The only Russian Sci-Fi I have read was Roadside Picnic. I REALLY enjoyed it in multiple of different layers. Was nice to read a book fromt he cold war on the "other side" from where I grew up. I need toadd this title to my list.
Tarkovsky originally shot the film based on a screenplay by the Strugatsky, an adaptation which was, I believe, quite faithful to the novel (this is not inconceivable, considering that Solaris was fairly faithful to Lem's story). But during post-production, the negatives were handled by an inexperienced lab worker who managed to damage the negatives beyond repair.
Tarkovsky fought to find funding to re-shoot the whole film, but at this point he was bored with the material, and essentially improvised the whole shoot based on his own ideas. The Strugatskys were not happy with the final film.
Though they dreamed of communistic future, keep that in mind. Their worlds probably will look foreign to the western reader. And there are some references to the russian culture. But translations probably should take that in mind.
except for may be the earliest works, their communist future isn't that different from for example the "self-betterment" world of StarTrek, and serves basically as just a setting.
Also "Solaris", although the descriptions of the various phenomenons on Solaris get a bit tedious over time.
And finally "The Invincible" if you like dystopian tales of artificial intelligence swarms going bad.
"Metro 2033" by Dmitry Glukhovsky - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033
"Night Watch" by Sergei Lukyanenko - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28Lukyanenko_nove...
I can recommend them only if you need to compare queality of mass-produced fiction across several countries.
"Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future."
http://www.amazon.com/Memories-Future-Review-Books-Classics/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe
Efremov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Yefremov
Golovachev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Golovachov Especially early works - how clash of civilizations would look and live like.
Alexander Belyaev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Belyaev A classic sci-fi writer, very grounded though.
And for pure aesthetic pleasure - Vadim Shefner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Shefner His writings are so poetic, kind, ironic and alive. I still reread some of his works, despite not reading much those days.