The dream voice, female, had the timbre of computer-generated speech. There was but one word: “Solaris.” I recognized the word as the Latin adjective meaning “related to the sun.” As simple as the dream was, it impacted me with a force that was breathtaking. I sensed this was a follow-on dream to “The Red Sun” (see February 2 post) and “FireWire” (see May 25 post) as well as related to the increased size of the “red spot” on the cover of Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations. For a good while, I was caught up in an intensity of portent in which I recalled that Solaris was the title of Stanislaw Lem’s novel (1961), one of the true masterpieces of science fiction, as well as the two film adaptations of it by Andrei Tarkovsky (972) and Steven Soderbergh (2002).

I have always taken voice dreams (auditory only, no images) as tasks, literally as something I must do regardless of my conscious intentions. Such dreams have an “authority,” as if some other and deeper intentionality was speaking that cannot be ignored. The word authority comes from the Latin auctor meaning “creator.” So, I experience these voices as coming from the source of creative urgency. Most of the works I have authored have had their origin in such voice dreams.

What, then, am I to do in response to “Solaris.” 

This dream comes as Paco and I are working on the third and final volume of Dreams, Bones & the Future. The subtitle is Endingsand we are trying to face squarely the implications of the Sixth Extinction and what it means for humans. At the very least, I believe the dream is telling me that Solaris belongs to these considerations of the possible extinction of humans. So, my first step in doing is to watch the two films again (it’s been a while since I have seen them) and to re-read Lem’s novel with these issues in mind. 

I will report on my experiences in doing these things soon.