June 3, 2024
Hugo Award winner Strahan (Twelve Tomorrows) spotlights 15 sophisticated, award-winning science fiction stories from the past decade that epitomize the best of space opera. He defines the genre as “romantic adventure... told on a grand scale,” set either in space or on a space station with high-stakes plot—and each of these perceptive and evocative stories perfectly fits the bill. In Tobias S. Buckell’s clever revenge tale, “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” after a galactic war, a sentient maintenance robot discusses free will with a cybernetically enhanced human from the fleet that surrendered. Yoon Ha Lee’s “Extracurricular Activities” delivers a lively adventure when assassin Jedao infiltrates a space station to rescue a former classmate and their crew, all while fighting pirates and evading a gene-altering substance. Aliette de Bodard’s pensive “Immersion” imagines a future in which a device provides wearers with an avatar and guidance on culturally acceptable appearance, language, and gestures, while obfuscating any sense of individuality, ethnicity, and heritage. Other stories feature vindictive clones, a planet-eating blob, outlaws, and space cults. Throughout, plentiful action, enigmatic and complex worldbuilding, sinister technology, and vast space vistas impress. It’s a gift for sci-fi lovers. Agent Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Agency.
July 1, 2024
These previously published stories from the last decade come from authors at the top of their game. The standouts in this excellent collection are Becky Chambers's "A Good Heretic" and T. Kingfisher's Hugo-winning novelette "Metal Like Blood in the Dark." Other stories that make this collection worth diving into include Arkady Martine's "All the Colors You Thought Were Kings," which manages to combine a coming-of-age story with political assassination, cultural upheaval, and the rueful knowledge that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Aliette de Bodard's Hugo-nominated "Immersion" is a heartbreaker about the tools of empire, the price of cultural appropriation, and fighting back with a little help from friends. Rounding out the collection are stories by Ann Leckie, Alastair Reynolds, Yoon Ha Lee, Lavie Tidhar, and Seth Dickinson, among others, including Charlie Jane Anders's utterly over-the-top, absolutely riotous and humorous romp, "A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime." VERDICT SF readers used to seeing space opera as multi-doorstop series will find a lot to love in this collection of skillful short works in a popular subgenre. Fans of the featured authors will love seeing their favorites' work in shorter forms.--Marlene Harris
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 20, 2024
Editor Strahan's introduction is an invaluable essay tracing the history of space opera as far back as 1890, defining what a space opera is, offering a selection of important authors from the various eras of the genre, and providing a framework for selecting the stories in this collection, which follows Strahan's previous two volumes The New Space Opera (2007) and The New Space Opera 2 (2009), co-edited with the late Gardner Dozois. The 14 short stories here, published since 2011, are written by an international selection of best-selling and award-winning authors. Tobias S. Buckell leads off with "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance," exploring an ethical dilemma for a robot (though they do not like that term) who traded free will to wander the galaxy in a bid for immortality and the importance of following one's programming in the aftermath of an epic space battle. The rest of the collection is a sampler for those looking for personal tales set in deep space. An excellent choice for fans of better-known space operas like Dune, Leviathan Wakes, or Guardians of the Galaxy.
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