Solaris is set in a future time of interplanetary travel. Kris Kelvin is a Solarist, a scientist who studies the planet Solaris, and his specialty is psychology. Kelvin travels to Solaris only to find that the planet's mysterious ocean has begun bringing to life precise duplicates of figures from the deepest recesses of the scientists' minds.
As the novel begins, Kelvin arrives at Solaris Station to study the mysterious and possibly sentient vast ocean that covers the planet Solaris. He finds the space station in disarray and the scientists on the verge of madness. Mysterious creatures haunt the spaceship. They look human, but they have superhuman abilities. Soon, Kelvin is visited by his own "ghost", an exact duplicate of Rheya, the girl he once loved, who killed herself when he walked out on her.
Kelvin is at first.....
