The Space Opera Renaissance....

[Warped9]

Today I just picked up the soft cover trade edition of The Space Opera Renaissance edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time now. Later I also want to pick up the editors' earlier collection The Hard SF Renaissance. I'm also intrigued by the collection Federations edited by Lois McMaster Bujold.

I've only just begun reading the introduction and already I'm juiced with the information I'm getting. They're making a point of explaining space opera's origins and how the term was originally intended (basically denoted tripe hack work of low form) and yet in recent decades has come to mean something wholly different and more respectful. The editors note that when they sought definitions from various and diverse sources as to what space opera was they got widely divergent answers. They also found the same thing when they'd compiled their collection of hard SF fifteen years earlier.

It's interesting to note that in the past many SF writers wrote damned good space adventure stories yet avoided the label "space opera" as something derogatory. Yet today many of those same works are embraced as great space opera in grand tradition. Also many works today that are openly acknowledged and/or defined as space opera win Hugo awards and the like while such works in many decades past would never have been recognized as space opera.

What it really comes down to is shifting social and political and literary perspectives over the years indulging in a measure of historical revisionism. Fascinating stuff.

While at this early point I'm not interested in any spoilers I would be interested to know if anyone else has read this collection (and The Hard SF Renaissance as well) and if you'd share your thoughts here.

Generally I prefer SF novels as well as nonfiction speculative science and technology. But I also appreciate good short fiction as it can not only be enjoyable but can also introduce me to authors I might otherwise not be familiar with and/or hesitant to chance purchasing.

Two previous collections I've greatly enjoyed were Explorers and Worldbuilders, both edited by Gardner Dozois.

Anyone?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Bueller?

 

[Steve Roby]

Don't think I have that one yet, but I read about it in Locus and was intrigued. I may have to buy it, though I wonder why a few stories described in this review were included. And there are a few writers I don't much care for. Still...

I've picked up the first volume of The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, but haven't read it yet, and the second's already out.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I've been meaning to buy that.

I think your review just kind of sold me on finally doing it.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Back in the 70's (I think) Brian Aldiss edited a collection of Space Opera stories. He suggested that "Zirn Left Unguarded the Jenghik Palace in Flames Jon Westerly Dead" by Robert Sheckley encapsulated what Space Opera was all about. I'm glad to see it is included in this new collection.

 

[Warped9]

I found the first two stories to be eye openers. They are The Star Stealers by Edmond Hamilton from 1929 and The Prince Of Space from 1931.

Right off there is much familiar here if you’re a fan of Star Trek. So many familiar elements are apparent in The Star Stealers: an interstellar Federation of worlds, FTL interstellar cruisers charged to explore space and defend Federation interests against human and alien threats, and a massive extragalactic threat to the safety of Earth’s solar system and humanity. Even some of the dialogue seems familiar yet this is nearly forty years before Star Trek arrived on television. Finally there’s even a female second-in-command.

The other familiar aspect is the stories striving for a sense of wonder, to provoke the imagination to envision something far beyond the familiar.

The similarity rather ends there. The story is very plot driven and characterization is minimal to nonexistent. This story epitomizes what was once derided as hackneyed and tripe “space opera.” The writing is clumsy and irritatingly repetitive even by the standards of its day let alone today. The science aspects are almost wholly fantasy yet this isn’t really surprising since this was written decades before most anyone had any decent understanding of what space and worlds beyond Earth could really be like.

I still enjoyed it, though. Not for its literary quality or even for the story idea, but for its historical value. It shows that grand imagination was evident long before film and television f/x and contemporary CGI.

Jack Williamson’s effort is much more recognizable in terms of what passes for space opera today. The Prince Of Space strives for what many writers today win Hugos for: marrying space adventure with what we would recognize as hard SF or at least elements thereof. His introduction of a ringed artificial space habitat is perhaps the first instance of what would become so familiar as the space station of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yet Williamson also reached for a sense of wonder to stir the imagination. A telling distinction, though, is that Williamson’s writing is tighter, more deft and eminently more competent. It’s much more readable than Hamilton. And Williamson expresses his ideas in scientifically plausible terms. His envsioning of Mars is quite amusing, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully. Long before automated probes reached Mars to confirm and reveal what we now know of the planet Williamson got much of it right. He only gets it wrong on a few points yet it’s completely forgiveable for being written in a more innocent age.

