Actually I wanna name more women whose work I love.
Lois Bujold has written truly excellent sci fi and fantasy. She is so excellent at making the Character and putting them in Situations that I think a lot of people miss that her world building is also peerless. The Vorkosigan series has such excellent characters and plot and prose that it gets overlooked for the brilliant hard sci aspects. She is examining how reproductive and genetic engineering technology impacts societies in ways I've never seen anyone else tackle them.
But also her fantasy series are amazing? The multiple separate unique magic systems she's come up with are all fascinating. From the beautiful meditations on faith and fate and free will in the Five Gods series to the low magic post-post-apocalypse Americana of The Sharing Knife to the historically grounded Italian politicking but with magic of the Spirit Ring, Bujold was constantly creating the most unique and thought-provoking settings I've read.
She's so old and has only written fun novellas for the last several years but I love her work so much and I wish more people would read her.
