If you were drawn to the meticulously detailed starship technologies and the scientific rigor of Lem’s Fiasco, you’ll love Blindsight. Watts’s novel follows a crew of specialists—including a linguist and a synthetic vampire—sent to make first contact with an inscrutable alien presence. The novel’s hard science approach, from neural architecture to astrophysics, is both intellectually challenging and exhilarating.

If the enigmatic, unfathomable non-human intelligence in Fiasco captivated you, Solaris is Lem’s definitive meditation on human attempts to comprehend an utterly alien mind. The sentient ocean of Solaris defies all human logic and communication, echoing the frustrating and profound mysteries faced by Parvis and his team.

If you appreciated the way Fiasco uses a first contact mission to probe deep existential and philosophical questions, Roadside Picnic will resonate with you. The Zone—a baffling, hazardous area left by alien visitors—serves as a metaphor for our inability to grasp the purpose or meaning behind incomprehensible phenomena, much like the doomed diplomatic mission in Fiasco.

If the grand, almost mythic scope of the starship Hermes’s expedition in Fiasco thrilled you, Tau Zero offers an even more sweeping odyssey. The crew’s desperate attempt to decelerate their ship as it approaches light speed leads to an epic narrative that spans not just the galaxy but the history of the universe itself.

If you were fascinated by the ethical quandaries facing the crew in Fiasco—where every choice in dealing with the alien civilization feels fraught and ambiguous—then Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness will engage you. Genly Ai’s mission to Gethen forces him to navigate not only puzzles of gender and culture, but also the murky territory of loyalty, betrayal, and moral compromise.