Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, based on Stanislas Lemm's novel, had been described as Russia's answer to 2001. Jonas Mekas, in The Village Voice, writes: “I find it one of the most original, most poetic, most beautifully paced science-fiction movies I've seen. The main idea of the film around which everything turns is the amazing discovery that the oceans can ‘think': they absorb all human thoughts and are able to send some of our desires back to us, in material form, under certain circumstances.” The story deals with a series of expeditions to the planet Solaris, and the interactions among the various earth scientists there, with each other and with each other's memories.