Stanislaw Lem is a Polish science fiction writer who died in 2006.  His writing is set in a futuristic, space travel setting but really explores the inner world of his characters.  With Pirx, he explores in separate chapters that could more or less stand alone, phenomenon of lateral thinking and problem solving, sensory deprivation, the fatal mental errors we can make in stress situations, our urges to avoid anything associated with death and dying (Albatross), and the ways we (projected in this case upon a robot, Terminus) we carry around bits and snatches of significant dialogues.  I don’t know if there is a category of psychological fiction but Lem’s work might fit here.  One also feels at times that he writes with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.  There is a zany or quirky element to his stories that keep readers engaged.

Didn’t really say what I thought about this book when I first posted this, probably because I’m still trying to make up my mind about Lem.  I guess I find him strangely fascinating at times, and just odd at others.  But I have several more titles of his on my Kindle and so will probably come back to him and some point in the not too distant future.