[jeffpetes]

I'm a big Heinlein Fan. I strongly recommend you read his other big famous works, "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land." After that you can dig deeper into his bibliography, but I'd consider those three to be essential reading.

I recently finished "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and I loved it. Makes me curious to read other sci fi from the Soviet world.

[fractallyte]

Look for Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series, published in the early 1980s. It's a mix of novels and short story collections. For shorts, I particularly recommend World's Spring, New Soviet Science Fiction, and Ballad of the Stars.

A long time ago, I read that Asimov's short story 'Nightfall' was considered the finest short SF of all time, but I respectfully disagree. Nine Minutes, by Genrikh Altov, is that story for me. Link: http://www.altshuller.ru/world/eng/science-fiction4.asp

Also - a truly awesome novel - 'Self Discovery', by Vladimir Savchenko (also in the Macmillan series). (Link: http://lib.ru/RUFANT/SAWCHENKO/savchenko_selfdiscovery_ok-en...) It has one of the most compelling, and fascinating, descriptions of AI I've ever come across. As Theodore Sturgeon writes in the introduction, 'described with such realism that one is tempted to apply for a grant, build it, and check it out.'

[bpodgursky]

Imo forever war is amazing, but stranger in a strange land devolves into bizarre fantasy. I'd strongly recommend the former if you're more interested in hard sci fi and the implications of real accurate (ish) relativistic travel.

[angersock]

Seconding this... Forever War is probably some of the most readable, non-America-Fuck-Yeah military sci-fi I've read--another good one is Armor.

If you want more military sci-fi, check out the Hammer's Slammers series by David Drake (tank company in spaaaaaace, but not the stupid Bolo stuff); he also had one anthology that was very nearly solid cyberpunk surveillance dystopia, Lacy and His Friends.