Space Opera

Mars #3 - Plotters and Shooters

by Rich Horton (Editor), Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear

More than five-hundred pages, over one-quarter of a million words... Space Opera spans a vast range of epic interstellar adventure stories told against a limitless cosmos filled with exotic aliens, heroic characters, and incredible settings. A truly stellar compilation of tales from one of the defining streams of science fiction, old and new, written by a supernova of genre talent.

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction

576 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2007

Reviews

[Khalid Abdul-Mumin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Knight of Chains, The Deuce of Stars by Yoon Ha Lee:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"The tower is a black spire upon a world whose only sun is a million starships wrecked into a mass grave."

This is my first read from this author and I have to say I was totally spell-bound. It's amazing how in such a short number of words she could evocate feelings of infinite spans of space and time while developing an interesting plot and cool characters.

The tale is told in a poignant prose --

"He cannot remember ever setting foot outside the tower; it has a number of windows almost beyond reckoning, which open and close at his desire, and which reveal visions terrible and troubling. Poetry-of-malice written into the accretion disks of black holes. Moons covered with sculptures of violet-green fungus grown in the hollowed-out bodies of prisoners of war. Planets with their seas boiled dry and the fossils bleached upon alkaline shores. These and other things he can see just by turning his head and wishing it so."

This a story about a Tower on a haunted world with a graveyard of a million spaceships as a sun.
It thoroughly integrates the reader into the plot and ultra imaginative world building.

It's about the confrontation of the warden/guardian of said tower with an exile War-Lord/Heroine that is badass.

Her Machineries of Empire trilogy has been on my tbr so I thought to start with this as an intro and I'll have to say; it is absolutely stunning, highly recommend it

"Her most notable feature, aside from her reputation, is not her height, or the gloves made from skinned fractals, or even the sword-of-treatises knotted at her side. It is her eyes, whose color cannot be discerned in any light but corpselight. In her eyes you can see a map forever drawing and redrawing itself, a map that knows where your flaws may be found, a map that knows how your desires may be drowned"

The Two Sisters in Exile by Aliette de Bodard:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Sentient ships and war, a far future read about violence, war and its justifications. A nice and well written story by a new-to-me author whom I shall endeavor to read more from.


Hideaway by Alastair Reynolds:
⭐⭐⭐⭐

A classic far future Reynolds about a cohort of humanity fleeing from Alien cyborg hybrids. He talks about some cool concepts on dark matter (called shadow) reminiscent of Absolution Gap.
A very nice read.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly enjoyable exploration of where the 'Space Opera' genre has gone, and how it's developed...

*****“The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars” by Yoon Ha Lee (Lightspeed)
Remarkably excellent. Very reminiscent of a more-poetic Iain Banks.
A warrior/strategist arrives to pits her wits against an ancient gamesmaster. What happens in this small space and time will have ramifications on a much larger scale, as Lee gives us a glimpse of a vertiginous universe...

****“The Wreck of the Godspeed” by James Patrick Kelly (Between Worlds)
A young pilgrim wins an essay contest; the prize to spend a year (or the option of two) aboard a legendary exploration ship. However, the ship is eccentric, to say the least, and the other passengers are worried... Well crafted, good characters, and an interesting take on the ramifications of matter-transportation. The end felt a little rushed and inconclusive, though.

****“Saving Tiamaat” by Gwyneth Jones (The New Space Opera)
This was the second 'Ki-An' story I've read by Gwyneth Jones. The first ('The Ki-Anna') was pretty good, but this one was excellent. A story of a diplomat assigned to be the 'minder' for the two foreign leaders of one side in an ethnic civil war, the events, unfolding, reflect on the greater truths of the unpleasant necessities of politics, and an invitation to consider the ethics of choosing the lesser evil.

***“Six Lights Off Green Scar” by Gareth L. Powell (Aphelion)
A space prospector, scarred by an earlier experience, has been in semi-retirement - but now a journalist has convinced him to go on one last trek. His past, however, will come back to haunt him... violently.

***“Glory” by Greg Egan (The New Space Opera)
A pair of archaeologists adopt alien bodies to examine the remnants of a long-dead civilization. But no matter how careful they are, their work and their presence may have a destabilizing influence.

