Lowkey is an insane and unforgiving dive into a Sci-Fi genre.

We always think of Extraterrestrial lifeforms and first contact with them as this "first significant step" but Lem spins it in a futile fashion which is extremely impressive, which is also well reflected in the ending. In terms of reading, I felt like this warrants more attention from the reader (especially around some seemingly unnecessary details of the previous research on the planet) but the result of that is how mankind has gone ahead with this idea even though it probably is out their reach, reinforcing their insignificance in some capacity.

I wouldn't recommend this to someone who's starting on the genre. Still, it has impressive thought processes involved in terms of the setup of the planet itself and how the scientists navigate around certain roadblocks that they encounter there which honestly felt fresh.