I loved Foundation (and the Caves of Steel series), and I have not read CJ Cherryh's Foreigner, but I highly recommend her 'Serpent's Reach.' I have read it several times. I also love Clarke, especially 'Rendezvous with Rama' (only the original, not the sequels, which he did not write). I think Rama would make a great movie, if they stayed close to the book.
re Thieves. Hmm, I edited that book, but don't recall if I wrote that. It might have been Jessica Ney. I'd have to go back and find it.
If it was Jessica then she's awesome.
The Foundation precursor novels 'Pebble in the Sky', 'The Stars like Dust', and 'The Currents of Space' are great too. This really more apropos to the Spacemaster forums, but I am kind of curious if any of the Spacemaster Terran Empire was derived from Asimov's galactic empire? I had read it was derived from Dune, but I haven't actually read Dune so I can't compare. The Empire always felt a bit like Asimov's to me. In point of fact as I tailored it to my own campaign the world at bureaucratic center ended up being called Proxima Trantor as a nod to both my own sci-fi roots in Asimov, and to Warhammer 40k. One of my players was really into Warhammer.
Cherryh's Fortress series is worth reading. I never knew if the series itself had an official name, but the first book was 'Fortress in the Eye of Time'. Great fantasy series.
I'd also recommend 'Fifth Quarter', and 'No Quarter' by Tanya Huff. It's an off the beaten path approach to a setting, but some of her social ideas were well ahead of their time. The story is very original too imo.
Niven's Ringworld makes me think of the Hindmost. Talk about an awesomely amusing racial concept for an alien. XD