Google.pl's crazy doodle
Stanislaw Lem is probably my most favorite sci-fi author. He's very popular in Europe, but not so much in the US it seems. His works are hilariously funny, philosophical and have a certain magic to them. When I saw the robot I was almost certain that it had to be about him.<p>I don't know about the quality of the English translations of his books, but in German, they are fabulous. There are a lot of word plays that are hard to translate.<p>By the way, many will recommend Solaris in here because there were two films based on it, one by Tarkovsky and one by Soderbergh. While it's not a bad book it's probably not his best and not entirely exemplary of his other books.<p>This is a good introduction to his work: <a href="http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/vitrifaxintro.html" rel="nofollow">http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/vitrifaxintro.html</a>