[a_bonobo]

I love Stanislaw Lem. Solaris is his most famous and it has many of his core themes; I'd also try Fiasco.

I'm also a huge fan of R.A. Lafferty, but his stuff his harder to find, mostly out of print.

Peter Watts' Blindsight is amazing recent-ish hard SF. (the follow-up, I did not like at all).

Anything from the Strugatsky brothers you can get your hands on!

[raddan]

I also love Solaris. I remember reading it the first time as a teenager. It is so matter-of-fact in its telling, but the facts are so bizarre, that I found it to really induce terror. It has always struck me as more of a horror novel than as a sci-fi novel although it is clearly the latter.

There are now multiple English translations of Solaris available. I know that there’s been a lot of praise for the newer translation, and I read it, but I do not like it. Something about the earlier translation feels more ominous.

On that note—I’ve always found it hard to believe that The Cyberiad was written by the same author! I love the Cyberiad as well but almost for the opposite reasons I love Solaris. The entire universe is charming and funny, whereas Solaris is engrossing but dreadful. I went through a phase in college, reading every Lem book I could find, and eventually discovering that my library’s stacks also included Lem in Polish. Sadly I know no Polish, and was not motivated enough to learn it, so those novels remained off-limits to me.

[a_bonobo]

I grew up in Germany, and there are more German translations of Lem than there are English translations - some 'first' English translations are very recent (last 10 years? Like Summae Technologicae?). I've always had a hypothesis that German geeks are more constrained and worried about the impacts of tech because we grew up with Lem, while American geeks grew up with Heinlein. VERY different views of the world.

[franczesko]

Solaris is such a unique concept. From Polish authors I've really enjoyed Limes Inferior by J. Zajdel. The concept of means of payment spoke to me, when I had my own wondering about workless future and digital currencies.