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.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.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.This is a good introduction to his work: http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/vitrifaxintro.html