[aleph_minus_one]

> it's probably the most pessimistic first contact story I can think of

三体 by 刘慈欣 (English: "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin) is clearly a much more pessimistic first contact story. :-)

And honestly: I did not find Solaris pessimistic; for me it was just a story about a first contact that fails because humanity still has a lot of things to learn.

[nathan_compton]

I don't know - The Three Body Problem is certainly a _bummer_ but in a way it presents a universe where all lifeforms can at least identify with eachother with respect to the desire to out-compete everyone else for resources. The aliens in TTBP are basically just people.

In Solaris we are presented with something genuinely alien to human beings with which communication is barely possible.