One of the major changes Johnston has made to the text is to the names of two of the book’s main characters. For the time being we are excited about the reception of the ‘new’ Solaris and its popularity.” Currently this is impossible due to legal issues but recognition of the new translation might persuade the publisher to rethink their position. We are both somewhat conservative readers and despite the fact that an ebook will follow in about six months we secretly hope for a paper edition.

“We are very content with Professor Johnston’s work, that seems to have captured the spirit of the original. “It took a few years to overcome a number of difficulties to allow for a new translation of Solaris – this time directly from Polish,” said Lem’s wife Barbara and his son Tomasz in a statement. Other crew members are also experiencing visions, and it emerges that the planet itself is sentient, and drawing out the memories. It sees the psychologist Kris Kelvin arriving on the space station that circles Solaris to study’s the planet’s ocean, only to start confronting a very real embodiment of his dead wife. The novel has been filmed twice: in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky, and in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh, starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. I believe this new translation restores Lem’s original meaning to his seminal work.” “Lem’s characteristic semi-philosophical, semi-technical language is also capable of flights of poetic fancy and brilliant linguistic creativity, for example in the names of the structures that arise on the surface of Solaris. “Much is lost when a book is re-translated from an intermediary translation into English, but I’m shocked at the number of places where text was omitted, added, or changed in the 1970 version,” said Johnston. Lem’s heirs are hoping to overcome legal issues to release it as a print edition as well. It has just been published as an audiobook download by Audible, narrated by Battlestar Galactica’s Alessandro Juliani, with an ebook to follow in six months’ time.

Now Bill Johnston, a professor at Indiana University, has produced the first Polish-English translation of the novel.

Solaris lem