[przefur]

If I were to choose three fiction, those would make the cut. Fiction:

The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem - It shed light on me in regards to microelectronics, swarm intelligence. Nothing ever eased my learning curve more for genetic algorithms like this short novel! It is also a good read in general. It also taught me that the difference in scientific vs force vs emotional approach to unknown. Would recommend as a springboard from a day-to-day acitivities.

Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - a Soviet sf classic, I've read it 3x already. It tells a story about a closed zone where 'aliens' left their artifcats, and how that changed people around them.

Ender's Game - I don't think there is an explanation needed. It is a total classic. It helps a lot to understand outsiders, not just aliens but a humans too.

All of the above are either hard or soft sf.

[olivermuty]

Did you also like the rest of the books? It got pretty deep into religious nutcase territory eventually. I didn't actually know all the religious controversy around the series before I read the books, so I got to experience that solid increase of "wtf??" moments as the trilogy progressed. The first book is pretty darn good though, won't argue that!

[przefur]

Of the Ender series books, I've read the whole quintet - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender in Exile. I've enjoyed all five of them, although the quality drops which each of the instance. Speaker for the Dead is worth the time for sure, the other three I'm not entirely convinced. Speaker won a Hugo award in 1987.

Of Card's novels, the Shadow Saga, is a pretty good read thou. I've enjoyed it more than the Ender's one. It is set in the same universe, and focuses on Bean - another child from the Battle School. It drifts towards political fiction.

[dekleinewolf]

For me Ender's game was completely ruined when I learned about the controversy around the author, because to me, homophobia goes completely against the message of the books. So it no longer works for me.

[andreime]

How can you live in our society? So many things around us have been made by despicable people...

[narrator]

+1 for Roadside Picnic. I love how unbelievably melancholy that book is. The amount of smoking and drinking in every scene is kind of amusing too. It definitely hits that noir sci-fi vibe. Like what if the future goes kind of wrong, but not necessarily dystopian.

[mvonballmo]

Ah, the Strugatskys! Absolutely highly recommended. That was my favorite book of theirs as well.

[pjc50]

I'd not heard of The Invincible, but Solaris had a transformative effect on me and you've convinced me to read the first two items on your list. Didn't Roadside Picnic become Tarkovsky's Stalker?

[maest]

> Didn't Roadside Picnic become Tarkovsky's Stalker?

Indeed, it did -- it also spawned the "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." game series, which really nails down the derelict industrial soviet aesthetic.