Solaris

There are a few notable analogues in the literary tradition that reflect or use generative processes in their fiction. Ballard, Aldiss and Murukami all employ dreamlike ‘remixes’ of the world and language in their texts. But ‘Solaris’ by Stanislaw Lem is fascinating in the extent to which the author documents the emergent properties a morphogenic ocean. The text is not generative in itself but uses the entropic nature of the planets restless seas as an allegory to discuss communication and meaning. I am trying hard to instill my work with elements of this approach.

“It had reached in a single bound the stage of ‘homeostatic ocean'” p 27

“…maze of tangled structures and crevasses, sometimes reminiscent of jumbled collonades, sometimes petrified geysers.” p115

“It would only be natural, clearly, to suppose that the symmetriad is a ‘computer’ of the living ocean, performing calculations for a purpose that we are not able to grasp’ 119

“When the geysers of organic matter have solidified into pillars or into three-dimensional networks of galleries and passages, and the ‘membranes’ are set into an inextricable pattern of storeys,panels and vaults” p118

“The completed symmetriad represents a spatial analogue of some transcendental equation” p118

“…the proud sweep of the domes falters, vaults sag and droop, and ‘wrong notes’ – incomplete, mangled forms make their appearance” p121

“..engaged in a never-ending process of transformation, an ‘ontological autometamorphosis’ ” p31

More screenshots here on my flickr sets.