***“The Mote Dancer and the Firelife” by Chris Willrich (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Haunted by the spectre of her dead partner, a spacer seeks some kind of conclusion in the midst of an alien - and violent - culture. Will she find what she's bargaining for - or his her quest more of a deathwish? Interesting alien elements here, which I'd be interested to explore more deeply.

**“On Rickety Thistlewaite” by Michael F. Flynn (Analog)
Eh, this one was not for me. The bulk of the story seems to be trying to play on ethnic-stereotypes for humor (Chinese and Irish, in space), but then the end goes for the tragically sentimental, and is inconclusive, on top of it.

****“War Without End” by Una McCormack (Conflicts)
An aging war criminal agrees to an interview with an elderly archivist from the side he's always considered his enemies. Although his ideas have not changed, he is drawn to the opportunity to record his side of the story for posterity. Really well done, and all-too-believable. Deals with harsh issues with sensitivity.

*****“Finisterra” by David Moles (F&SF)
Caught in an untenable situation, an engineer agrees to a job that she knows will not be strictly legal... but once out on what turns out to be a poaching expedition killing a protected alien species, her ethical compunctions are stretched to the limit. Poignant, complex, and very relevant...

****“Seven Years from Home” by Naomi Novik (Warriors)
Two planets are in the midst of civil war. The way of life of a people is threatened. Into this conflict comes an foreign agent, willing to help, to divulge information about the other side. But little do her new acquaintances realize that her agenda is not as selfless as it seems, and that she is working with counterparts on the other side of the conflict. Really nicely done, with well-drawn emotional complexity.

***“Plotters and Shooters” by Kage Baker (Fast Forward 1)
Revenge of the Nerds meets Ender's Game - with a twist. Fun, but not Baker's best, in my opinion.

****“The Muse of Empires Lost” by Paul Berger (Twenty Epics)
Jemmi, a beggar child on a decaying orbital habitat, has the ability to bend other people's minds to her will. Only one other person in existence has similar powers - the former ruler of an interstellar empire. He has dreams of restoring his former glory - but gets more than he bargained for when he tries to recruit Jemmi to his cause.

****“Boojum” by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette (Fast Ships and Black Sails)
Black Alice is a pirate, on a sentient, organic spaceship. However, she's a pretty lowly pirate. Stuck down in engineering, she doesn't even usually get to know what the captain's planning or how a battle might be going... She doesn't care much for her coworkers, though she does occasionally dream of becoming one of the top engineers - the ones the ship actually listens to. Nice, with an unexpectedly satisfying outcome.

***“Lehr Rex” by Jay Lake (Forbidden Planets)
A pretty overt homage to Blade Runner here, in a story of a team sent to investigate a lost mission... with a 'planet-busting' bomb. The story's OK... I'm not really sure what the point of one of the character's sexist comments at the beginning of the story was - they go unexamined, don't really add anything, and aren't relevant to the rest of the events...

****“Cracklegrackle” by Justina Robson (The New Space Opera 2)
A journalist with a missing daughter agrees to interview an alien 'psychic' detective. Outwardly, he claims to believe the alien's abilities are a fraud - but he agrees all too quickly to have his daughter's mysterious disappearance investigated. The outcome is emotionally wrenching. Very much a crime mystery, with an almost incidental sci-fi setting.

***“Hideaway” by Alastair Reynolds (Interzone)
A group of humans are desperate refugees from the aliens who have been 'cleansing' the galaxy of our race. They seem to be facing a difficult choice: die fighting, or hide, opting to 'upload' themselves into a computer program and continue to experience a virtual existence. But then, a third opportunity presents itself.

***“Isabel of the Fall” by Ian R. MacLeod (Interzone)
In an artificial habitat, strict roles have sprung up, dictated by dogmatic religion. In the face of this, two young women, priestesses of different cults, secretly happen to meet and become friends - in the process breaking all the rules. The story aims for high tragedy, but I felt like it tried a little too hard.

