“The Chanur Saga” by C. J. Cherryh is full of great female leads!

Very fun series that works under a premise of first contact from the alien perspective.

Pretty much anything by Cherie Priest, the Clockwork Century books are great!

Try out the Wayfarer’s series! Becky Chambers is amazing. Her books are wholesome and character focused, and give you a great feel of what it would be like living in that setting.

I also really like Brandon Sanderson’s Cytoverse. It’s a fantastic adventure that will keep surpsing you, but it is YA, so be ready for a little silliness.

Xenobiologist Kira Navárez in To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars might not win feminist awards, but I really liked her, the world building and the story. IIRC, it was relatively clean of overly sexist BS.

Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey was pretty good.

Less scifi and more fantasy, I just finished The Priory Of The Orange Tree and I highly recommend

And just want to add A Great And Terrible Beauty as another Fantasy book that is a wonderful read (series)

I liked the Academy/Priscilla Hutchins series by Jack McDevitt. Character drama isn’t necessarily a big part of it, partly because most people act like real humans (for sci-fi) and it’s more about the space exploration angle and, on the series level, about how that changes over time.

The Bel Dame series by Kameron Hurley is good. It starts with God’s War.

The “Broken Earth” series by N.K Jemesin

First book

• Silo series by Hugh Howie
• Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi (Young adult dystopian scifi)
• Across the Universe by Beth Revis (Young adult)
• Bird Box by Josh Malerman (apocalyptic thriller)
• Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (fantasy, not scifi, but I’m digging up stuff from when I used to read more prolifically)
• Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds. I read this so long ago, and I feel like their were some great female characters, but I can’t remember if any were the protagonist. Each novel shifts around.

I had so much fun reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. It is squarely in the fantasy genre. Not SciFi like you’re asking for. But I can’t recommend it enough.

Amina is a very rare character: she is simultaneously an older woman, a single mom, a pirate, a lover, and a legendary hero. Chakraborty does an admirable job of balancing all these different aspects of her main character’s personality. The story is bombastic and fun, the supporting characters are charming, the setting is historical and fantastic all at once. This book is incredible, I could not put it down.

I have heard good things about the audio book. I read it in text form though, so I can’t confirm that myself.

Seveneves, tho it is written by a dude. Great characters tho.

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

The Expanse series has Naomi Nagata, Avasarala, Bobbie Draper, and Drummer (among others)

The Revelation Space trilogy by Alastair Reynolds has the badass Ilia Volyova as a main character (not primary protagonist though) in the first two books and Ana Khouri is the primary protagonist in the second two. Some of his other works also have strong female protagonists as well (e.g. Pushing Ice and the whole Revenger series).

Well my first recommendation was going to be Ancillary Justice, but there’s also Artemis by Andy Weir! It’s been a minute since I’ve read it but I don’t immediately recall it snacking of a “men writing women” feel.

Edit: Not super SciFi, but like steampunk fantasy maybe… Another option might be Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

Second Edit: Whatever you do DONT read Hyperion. Oof that one was one of the most ridiculous examples of “men writing women” I have read, although he notably grew as the series progressed.