Regarding next choices -

1) I've always hated Fantastic Planet. It's a shit movie. It has nothing to say, the animation makes Bakshi look like Miyazaki, and it goes on and on and on without a point. It's a pale imitation of John Christopher's Tripods trilogy, which are pretty kick ass for children's books. Fantastic Planet just adds boobs and brooding French voice actors.

2) Per your recommendation, I read Blindsight. I agree - very much loaded with material to discuss. I'll warn you, though: prior to reading it, my two most loathed works of writing were The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin and The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton. After reading it, my two most loathed works of writing are The Cold Equations and Blindsight. I enjoyed it for about the first 60%, then took a quick drive to the grocery store and realized how much of that book makes zero goddamn sense. The last half drove home the point that Peter Watts was not only winging it, he was passing it off as wisdom.

A "change of pace" would be something optimistic and fun. "Short" would be good, too. Unfortunately, pretty much everything on this list is a stone-cold bummer.

I'd recommend Rendezvous with Rama as "Blindsight without teh suck" but it's long-ish. If we're going to go for movies, I'd push for Forbidden Planet or Day the Earth Stood Still or 2001 because they're classics. I, Robot is mostly pretty up-tempo. It's short.