Stanislaw Lem, and the Strugatsky Brothers - I think that Soviet-era SF really asked the 'big' questions and is far away from today's 'SF but actually just an action movie with lasers instead of bullets' standard.
For Lem, try Solaris, or His Master's Voice. He often dealt with how alien intelligence is impossible to understand (compare Wittgenstein: if a lion could speak we would not understand him). He also wrote many satires (Pilot Pirx / Fables for Robots).
The English translations of the Strugatsky Brothers you commonly get aren't good as they're translated from (I think) German, not Russian, but the new direct translations from Olena Bormashenko are MUCH better, they flow so much better. Stay away from the old ones.
Get Hard To Be A God, or maybe Stalker.
Also seconding Borges, and perhaps Umberto Eco, and Hesse's The Glass Bead Game.
For Lem, try Solaris, or His Master's Voice. He often dealt with how alien intelligence is impossible to understand (compare Wittgenstein: if a lion could speak we would not understand him). He also wrote many satires (Pilot Pirx / Fables for Robots).
The English translations of the Strugatsky Brothers you commonly get aren't good as they're translated from (I think) German, not Russian, but the new direct translations from Olena Bormashenko are MUCH better, they flow so much better. Stay away from the old ones.
Get Hard To Be A God, or maybe Stalker.
Also seconding Borges, and perhaps Umberto Eco, and Hesse's The Glass Bead Game.