The Top 10 Sci-Fi Titles Written by Women

“The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”
―The British Critic, New Series, Volume 9, April 1818

The above quote is taken from one of the earliest reviews of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a book commonly regarded as the first ever work of science fiction. Not even the very best books can be expected to transcend criticism, so that a critic might find flaw with a book shouldn't come as a shock; what might, is that the flaw this anonymous critic found with Frankenstein was in the gender of the writer rather than in the content of the work. This is something women writing in science fiction have been up against for the better part of forever, and it's a sentiment we can no longer abide. The good news? Times have definitely changed and they continue to do so.

Starting around the 1950’s women began to gain some real traction in publishing in science fiction, writing award-winning novels alongside the men who traditionally dominated the genre; and while women writers are still under-represented, readers and critics alike are increasingly embracing their work and their often unique perspectives. So let’s celebrate some of the best, shall we? Here are the top 10 science fiction titles written by women as chosen by you, the Discover Sci-Fi community!

As always, these top ten lists are not meant to be all-inclusive or definitive, but give a great finger on the pulse of our communities interests and favorites. Want to see who missed out? Here's the original nomination list from the blog.

As always the results below are based on the combined nominations and votes here on the Discover Sci-Fi blog and the Facebook group.  

10. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is an American literary treasure, or as Stephen King has said, "...a literary icon." Over her almost 60 year literary career she wrote more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books, though her most famous and popular works are undoubtedly the works of science fiction she wrote set in the Hainish Universe along with the high fantasy Earthsea Cycle series. Two of the books from Hainish Universe made our top 10. Let's take a look at how they did!

In tenth spot, we have The Dispossessed  which, as mentioned, is set in the Hainish Universe. The book has won multiple awards, including a Nebula for best novel, and both Hugo and Locus awards. The book plays with themes that, at the time, were not often explored in science fiction; things such as anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, and individualism and collectivism. While it is the 6th book in the Hainish Cycle, it can be read as a standalone.

A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.

Read The Dispossessed  here on Amazon.

9. Beast Master by Andre Norton

We were as surprised as many of you in Discover Sci-Fi community to see that none of Andre Norton's books made the cut for our last top 10 list for Young Adult Fiction, so it's good to see her getting the recognition she deserves here with not one, but two nominated titles! The first, coming in ninth place, is The Beast Master.

Left homeless by the war that reduced Terra to a radioactive cinder, Hosteen Storm Navaho commando and master of beasts is drawn to the planet Arzor, to kill a man he has never met.

On that dangerous frontier world, aliens and human colonists share the land in an uneasy truce. But something is upsetting the balance, and Storm is caught in the middle. He had thought the war was over but was it?

Get your copy of The Beast Master here on Amazon.

8. Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh

The 77 year old novelist C.J. Cherryh has published more than 80 books since she began writing in the 70’s. Her remarkable capacity for world building has earned her not only a loyal fanbase, but Hugo Awards for two of her works, both of which were nominated for this poll and landed in the top ten, the first—Cyteen—appearing in eighth spot! Cyteen is set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe, the same universe as her award-winning Downbelow Station. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1989.

A brilliant young scientist rises to power on Cyteen, haunted by the knowledge that her predecessor and genetic duplicate died at the hands of one of her trusted advisors. Murder, politics, and genetic manipulation provide the framework for the latest Union-Alliance novel.

Get your copy of Cyteen, books 1-3 in one volume, Here on Amazon

7. Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

Can you imagine having an asteroid named after you? C.J. Cherryh was honored in just such a way, the asteroid’s discoverer saying of the author: “She has challenged us to be worthy of the stars by imagining how mankind might grow to live among them." Who better to make our list then!

The science fiction classic Downbelow Station was published in 1981 and has the distinction of having won the 1982 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book was nominated and shortlisted for a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction the same year, an award which it didn’t win, but it was later named one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all-time by Locus Magazine. Not too shabby! Throughout our poll it remained neck and neck with C.J. Cherryh's other nominated work, beating it by one vote to it finish in seventh place! 

The book is set in Cherryh's Alliance–Union universe during the Company Wars period, specifically late 2352 and early 2353. The book details events centering on a space station in orbit around Pell's World (also known as "Downbelow") in the Tau Ceti star system. The station serves as the transit point for ships moving between the Earth and Union sectors of the galaxy.

Read Cherryh's Hugo Award winning Downbelow Station  here on Amazon.

6. The Time Traders by Andre Norton

The remarkable Andre Norton published her first novel in 1934, and was the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1977, and won the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) association in 1983.

Often called the Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy by biographers such as J. M. Cornwell and organizations such as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Publishers Weekly, and Time, Andre Norton wrote novels for over 70 years. She had a profound influence on the entire genre, having over 300 published titles read by at least four generations of science fiction and fantasy readers and writers.

The Time Traders is the second book of Norton's to make our list, and missed the top five by a margin of only one vote! The book was first published in 1958, and has been printed in several editions. It was updated by Norton in 2000 to account for real world changes. It is part of Norton's Forerunner universe.

