I’m a fantasy girl. Especially love it when the fantasy turns out to be post-apocalyptic science fiction, like the Broken Earth trilogy from N.K. Jemisin or Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire trilogy.
I’ve read almost every book Mercedes Lackey has ever written, and I recently finished the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks.
I’ve read much of Lackey’s work. I like her
As far as Sci Fi, I always recommend the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. He’s got others that people love as well. More recently I’ve read the original Silo book trilogy by Hugh Howey as well as his short stories. I haven’t delved into the other Silo universe stories by other authors yet. Right now I’m being basic and reading Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets.
Need to give a try. I also like post-apocalyptic sci-fi, if anything
The only two problems with Heinlein were when his brain was literally oxygen starved he wrote some ridiculous stuff (the followups to Metheuselah’s Children - Time Enough For Love, Number of the Beast, etc) and also Ginny’s ultra conservative and frankly juvenile brand of libertarianism started to really bleed in to his stuff. A lot of it in the ‘70s was, frankly, garbage.
Some greats nonetheless though.
If you want some real laughs look up Asimov’s stories about them all in WWII though. The picture he paints of Heinlein is hilarious (if unflattering).
Starship Troopers was an amazing (if unconscious) exploration of military fascism, even if Heinlein wasn’t aware he was writing one, and Verhoeven’s take was so on point it amazes me he got away with it.
In the end Haldeman did a much better job there though.
If I sound harsh there - FWIW I was a superfan growing up and have read everything he wrote. I mean that verbatim, I have read every novel, novella, short story and essay the man published. Several more than once, and some of the ones I just called garbage were guilty pleasures 
But it’s important to recognize that even your heroes can be deeply flawed.
Actually riffing on above, both Joe Haldeman and John Scalzi are great recommendations for most who like books like Starship Troopers.
For me, the last big SF thing I got deeply in to was the new British wave, specifically Banks and Reynolds.
Lifelong bookworm checking in… authors? most of those you’ve listed, including Heinlein, with Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke among my favourites. I also have a soft spot for “pulp sword and planet stuff” like Jack Vance, and Clark Ashton-Smith’s Hyperborea, as well as post-apocalyptic science fiction such as Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas, Babylon and even the Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey (Silo) Absolute guilty pleasure are novels set in the Shadowrun TTRPG (think D&D Elves, Orcs and Trolls with cyberware and machine guns in a world where criminal anti-heroes meet oligarchs who are literal dragons meets tech and magic) universe, written by a variety of authors who were also designers for the game.
Like Mr Rogers?
Shadowrun is fantastic
A shameless plug…my first book was published a couple of months ago
I read all of Matt Bracken’s books and did not really read much after that until two years ago when I read as much Civil War material as I could get my mind around. It is hard for me to find the time to sit and read now but hope to some day.
Highly recommend House of Suns, I liked Revelation Space but not as much as his more recent stuff.
I’m pretty heavily into SF and my favourite author is Iain M Banks (for non SF it’s just Iain Banks) who sadly died way too young. But I’m also a huge fan of Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. However my current favourite (extant) SF author is Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I also love Canadian author Emily St John Mandel who I might describe as having one foot in the SF world and one in the literary world.
I’m also very into magical realism with work from the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami probably at the top of that pile.
The “Children of Time” series is on my “want to read” list. And also Iain M. Banks’ “The Algebraist.”
The problem with Hamilton is even his shorter works are a marathon
Very true! But I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no difference between that and the multiple volumes in endless series from the like of David Weber and many, many others. Especially since nowadays authors seem to think it’s fine to split a continuous story at random points leaving each volume on cliff hangers. I hate that so much I have no words for it!
That was one of my first Banks books and is brilliant; it has the advantage that it is a complete stand alone, though it is bit of a marathon. Most of his SF books are part of his Culture universe, though in fairness most of those books are stand alone within the series and only a couple really need to be read in order and even those it’s not essential.
@howard Hoi, chummer! 
Same for me, man! That’s realy shitty… The great book must have the story ended.
