TIL SimCity creator Will Wright was in part inspired by the Stanislaw Lem book, The Cyberiad. It's one of my favorite books!

In addition, Wright also was inspired by reading "The Seventh Sally", a short story from The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem, in which an engineer encounters a deposed tyrant, and creates a miniature city with artificial citizens for the tyrant to oppress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(1989_video_game)#Development

If you have not read The Cyberiad, I cannot recommend it enough as a work of comic science fiction.

The main protagonists of the stories are Trurl and Klapaucius, two "constructor" robots who travel the galaxy, constructing fantastic machines. Nearly every character is either a humanoid robot or some sort of intelligent machine, with few living creatures ever appearing. These robots have for the most part organized themselves into proto-feudal societies with strict ranks and structures. The timeline of each story is relatively constrained, with the majority of the individual tales following one or both of the two protagonists as they find and aid civilizations and people in need of their creations, advice, or intervention. Though the thematic content of the stories is broad, most focus on problems of the individual and society, as well as on the vain search for human happiness through technological means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad

If you haven't read Stanislaw Lem at all and you like science fiction, read Stanislaw Lem. He will blow your mind.