Reddit mentions of Darwin's Radio

Darwin's Radio is a good one, if you are looking for something that details what would happen if humanity underwent a sudden evolution right now (2000's).

I loved that book. There is a lot of science language (details of how and why the evolution occurred), but I enjoyed that very much.

Evan Currie's Odyssey One series is more military than pure space opera, but it is awesome.

The Golden Oecumene series by John C Wright is a Transhuman Space Opera of epic proportions. I highly recommend it.

Rachel Bach has a great series called Fortunes Pawn. Also a lil closer to military sci-fi but it has some nice Space Opera themes.

Joshua Dalzelle has a great series called the Black Fleet, again more military sci-fi than true space opera, but very good none the less.

The Reality Dysfunction series though, if you are looking for a meaty Space opera to lose yourself in is a must read series.

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I almost forgot about the Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter and the Darwin's Radio series by Greg Bear. Both are phenomenal reads, and while technically they are set in the near future and aren't space opera per say, they are must reads for anyone into Sci-Fi.

Right, I have a bit of a terrible memory so here are some... not all of them have a woman as the main but generally more than just 'supporting' or 'girlfriend' roles :)

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. This is part of a series and I'm pretty sure this is the first in that series with Darwin's Children the next one.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

Ender's Game.

Mainly my favourite authors are Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson, Stephen Baxter, Philip K Dick - the usual crowd. Do you have any recommendations?

Thinking of Dawkins made me think of Darwin's Radio which is a great read purely as a work of fiction, but is based around a fun premise of endogenous retroviruses triggering evolutionary jumps; basically a sci-fi explanation for punctuated equilibrium. His book Vitals was pretty good too, although the ending made me want to punch someone.

Greg Bear wrote a sf novel (very fanciful, of course, but with plenty of real science, too) about this very topic. Darwins's Radio. You can read it for a layman's explanation of the real process and with lots of very imaginative applications!