Connie Willis is my very favorite author in the whole world, and I also very much enjoy Kage Baker, Sherri Tepper, and Emma Bull. I need to wait until I get home and look over my shelves for you, but one that comes to mind that you might enjoy is Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. It’s fantasy, not science fiction, but I think it has the right blend of humor for you. And I am shocked to be the first one to recommend Terry Pratchett - again fantasy, but very worthwhile fantasy. Neither are “girly,” exactly, but they’re not laser guns or swords and sorcery, either. (Well, Pratchett does some great sendups of swords and sorcery, but he’s not serious about it.)
I recommend James H. Schmitz, particularly “the demon breed” and “witches of karres”. His books often have female leads (and not thinly-disguised males either), and they are great adventures. They are from the 40s and 50s.
C.J. Cherryh!!! “Downbelow Station” absolutely ROCKS, comparable to the best SF by anybody!
John Varley writes fantastic female characters-(well he used too, the last few books have been a bit meh). Check out his Titan trilogy.
BrassyPhrase
Julian May might be up your alley - she wrote a terrific series in the 80s called “The Saga of the Pliocene Exile” (there was a previous thread about it).
CJ Cherryh and Connie Willis may be some of my favorite authors, but I’m not sure they have a lot in common! Cherryh writes best when she’s writing about going native. Her books are generally Very Serious, but also very personal. Try Foreigner and see if it’s for you. (If it’s too politic-y, try The Pride of Chanur, which series is like a dry run for Foreigner.)
I’ll add to the recommendations for Kage Baker. I actually didn’t really like In the Garden of Iden (mostly because I didn’t think it went much of anywhere, which frustrates me; you may not have this hangup), but I really liked Anvil of the World/House of the Stag/Bird of the River (same world, not really same plot though). They’re light, funny fantasy (not sci-fi) which doesn’t take itself too seriously, has some serious anachronisms, and some strong female characters. Very sad there won’t be any more…
Otherwise, I remember liking Anne McCaffrey’s sci-fi a lot, although in retrospect it may be a little dated. Lots of good female protagonists, but also a little more rape-except-she-liked-it than I’m totally comfortable with.
Let’s see… for actual sci-fi, I can’t recommend Iain M Banks enough - again, not girly per se, but also decidedly non-sexist. The Culture doesn’t really consider gender important (except sometimes you switch, just for the hell of it), and there are a lot of very well done female characters. Dunno if I’d call it light; I tore through them, but they tend towards doorstoppers.
If you can find any stories by Schmitz, by all means, read them. Very good, and surprisingly nonsexist, especially considering when they were written.
Also, you might try Andre Norton. She had some clunkers, but she was quite prolific. She’s hard to find, though.
I like SOME of LeGuin’s books very much indeed, and actually love some of them. However, if I had read Always Coming Home first, instead of the first Earthsea book, I would have probably never given her a second chance. As it was, I bought the Earthsea book when it first came out, long before she wrote Always Coming Home.
Always Coming Home is probably her most difficult book, and I agree, it’d be a lousy introduction to her for most people. However, it’s also one of my favorite books by her, and she is uniquely qualified to have written it.
(For folks unfamiliar with it/her, the book is an anthropological treatise on a culture that existed on the California coast some 200,000 years or so in the future. Le Guin’s father was an anthropologist, her mother an author, giving her a unique background that permeates all her books, none more so than this one.)
A lot of chicks dig Zenna Henderson.
Selina Rosen’s books are girly in a different way but very fun reads.
On the theme of “science fiction that appeals to girlies” rather than necessarily “science fiction written by girlies” I’d also like to recommend Vernor Vinge - good old fashioned ‘hard’ SF but without the clunky stereotypes that often bedevilled writers of the Golden Age, and loads of great female characters.
An obscure one - Nancy Kress, especially An Alien Light - descendents of the crew of a spaceship of Middle Eastern origin have separated into an Athenian/Spartan dichotomy of city states and come under investigation by an alien race at war with humanity, who want some isolated humans to experiment on and find weaknesses in. Very similar feel to Octavia Butler, if you end up reading and liking her.
Katherine Kerr (NOT by any means Katherine Kurtz) is a prolific fantasy writer who has also delved a little into Science Fiction - Snare is another good ‘human societies on future alien planets’ one.
Given your profile of things you like I have to re-endorse Julian May too - the original Saga of the Exiles is so much fun. Not so much the Galactic Milieu prequels though - she kept going too long after she’d run out of things to say.
Thumbs down on Anne McCaffrey for me - I don’t know if her books are girly or not but…boring. They seem to be very popular though so maybe that’s just me.
Baen Books reprinted a lot of his material a few years ago, and they are currently available on the Baen Free Library if you prefer softcopy (though I recommend getting the physical copies).
Cordwainer Smith is a guy who wrote wonderful bizarre sci fi - he was the New Weird long before there was a New Weird.
More on the humor side, I recommend checking out Gini Koch’s Alien Series - Touched by an Alien, Alien Tango and Alien in the Family
They are somewhat girly, at least. The first six or so, plus Moreta and Nerilka’s Story, I enjoyed. I think that she said everything that she had to say in those eight books, and after that, she kept writing because her fans kept clamoring for more.
Hell, I dig Zenna Henderson. Or I did when I was younger, I don’t think I’ve read any of her work since I was in my late teens. Her stories tend to be very…gentle, I guess. Her background as an elementary teacher often stands out.
I’m a little surprised at the recommendations for Anne McCaffrey - I thought she was a young adult writer.
Oh, not at all. There is sex ( not particularly explicit, but certainly suggestive ) in most of the dragon books. I think the popular dragonsinger books were deliberately pitched to younger audience, like LeGuin’s Earthsea novels. But McCaffrey, like a lot of working sf writers I understand, even stuck her toe into the softcore sf short-story field when that was paying some bills in the 1970’s.
Sharon Lee and Steven Miller’s Liaden series is some of my favorite stuff - there’s humor, emotion and action, all wrapped up in a way that reminds me a bit of Jane Austen. I started with Agent of Change (the first one written). Sharon Lee has a post on possible reading orders here: http://sharonleewriter.com/bibliography/correct-reading-order/
I’ll chime in on Lois McMaster Bujold - her stuff is excellent.
Sarah Zettel’s work is very good as well - my favorite is Fool’s War.
If you are interested in fantasy as well as SF:
Elizabeth Willey’s Argylle series (The Well-Favored Man, A Sorceror and a Gentleman, The Price of Blood and Honor) is very good (and strongly reminiscent of Zelazny’s Amber series). Only three books by her so far - I have an alert set up on Amazon in case any more show up. I don’t do that for most authors.
Martha Wells is another great one. Start with The Element of Fire, her debut novel, in part to set up The Death of the Necromancer (but also because it’s very good).