In Lem's "Golem XIV" Golem (a machine built to help plan World War III) explains to the humans that its intelligence isn't just greater than theirs along some singular dimension, like it understands way more about high energy physics or jazz or ethics than they do, but is instead categorically greater - and worse that it is definitely categorically impossible for humans to achieve such intelligence.
The humans really don't like that and Lem's story struggles to really sell it because of course Lem was human, so it's hard to play the role of "Machine which is just categorically more intelligent than my whole species" effectively.
One of the clever tricks in Vinge's "Tatja Grimm's World" is that Tatja is way more intelligent than everybody else on her planet, yet because of why she's more intelligent than everybody else Vinge doesn't need to somehow imagine being far smarter than he is.