Paul H Williams / Solaris / 2010

One morning I awoke to find everything obscured by a thick roiling mist. It seemed to have a life of its own; sometimes moving slowly sometimes quickly. I could smell the sea and I realised that that was where it had come from. I stood on the balcony with the clouds drifting about me. I thought of home and, for a while, it was as if I was floating between two worlds... Successive bursts of static came through the headphones, against a background of deep, low-pitched murmuring, which seemed to me the very voice of the planet itself. — Stanisław Lem (Solaris) Abstracted, Mason invented some tale to satisfy her, then carried his coffee into the study and stared at the morning haze which lay across the rooftops, a soft lake of opacity that followed the same contours as the midnight sea. The mist dissolved in the sunlight, and for a moment the diminishing reality of the normal world reasserted itself, filling him with a poignant nostalgia. — JG Ballard (Now Wakes the Sea)