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The Space Opera Renaissance
01/12/2006 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
It might not have escaped your notice that we get a lot of books here to review at SFCrowsnest. Buy The Space Opera Renaissance in the USA - or Buy The Space Opera Renaissance in the UK  check out website: www.tor.com
It might not have escaped your notice that we get a lot of books here to review at SFCrowsnest. They come in all shapes and sizes and page counts. Even I looked with some intrepidation at this monster, especially when I started reading and realised the smaller print meant I was probably reading nearly double the page count which makes this book rather good value for money.
Editors David Hartwell and Kathryrn Cramer link the various 32 novelettes and some small novel-length stories on a discovery to find just what it is that makes a 'space opera', including comments from various writers used within. The most obvious thing is that it changes from decade to decade. The early pulp space opera was really no more than western substitute with technobabble added for local colour.
The science and not to mention heroics were on occasion even laughable. I mean, which hero would you trust, the one who would willingly die for the patrol or the one who stays alive to fight for the cause? From such origins, its not hard to see traces of early shows like the original 'Star Trek' evolving from such fare even compared to some of the early 50s TV space series. In some respects, at least from my perspective, there are similarities to the cyberpunk era, also covered in this book, in that the writers involved got too involved with cyberspace and not how such a system would function.
A lot of the time, 'space opera' is perceived as being the rather lower end of Science Fiction that would appeal to the masses more than the 'serious fan', yet looking at the writers here including Ursula LeGuin, David Brin, Samuel Delaney, Gregory Benford and Charles Stross: none of these are lightweight writers. Indeed, the same could be said of the rest as well.
A lot of the later writers just took the form and build into the aspects commonly associated with space opera with a lot more scientific savvy. If anything, 'space opera' focuses a lot more on characters than scientific elements with a lot more out in space and a tad military with some aspects. If the general populace perceives Science Fiction to only be about spaceships and aliens, then space opera fits them to a 'T'. Whether they will be caught only in this niche rather than see what else SF has to offer depends on how much more they want to read.
What I did find immensely satisfying from a reality chasing POV is the number of stories I hadn't read here. A Hani story, 'The Shobies' Story', from Ursula LeGuin, a Man-Kzin War story, 'The Survivor' from Donald Kingsbury and a Marrow story, 'The Ramoras', from Robert Reed. If nothing else, it keeps up the tradition that space opera readily lends itself to multi-book stories.
Anthologies such as this also enable you to sample authors you wouldn't normally have gotten around to read and was rather taken by Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Weatherman' and John C. Wright's 'Guest Law' even if their endings were rather too tightly abrupt.
Whether the inclusion of some small novels was appropriate or not is open to debate. I have to confess that reading a couple of the short stories one after the other left me more punch-drunk than paying attention to similarities between realities than the story as much as I should. If you read at a more leisurely pace then that shouldn't be a problem.
With so many authors here, you'll have to forgive me for not mentioning them all. I think this book is worthy of being included in your book list and hope that should TOR release this as a paperback that they consider the spine and have it split into two books. Logistically, it makes a lot more sense to have the hardback in this instance.
GF Willmetts
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