Obviously, to go back and try to track every single idea that goes into TtS would involve me recapitulating my entire life, so this list is limited to fictional sources in which I can point to something specific. Obviously, my memory is not perfect.

John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War: Old people in the army, aspects of the special forces, Earth’s importance to military manpower, space elevators (though that’s a general concept)

Iain Banks’s Culture series: I came up with AI-starships on my own, but stuff people have told me about the series have by now undoubtedly influenced stuff. Also, for the occasional starship with the weird name.

Lyda Morehouse’s Archangel Series: For traffic tubes, to ease congestion

Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Series: For the name Governance

Karl Schroeder’s  Lady of Mazes: For aspects of the way Governance functions

Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft 2: For infantry in armored suits, and aspects of the special forces armor. Though admittedly, this isn’t original to Starcraft at all.

Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3: for that one girl who has a “hands reaching out of the ground” attack.

Relic Entertainment's Homeworld 2: For aspects of space combat.

Bioware’s Mass Effect series: For aspects of space combat.

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: For certain terminology (Eudaimonia, and something else I’m forgetting…)

HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos: For why the aliens are cephalopods. Though I can’t deny that I played Crysis 2.

Catherine Asaro’s Saga of the Skolian Empire: For spinal nodes that talk to you and are sometimes snarky, and certain aspects of space combat. Also, magic-like nanotechnology.

Gen Urobuchi’s Puella Magi Madoka Magica: I hope this is obvious…

Kage Baker’s Company Series, for some aspects of cyborgification (particularly contraceptive implants.

Kage Baker’s Anvil of the World Series, for the mutated origin of “Erwynmark”. (In the story it’s Erwynmyr. So you see, I never even considered that Rommel’s first name was Erwin…).

Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next Series, for the idea of having random excerpts open chapters, and the last name Bradshaw for Julian Bradshaw.

George Orwell’s 1984, whose poster of a Eurasian soldier with gun always pointed at the viewer served as inspiration for Homura’s arrow in the holographic statues at the movie theatre Mami attends in chapter 3.

This doesn’t necessarily mean I endorse any of these particular series. Some of these I didn’t finish with the highest opinion of. If you want to know, ask me separately.