***“Precious Mental” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s)
This was OK, I suppose. It didn't really grab me, emotionally. This long story (it's a novella) is set in Reed's 'Great Ship' universe, which is new to me. Most people are cyborgs, traveling between stars, living unimaginably long lifespans. But even for this world, Pamir has lived a long life, leaving his former identity behind and living incognito as a lowly mechanic. However, one being may be suspicious - enough so that Pamir is kidnapped and shanghaied into working on an alien propulsion drive. It makes some sense that a story of such epic scope might feel a bit leisurely and unhurried - but I ended up just feeling a bit blasé about the whole thing.

****“Two Sisters in Exile” by Aliette de Bodard (Solaris Rising 1.5)
A young woman from a proud and violent warrior culture has been sent to return the hull of a sentient ship to its people; to explain that it was killed by accident and avoid causing a diplomatic incident. She disdains the culture she visits as peaceful and weak - but despite herself is impressed with what she sees upon her visit. I loved the ending here - the conclusions that the main character comes to are perfectly in line with her culture - but it's left up to the reader to wonder whether or not she is correct.

***“Lode Stars” by Lavie Tidhar (The Immersion Book of SF)
A tale set in an odd far-future full of biotech, uploaded ghosts, and religious worship of black holes... (sort of). A woman seeks to investigate the mysteries that led to her father's death. (maybe). Original, but doesn't feel quite like a finished piece.

****“Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Clarkesworld)
A military general (who may be a posthumous clone) is sent on a mission to try to convince her ex-wife to reconsider her goals and actions as a seditionist leader. Gradually, the reasons that the woman has decided to rebel against the power structure that her former partner belongs to are revealed - with complex implications as far as ethics and interpersonal relationships... The point here is to raise questions, but I did wish the ending was more conclusive...

****“The Tear” by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
Beautiful, beautiful writing here. A pleasure to read just for the poetry of McDonald's language. Not only that, but a strikingly original portrayal of two very interesting cultures from the panhuman diaspora. All that said - I'm not positive the structure here completely worked. I loved the set-up, and the relationship between two young men who are forced to grow apart due to elements of their culture. I loved the introduction of the nano-aliens, and the results of first contact. However, the piece keeps going, expanding scope and changing focus - and I'm not sure the latter part meshes perfectly with the first part. I still really enjoyed it.

ARC provided by NetGalley - and greatly appreciated! As always, my opinions are unaffected by the source of the book.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horton opens this enormous collection with a new-to-me YH Lee, "The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars". 5 stars, and I reviewed it separately here, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...# . One of his/her two best shorts, I think.

This is a must-read collection for space-opera fans. All the stories are at least readable, and some are great. Not to be missed.

The go-to review is Althea Ann's, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I don't have any serious differences with her opinions, and thank her again for a fine, detailed review.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of very good stories and a few excellent ones. Recommended.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did get some reader fatigue getting through this huge anthology, but found very few outright duds (as noted below)

Standouts first:
"Knight of chains, deuce of stars" by Yoon Ha Lee. Chiefly for the prose: "a ship of ice and iron and armageddon engines." "The liquor effervesces and leaves querulous sparks in the air, spelling out hectic inequalities and the occasional exclamatory couplet." "They first notice the warden's gun. It is made of living bone and barbed wire and smoke-silver axioms...and along the barrel is an inscription in whatever language your heart answers to: I never miss."

"On Rickety Thistlewaite," by Michael F. Flynn. Celto-Chinese setting, much tongue in cheek: "He clapped his hands and a servant struck a hanging gong. 'Bring forth the crumpets and scones!'"

"Boojum," by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. A space traveling whale, spawned in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant and currently inhabited by large crew of human pirates. Good times!

"Isabel of the Fall," by Ian McLeod. Poetic style, featuring caller who sings up an arcology's dawn and a librarian/dancer/beekeeper: "It's the same with us Librarians. Our dance is a ritual we use for signalling where a particular book is to be found."

"Precious Mental," by Robert Reed. "On the whole," said the Kajjas, "I believe that strength is our universe's most overprized trait."

"The tear," by Ian McDonald. A mini-novel, beginning on a water world with physically schizoid aliens and taking on cosmic scope by the end. The end, though, is kind of a long time coming.

