Solaris

[avram]

Finished Engine City, the last of Ken MacLeod’s Engines of Light books. Not as good as the Fall Revolution series, but still good, with some very funny bits. I know (from comments he’s made in rec.arts.sf.fandom) that he’s working on a space opera, and the ending of Engine City leaves open the possibility of a sequel, but I don’t think that’s going to be it.

I’ve started reading Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (“Now a major motion picture” says the cover of my 1971 paperback), which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Not even twenty pages in, I’m already wary. I was a bit puzzled when the protagonist’s transit by space capsule gives no indication of the distance he’s covering, a classic sign of scientific illiteracy in SF writers. Then I hit a sentence which confirmed my suspicions:

At the same time the composition of the atmosphere — devoid of oxygen — was analyzed, and precise measurements made of the planet’s density, from which its albedo and other astronomical characteristics were determined.

Albedo is a measure of how much light a body reflects; it’s one of the properties that’s easily measured at a distance, and as far as I know bears no relationship whatsoever to density. Either the translator was on drugs or Lem didn’t know what he was talking about.

I’ll keep on with it; The Cyberiad was no great shakes scientifically but managed to be brilliant anyway.