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"Cyberiad" is by far my favorite, whimsical, yet instructive to engineers.

"The Futurological Congress" is good, but not great; "The Congress" with Robin Wright was loosely based on it and had more of an impact for me.

"His Master's Voice" I read while still in civil service, and it hit pretty close to home, albeit it also reminded me of the bad parts of academia. I need to read that one again sometime.

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It's kind of strange to me to see Futurological Congress and e.g. Fiasco from the other responses being advised as standalone novels (maybe it has something to do with the history of Lem's English translations).

I'd instead advice to read the whole Ijon Tichy cycle starting from Star Diaries (which are pretty similar to Cyberiad in style), and the whole Pilot Pirx cycle starting from the Pirx Stories.

> I'd instead advice to read the whole Ijon Tichy cycle starting from Star Diaries

That might help, I should probably do that. I started with "Cyberiad", then got into Lem's other works just sort of at random. It doesn't really feel like the Tichy series is grouped together in the way say the Heechee saga or a lot of other "serial" or "extended universe" works are.

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