Less memorable: "Wreck of the Godspeed," "Saving Tiamaat," "Six lights off green scar" (noirish, too wordy), "Glory" (Readable, but about suppressing a glorious mathematical insight in order to preserve the Galactic status quo. Where's the joy in that?), "Cracklegrackle," (unreadable), "Silent bridge, pale cascade," (the only story in the lot that seemed "slight" to me...and which definitely ended too soon.)

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of Rich Horton's anthology Space Opera was expertly designed by one Sherin Nicole to reveal precisely what's inside. The title is big, bold and unambiguous. The colors are unfailingly vivid—the contrast between orange text and blue background (a painting by Scott Grimando, of a great starship sailing over a city-sized satellite in orbit above a vast blue planet) simply pops from the paperboard.

Space opera combines the sweep and grandeur of scientific discovery—its scope is potentially unlimited in both space and time—with the intense and intimate passions of human beings. As such, space opera may be the truest expression of science fiction—the subgenre that can evoke most fully that "sense of wonder" for which many rightly pine:

So he spent hours and years immersed in the great annual eisteddfod of the Barrant-Hoj, where one of the early generations of seed ships (early in that it was seed of the seed of the seed of the first flowering of mythical Earth) had been drawn into the embrace of a fat, slow hydrocarbon-rich gas giant and birthed a brilliant, brittle airborne culture, where blimp-cities rode the edge of storms wide enough to drown whole planets and the songs of the contestants—gas-bag-spider creatures huge as reefs, fragile as honeycomb—belled in infrasonic wavefronts kilometers between crests and changed entire climates. It took Barrant-Hoj two hominiform lifetimes to circle its sun—the Anpreen had chanced upon the song-spiel, preserved it, hauled it out of the prison of gas giant's gravity well, and given it to greater Clade.
—"The Tear," by Ian McDonald, p.544

If that passage makes you shiver, even a little bit—or a bit more than a little bit—then you too might just be susceptible to space opera's allure.

But the style is not without its flaws. To stretch humanity over so expansive a canvas, your brushstrokes must be broader, your colors more intense, more lurid, than reality. As in Earthbound musical opera, such exaggerations can be offputting. It is to editor Horton's credit, I think, that the stories selected here, by and large, do not let their libretti obscure the impact of their music.

The first three stories in Space Opera are especially strong—the unconventional word juxtapositions in Yoon Ha Lee's "The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars"; the personality-bending generation ships in James Patrick Kelly's "The Wreck of the Godspeed"; and the twisted alien diplomacy of Gwyneth Jones' "Saving Tiamaat" make a stirring introduction.

After that, frequently-reprinted favorites like "Finisterra" (David Moles), "Plotters and Shooters" (Kage Baker) and "Precious Mental" (Robert Reed—this is the only story I didn't actually reread in this volume, since I so very recently read it in one of Dozois' annual anthologies) appear alongside lesser-known tales from major authors like Alastair Reynolds ("Hideaway") and the late Jay Lake ("Lehr, Rex," one which took me a shamefully long while to unravel); entries by names I don't see enough of, like Justina Robson ("Cracklegrackle") and Aliette de Bodard ("Two Sisters in Exile"); and high-quality stories from authors entirely unfamiliar to me, like "War without End" by Una McCormack and "Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.

The stories inside Space Opera do all share the same sense of epic scale, the same sort of dynamic characters, individuals both dwarfed by and rising to the challenges of their environments, but each author takes the tropes of the subgenre in very different directions. The result is a harmonious whole, possibly the best of the string of recent anthologies I've recently read. It's the kind of book you might well want with you, next time you're marooned on an asteroid or trying to escape the gravitational field of a neutron star...

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's taking me quite a while to read through this, and I think my time's now up, but the third I did read was eye-opening. The space opera genre is far wider than I'd initially thought, and the variety of stories offered here was an education in itself: everything from space exploration to alien scientists and abandoned colonists.

