Suddenly it feels as if every new book features an intimate story set in a huge amount of space.
Charlie Jane Anders summarized it best in March of this year, in her piece “Space Opera Fiction Isn’t Just Back. It’s Better Than Ever” for Wired, which examines why space opera has coalesced as a re-emergent sub-genre in the past two years.
The real world can be frightening right now. Space operas celebrate the idea that, come what may, humanity will one day conquer the stars and brave new worlds. It offers an escape, and, [Kameron] Hurley notes, a glimpse of more hopeful futures.
Space opera is also a sub-genre naturally adept at offering writers the most toys within the biggest tent, allowing authors to present any imagined surrounding as logical. Space opera allows for the lonely, the beautiful, and most of all the extreme. A star can die because a lover is slighted. A series of algorithms can become the only consciousness that remembers you. The injustice rampant in a civilization can grow so unwieldy it changes the laws of physics. Han Solo’s twerpy son can kill him in a featureless pit and it will make you feel worse than anything.
Space opera is back. Did it ever truly leave? How do we define it? This week, Tor.com and B&N’s Sci-Fi Blog will feature a series of essays and excerpts that look backwards into space opera classics and forwards into the new wave of stories. You can follow it all through the Space Opera Week index here.
First, let’s get a good primer on the sub-genre by exploring 10 Space Opera Universes.
Onward!
good call Stubby! Looking forward to this week
LMK if you’d like a guest article or interview. Happy to oblige either.
Personally, I don’t agree that space opera needs to focus on humanity at all. Rather, the stories, characters, adventure and the creativity are what makes it great. And let’s start moving away from humans being the center of everything. If we’re already leaving Earth, why not go all the way.
And while I’m here, I’ll second Jon’s offer. I’d love to see something from the author of the extremely well-reviewed Star Realms: Rescue Run.
And if you’d like to hear something from a new author taking a somewhat different approach to space opera, I’m available as well!
A guest article by Jon Del Arroz would probably bring in traffic from elsewhere. His sci-fi novel “Star Realms: Rescue Run” is well regarded by readers according to the Amazon reviews (one of which is mine–it’s a great book!)
I’d love to see an article or interview by Jon Del Arroz. He books are well received and well rated.
I think he would bring a lot to the table.
Hey, I did a core list for space opera not so long ago. And I don’t recall how links work here so have a naked URL:
http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/twenty-core-space-operas-every-true-sf-fan-should-have-on-their-shelves