The never-ending tension between Russia and the United States has been escalated by a stunning new variable: time travel. While the Americans can roughly utilize the technology, the Russians have learned the secret of space travel—and that makes the US vulnerable. What they need is someone expendable to send through time to obtain the same secret.

Get your copy of The Time Traders here on Amazon.

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5. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

We have reached the top five with Madeleine L'Engle's  classic, A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle began writing at five years of age and almost gave up at 40 when she received yet another rejection letter. We are fortunate that she found she couldn't give it up, and was finally able to publish one of the most beloved books of our time, the multi-award winning, A Wrinkle in Time. 

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.  

And so begins the adventure as Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe, embark on a journey through space and time, from universe to universe, as they endeavor to save the Murrys' father and the world. The novel offers a glimpse into the war between light and darkness, and goodness and evil, as the young characters mature into adolescents on their journey.

Start the adventure with book one in the Quintet, A Wrinkle in Time  here on Amazon.

4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

In fourth place, we have the mother of all science fiction, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein! Mary Shelley is a fascinating and tragic figure. She lost her mother in infancy, and in the course of her relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, three of four children. She was widowed at 25 and succumbed to a brain tumor at 53 after years of illness. Despite a life fraught from the start with challenge and heartbreak, she persisted, and at the young age of 18 wrote what many consider the first work of science fiction ever.

Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece Frankenstein is a tale for the ages; a timeless classic with a fascinating origin story: 18 year old Shelley, on holiday with her lover and their friends challenge each other to see who could write the most terrifying horror story. Initially stymied, after thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made, inspiring the novel and introducing one of the most icon monsters of all time. 

Find the gothic classic Frankenstein, here on Amazon

3. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness—set in the author's Hainish universe—won Le Guin both the Hugo AND Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first woman to do so. The Left Hand of Darkness was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction. Given that distinction, it is no surprise to find it near the top of our list! 

The Left Hand of Darkness takes place many centuries in the future—no date is given in the book itself. Reviewers have suggested the year 4870 AD, based on extrapolation of events in other works, and commentary on her writing by Le Guin. The protagonist of the novel, the envoy Genly Ai, is on a planet called Winter ("Gethen" in the language of its own people) to convince the citizens to join the Ekumen. Winter is, as its name indicates, a planet that is always cold.

Pick up Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking The Left Hand of Darkness here on Amazon

2. The Vorkosigan Saga

Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. Bujold is one of the most acclaimed writers in science fiction. Last year the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 36th SFWA Grand Master; she has won the Hugo Award for best novel four times—more times than any of the other authors on this list, so perhaps the only surprise here is that her acclaimed epic, the Vorkosiagan Saga landed in second place rather than first.

The Vorkosiagan Saga, perhaps her best known work, is a series of science fiction novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe. At present there are sixteen books plus six short works in the series. There is a little bit of debate about the best order in which to read them, however the author recommends reading the books in order of the internal chronology so we'd suggest that is what you do, too!

When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia survive countless mishaps while their mutual admiration and even stronger feelings emerge. A science fiction romance by a Hugo and Nebula Award winning master. Bujold's Shards of Honor is the first book in her SF universe to feature the Vorkosigan clan.

Get your copy of Shards of Honor, the first book in the internal chronology, here on Amazon.

1. The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

We've reached the top! In first place by a landslide, we have The Dragonriders of Pern, a series by the indomitable Anne McCaffrey. McCaffrey is a remarkable writer and one of a handful of women (some of whom also appear on our esteemed top 10 list) awarded the Grand Masters award, a prestigious lifetime achievement award won by a small number of other sci-fi luminaries—some of the biggest of the genre—such as Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. Select individual works written by McCaffrey have won Hugos and Nebulas and in 2005, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In addition to all the wonderful industry accolades, McCaffrey is a beloved and oft celebrated author among our Discover Sci-fi community as well, so we were not surprised to see her top the list. In fact, the nominated series—The Dragonriders of Pern—has been KILLING it in these polls of late, taking the top spot in the most recent poll for best young adult science fiction, and a respectable fourth place in the best multi-book science fiction series of all time.

If you haven’t read the series, you are seriously missing out!  McCaffrey made history as the first woman to win a Hugo or Nebula Award with the first novel in the series, Dragonflight.  In Dragonflight, we meet a young woman named Lessa who is being recruited to establish a telepathic bond with a queen dragon at its hatching, thus becoming a dragonrider, and the leader of a Weyr community on the fictional planet Pern.

 Discover the book that started it all, Dragonflight, here on Amazon

"We've come a long way, baby..."

"...From now on, lover-boy, it's fifty-fifty, all the way. Up to now I've been an object made for pleasin' you. Times have changed and I'm demanding satisfaction too." —Loretta Lynn.  

Here's to the women of sci-fi: not just to the ones who grace the artwork on the covers, but especially to those who put themselves out there, writing rich and layered science fiction that, more often than not, gives us something to think about while keeping us wildly entertained. Who knows what this list will look like next year, or ten years from now.

Thanks to these trailblazers, more women are coming up in science fiction than ever before. Yes, we've come a long way, baby, but perhaps the best is yet to come.  

*All book-related copy in this post was pulled from Amazon, Goodreads & Wikipedia, unless otherwise credited.