I really regret that the ARC wasn't available in a Kindle format, otherwise I would have finished it in a few days, but reading an EPUB on my phone (when you can't resize the text for the smaller screen) just had too many limitations. I hope to come back to this later.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[S.B. (Beauty in Ruins) · Rating 3 out of 5]

As we pass the halfway mark of the year, we find the first of the new 'best of' anthologies flooding the market. Currently I have 4 monster tomes that I've been reading through, jumping around between favorite authors and intriguing titles. I'm not one to read an anthology from cover-to-cover, but I try to give the bulk of the stories a fair shot.

First up we have Space Opera, edited by Rich Horton, which offers up 576 pages of space opera science fiction from authors both familiar and new. I have a definite soft spot for space opera, having grown up on the likes of Star Wars, Buck Rogers, and the original Battlestar Galactica, so this was a must-read for me, especially since there were so many instantly recognizable authors.

Ironically, while it was the fun, light, action-packed space opera that I was looking forward to here, what really struck me was how powerful (and entertaining) the political and social themes really were. There's a lot of sexism and racism buried in these stories, not to mention some deep exploration of what it means to interfere with other civilizations, regardless of the reason or justification. Environmental and religious themes are prevalent in many of the stories as well, and while I often find that particular nice a little overbearing and heavy-handed, it was actually handled very well within these stories.

Favorites for me in Horton's collection were THE KNIGHT OF CHAINS, THE DEUCE OF STARS by Yoon Ha Lee (a great story of strategy and gamesmanship), SAVING TIAMAAT by Gwyneth Jones (a fascinating exploration of the ethics of civil war, and the moral choices involved in choosing sides), FINISTERRA by David Moles (an exploration of the ethical dilemmas involved in hunting an endangered alien species), SEVEN YEARS FROM HOME by Naomi Novik (another that explored the ethics and agendas of taking sides in a civil war), BOOJUM by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette (with a different sort of take on deep-space pirates), HIDEAWAY by Alastair Reynolds (a tale of aliens, ethnic cleansing, and one last chance for salvation), and TWO SISTERS IN EXILE by Aliette de Bodard (which actually made me care about the friendship between faiths).

Space Opera was higher concept and less pulp than I expected, but I think Horton did a fantastic job of choosing stories that did something powerful within the bounds of the genre.


Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins

[Penelope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought it because I liked the cover (yeah, I'm just that easy:"]) ... and space operas.
I'm glad I did.

My personal favorites were:
- The knight of chains, the deuce of stars by Yoon Ha Lee (beautifully written!)
- Lehr, Rex by Jay Lake

Overall a pretty cool collection of stories!

[Josie Boyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read a few anthologies lately, this is the most consistently solid one i have read in ages. The first three stories are worth the purchase alone, and a number of the others are also great. No duds at all.

[Reuben Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant!

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather hit-or-miss anthology. I got about halfway through before moving on; too many of the stories lacked good payoff or resolution, and several were much closer to fantasy set in space than to space opera or science fiction.

There were a couple good entities, and probably several more past the point where I stopped. The quality was too uneven, though. Stick to Dozois's New Space Opera anthologies.

This book also had slightly more than its fair share of typos and had an annoying habit of putting different characters' dialogue on the same line.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty great overall. The quality of the stories was high throughout. On starting this collection, I wasn't sure how the authors would manage to collapse the length of traditional space opera into short story form, but almost overwhelmingly they did. I really felt the grand scale of the created universes, and in so few words, it was pretty amazing.

The book is pretty long though. I'm on the fence for four stars or five, but I think its just because of the length.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who like the Sf outside the solar system

I am old enough to remember the science fiction of the 1960s, when it seemed every author was looking to the stars. It was great to feel that old sense of wonder again. Four stars? No anthology is perfect not even one as good as this one

[Adam Zabell · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the spirit of most (all?) anthologies, some of these spoke to me and others weren't my cuppa. Great as a survey of what people are saying in the genre. Could have used better editing, since I kept getting tripped out of the plot because of formatting and spelling.

[Ray Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent selection of stories, mostly "new space opera", some I had not seen before.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ready only a couple of the short stories, so my rating is based on those. It is not based on the entire collection.

[De · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not read all the stories, Like most anthologies they are a mixed bag. I enjoyed the ones I read.