John J. Vinacci

The second in my series of reading of sci-fi books in 2023, Blood Music is – how can I say this without spoiling much – well, it starts off as a by-the-numbers story of a scientist forced to experiment on himself. The story proceeds a bit predictably for a little while until things go completely off the rails and the plot becomes quite the opposite; completely unpredictable. Interestingly, the protagonist – and we have to use that term lightly here – turns out to not be our protagonist after all as we’re introduced to several new characters a third of the way through the book, one of whom the story rallies around though he had been a minor character up until that point. This makes the other characters somewhat superfluous, though they do serve as observers for a transformation of sorts. Unfortunately, none of the characters are much of anyone for the reader to bond with; our first protagonist gets the rug pulled out from under him then none of the new characters are really fleshed out...

Solaris is a classic sci-fi drama that follows the story of Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, as he arrives on a space station that is surveying the planet Solaris below. Solaris – the planet itself – appears to display signs of what might be intelligence, implying the planet is conscious. However, this intelligent consciousness is not like anything human, raising the question of why humans use themselves as the standard of consciousness for all ‘life.’ This however, is but a subplot of the book.   The book’s main focus is upon the humans studying it. Shortly after Dr. Kelvin arrives on the station, he is soon plagued by ‘visitors’ of which I will say nothing more other than said ‘visitors’ are implied to be explorations of the human psyche by the planet for reasons that are not readily apparent. The book’s strength lies in how Dr. Kelvin rationally, successfully – and emotionally, unsuccessfully – deals with the station’s ‘visitors.’ This is what makes the book more about the human psy...