Great Female Science Fiction Novelists

Consider this exercise. Take a year, and for the primary focus of your leisure reading, imagine reading science fiction and fantasy written exclusively by women. Let's say it's a senior seminar at the crossroads of women's studies and science fiction/fantasy studies.

What kind of syllabus would you put together? What works would you assign? Here are my favorite options right now, kind of a mix between what I actually intend to read in 2014, and what I have read in the past and consider to be the best of this genre written by women.

The Ür-Text: Mary Shelley

Challenger of Middle Earth: Ursula K. LeGuin

"The grand dame of science fiction": Octavia Butler

Steampunk: Erin Morgenstern

Because (full confession) I read the first six volumes but have never read the seventh: J.K. Rowling

The books that forever changed my childhood: Madeline L'Engle

Popular contemporary: Elizabeth Bear

The trilogy, of which this is the concluding volume: Margaret Atwood

A classic steamrollered by the movie industry: P.D. James

For a real challenge: Doris Lessing

Based on the Ozarks: Suzette Haden Elgin

Did you know Virginia Woolf wrote sci-fi under a pen name?

Others I'd like to include but it begins to be more than syllabus length: Lois Lowry, Suzanne Collins, Connie Willis, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Anne Rice, Susanna Clarke, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, Patricia Kennealy, and more.

Finally, this one for good measure, which really ought to be science fiction: Rebecca West