Thanks for the thread.
One of the main reasons why I want to learn Russian are the sci-fi/fantasy writers.
Sergei Lukyanenko, perhaps the most famous of this generation. However, his most famoust series about the Night Watch is not his best work, in my opinion. It is great, but he's got even better ones.
the Strugatsky brothers are classics of the genre.
Zamjatin. Some say Orwell was copying him. I don't think so, but his We is certainly a must for distopia readers.
Now I am going to the list of authors I only heard about and haven't read yet, so I have just a limited idea what they write, but the sources I discovered them through usually point to good stuff. I am keeping them as a source of motivation, once I have the time for a new language.
Kiryl Yeskov
Andrei Rubanov
Alexey Pehov: This one looks the most interesting at first sight. I hope the most interesting thing about his work is NOT the fact that some ofthe book covers are copies of the covers of more famous books.
Boris Akunin is quite well known as a writer of historical fiction, unless I am mistaken.
and now, while googling correct English transcription of the names, I found
http://readrussia.org/ which may be interesting.