[ajuc]

From serious ones I liked "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. It was also very abstract at times, but it focused on one kind of abstraction, and one that I liked.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson was nice, too, I loved the worldbuilding with construction of whole independent history of science and philosophy on a fantasy world, and how people used it in their lives.

Algebraist by Ian Banks is interesting (not in the Culture series, Culture books are ok too, but there's no tension in these books whatsoever).

I love Lem, especially the robot stories, but also Futorological Congress, Solaris, His Masters' Voice. IMHO Lem has the best aliens in all sci-fi. Maybe Blindsight by Peter Watts comes close.

I also like Jacek Dukaj who I belive wasn't translated to English. But now that I think he tends to do the same thing as in 3rd book of 3 body problem - a book starts with regular people and easily relatable stuff, and by the end it's all so abstract and weird you don't know what's going on. It kinda puts me off, I prefer constant level of abstraction all the way through.