I read the Jules Verne series when younger, and really liked the feeling that here was a guy who was an original thinker and who really, really tried to put himself and his readers in places no one ever really thought about before. It was breath-taking. I had to take it slow because the flavour of the language was something I wasn't used to. Fortunately there were a fair number of books in my parent's house that had been written in the 30's and 40's - they helped me step back into the literary usages of the turn of the last century. My treasured gift from my mom is her first edition full set of his work with hand coloured frontispieces. I guess being the only one of her kids who read her books helped me there.
Read my first Heinlein juvenile fiction - I think it may have been Rocket Ship Galileo, and wondered what else I'd been missing. I maybe was 8 at the time? Looked for all his books at the school library. Loved Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, you name it I read it. As I grew up so did the nature of the books available from Heinlein. It was always a pleasure to find a new one on the shelf somewhere. I loved how he made it seem so natural for people to live lives in the new situations that may arise. And the way he could toss in off the cuff references to major upheavals in society that shook my monolithic understanding of the world and allowed me to reconsider possibilities, reassess history, and evaluate change as a constant as opposed to anathema.
I remember coming home for lunch from high school and finding a shipment of SF books had shown up that I'd ordered via the mail from Ballantines or some such seller. I would tear it open, and start 2 or 3 books while eating lunch, and say to hell with it. Bail on school the rest of the day. Finish those books before going to bed, and bringing a fresh one down to read at breakfast the next day. Ah, youth.
I don't really think specifically about portrayal of women in the books. More about the portrayal of people living and breathing and dealing with situations framed by the imagination of the author. If you want an interesting look at women in the genre try Cecelia Holland's Floating Worlds. Or Kingsbury's Courtship Rite. Or the Gaea series by John Varley. Or David R. Palmer's Emergence (which also covers woman-child people and another take on the concept of Indigo Children).
I don't have a packaged response to women who read /watch the genre. It is great that my Lady is a Star Trek nerd - she knows episodes by number for heavens sake. I love that, but women enjoying SF isn't something that I've ever really paid any mind to as particularly special. Women are great in general. The specifics are what makes them individually great.
Early works that come to mind - how about authors instead? We already covered Heinlein and Verne . . .
John Wyndenham (The Day of the Triffids · The Kraken Wakes · The Chrysalids · The Midwich Cuckoos · The Outward Urge · Trouble with Lichen)
John Christopher (The Tripods trilogy · No Blade of Grass · The Ragged Edge · Pendulum)
Larry Niven has been mentioned. I love his Known Space books and short stories, and the weaving together of stories that he did with World of Ptavvs, the Ringworld books and the Beowulf Schaeffer stories. Not to mention the Mote books he co-wrote with Jerry Pournelle
I have to join in mentioning Dune, and the other Herbert books that go with it.
only 5? then I'll say C.J. Cherryh (just start reading Cherryh, doesn't matter what) in the same breath as the already listed Louis McMaster Bujold (again, anything that mentions Miles Vorkosigan is FTW). That ought to help cover the idea of women in SF because they are both such masterful female authors
