A continuation of a small theme for me this year in which I read more Central and Eastern European literature, from "The Master & Margarita" to "Roadside Picnic" to "Satantango". There's a curiosity to pre-Moon landing science fiction that feels so different from anything that comes out past then. Space was a true frontier, and advances in spacecraft meant realization of early science fiction but also meaning any future books had to be more grounded in the realities of space travel.

With this in mind, "Solaris" is two books in one: the first, an intense psychological drama where group of earthling scientists come to the sentient planetwide ocean that is Solaris and start doing experiments - but what happens when Solaris does experiments on its own? The second, a deep love affair with mystery and the fantastic in which space seemed truly unbound by our earthy preconceptions of life and existence. While I felt the book mired itself a bit in its own fascination, it was worth ticking-off this highly influential progenitor to weird fiction.