepts can refer to things which were once capable of being experienced as present and are now absent ("Monica no longer lives here, she lives in Hamburg"); or to a reality which exists elsewhere and the existence of which I do not doubt, although I have never experienced it as a fact with my own senses, having knowledge of it only through reports or the daily news ("Two Israeli military aircraft were fired upon while...