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As a female reader, the disposable woman trope makes me grumpy, so I tend to steer away from books where it happens a little too often to shrug off. That's usually more of a problem in military sci-fi, and I don't read a lot in that subgenre.
Here's a list of sci-fi books I've read over the last year or so and liked:
* Elizabeth Bear's Jennny Casey Trilogy: Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired (cyberpunk; heroine is in her 50s)
* Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood (social sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, with 'helpful' aliens)
* Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Diving into the Wreck (sci-fi wreck exploring and salvaging, with a time warp subplot)
* Marianne de Pierres' Parrish Plessis series: Nylon Angel, Code Noir, Crash Deluxe (dystopian cyberpunk, quite dark)
* Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay series: Retribution Falls, The Black Lung Captain, The Iron Jackal (lots of adventuring, also a little steampunk-ish)
* Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief (post-human themes, hard sci-fi)
* James S.A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes (space opera, with a biotechno-thriller mystery)
* Philip Palmer's Debatable Space (space opera; readers seem to either love it or hate it)
* Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels (alternate universe shenanigans)
* Toby Frost's Chronicles of Isambard Smith Trilogy: Space Captain Smith, God Emperor of Didcot, Wrath of the Lemming Men (humor, parody of numerous beloved sci-fi movies, books, etc.)
And, despite being grumpy over the disposable woman thing, I have enjoyed David Gunn's Death's Head series (Death's Head, Death's Head: Maximum Offense, Death's Head: Day of the Damned.) They're really violent, though, and that might be a turn-off for some female readers.
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