Just an interesting aside: Lem is famously known for Solaris, mainly due to the movie adaptations. According to Lem the movies don't really reflect his vision:
..to my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space... As Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space".
I loved Solaris (the book). It's one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written, because it points to the unsolvable question of consciousness that lies near the heart of all of humankind's greatness and flaws. It was the first piece of literature I encountered that actually made the typical human idea of the divine God palpably ridiculous; the idea of the planet Solaris palpably holy. The universe was revealed forever larger after I turned the last page.
I really enjoy this theme of a struggle to communicate or make sense of non-Earth origin life. You mention the Solaris really changed your views of the universe. I highly recommend Diaspora by Greg Egan or Blindsight by Peter Watts if you haven't already read them.
Diaspora fundamentally changed my view of life and the universe.
I second the Diaspora recommendation, but I found Permutation City even more mind-expanding. It's not such a cohesive story as Diaspora, but the sheer amount of big ideas crammed into that little book is amazing.
I actually like the Soderbergh version on its own merits, although it may not have much more in common with the book than the title. The soundtrack is amazing.
Book was great, I really liked it. I haven't seen the older adaptation yet, but the more recent one (with Clooney) was IMHO terrible. Such adaptations make more harm than good.
The Tarkovsky version is fantastic, definitely find time to watch it. It's visually stunning. Kurosawa wrote about how much he aesthetically loved Solaris, particularly the way Tarkovsky captured water.
Word of warning: do not expect Star Wars or Inception type special effects. And this is Tarksovky's reading which, if you know Tarkovsky, he was concerned more about the human condition, than technological aspects of Sci-Fi.
I both read the book and watched the clooney movie and I liked both of them. The key to enjoying movie adaptations is to imagine they're two completely separate stories that just happen to have certain names in common.
..to my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space... As Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)