Comment by Cyph0n

One of the amazing things abut Lem's "Solaris" is how invested humanity became in Solaris, the planet that housed the being they chanced upon. In the story, all of science basically revolved around Solaristics - the study of Solaris. By the time the events in the book take place, Solaristics had existed for over a hundred years. In one scene somewhere in the middle of the book, the protagonist actually sits in a library and starts to describe the key works of the field, but in an indirect way of course. Lem depicts humanity's obsession with the being perfectly, yet never actually spoon feeds the reader. Even so, the reader ends up investing himself/herself into humanity's struggle of understanding the being. I was simply amazed at how he was able to achieve this using only words. I've read a good amount of sci-fi, yet no author, not even the great Asimov, was able to execute such a thing so flawlessly. I'll be sure to read more of Lem's work as soon as I can.