In both cases, though, Hamilton and Williamson are quite similar in terms of scant characterization and focusing strongly on plot. And although they both use terminology that’s now quite dated (and even made up) many of their ideas still resonate in principle.

The third story is Leigh Brackett’s Enchantress Of Venus from 1949. I nearly fell off my chair! Brackett’s writing is really good. She has a wonderful command of vocabulary and economical yet very evocative narrative. She effortlessly conveys the idea of a very alien world that trancends the notion that alienness is inherently ugly (by human standards). Her portrayal of Venus possesses a mysterious and haunting alien beauty. It reads more like science fantasy primarily because the inclusion of scientific and technological elements are scant. But she creates an exotic world that you want to believe is possible even as you recognize it’s highly unlikely or even flat out impossible.

Yet the most basic thing that strikes me about this 1949 work is how contemporary it is. This could have been written today and it would stand effortlessly alongside anything of the like published today.

One charming aspect shared by all these stories is the innocent assumptions regarding the planets in our solar system as well as the misconceptions of the true scale of interplanetary and interstellar space. Measurements are often expressed in miles and miles per hour. And the solar system was as mysterious and unknown as we now envision the extrasolar planets being detected orbiting far off stars. Change the familiar names of the planets in these stories and they could just as easily pass for extrasolar planets being envisioned today.

The term “science fiction” was first coined by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 three years after he began publishing Amazing Stories and began circulating stories that have so much familiar to readers and audiences today. Many of these early stories would come to be dismissed a space opera to the point that many later writers (and television creators like Gene Roddenberry) would be uncomfortable with having their work labeled as such. They preferred the terms science fiction or space adventure and might have avoided setting out to deliberately write what could be quickly dismissed as space opera.

Times and perspectives have changed since the New Wave period of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when some writers and editors sought to redefine serious science fiction as more near future, more introverted and more character oriented. Most anything else was dismissed alongside space opera that was born and died in the pulps where they felt it belonged. Since then, however, beginning in the late ‘70s and unto today the term space opera is rarely invoked as a derogatory label. Today it’s generally seen as something more positive. As I mentioned at the beginning of the thread changing perspectives now praise early work as space opera that the original writers never intended as such.

For myself I understand why the term can still have negative connotations. I think’s it’s the word “opera” and that it can connotate the similarity with soap opera. And it’s why I, too, prefer the term space adventure. At this point, though, it’s become a matter of degree and semantics wholly dependent on what exactly you’re trying to convey. The terms have become practically interchangeable.

I’m really looking forward to the next stories.

 

[Warped9]

After a little more than a week’s reading I’ve gotten more than three quarters through this book and it’s been a mixed bag, although I will say my impressions are generally positive.

Overall these are good writers and it’s mostly either individual style and/or story that manages to turn me off. I found only a few stories uninteresting: Cordwainer Smith’s “The Game Of Rat And Dragon,” Samuel R. Delany’s “Empire Star,” David Brin’s “Temptation.” Iain M. Bank’s “A Gift From The Culture” and Colin Greenland’s “The Well Wishers.” Of those only the stories of David Brin and Samuel Delany I was unable to finish reading. They simply couldn’t hold my interest.

At this point the two contemporary writers that have made the greatest impression on me are Lois McMaster Bujold and Peter F. Hamilton, to the point that I’m interested in looking up something of their work in novel size. I like Bujold’s writing and she created interesting characters and situations. Her protagonist was interesting in that he was far from being the model hero and yet he wasn’t an antihero either. Dan Simmons “Orphans Of The Helix” is set in his Hyperion universe and I found this noteworthy in its depiction of a far future setting and situation.

But it’s Peter F. Hamilton that had me exclaiming aloud. His story “Escape Route” hit an excellent mix of story and writing style. This was far future space adventure yet told with a hard SF flavouring. And to boot it was a story of exploration and discovery by unconventional adventurers (commercial traders) mixed up with mercenaries with conflicting agends. Good stuff and the best thing I’ve read so far in this collection, to my tastes anyway.

Next was a David Weber story featuring his Honor Harrington character. I’ve read Weber’s work before, but the subject matter was independent of his Honor Harrington materiel. I generally like his writing style and general approach to character and depiction of action and situation. My overall favourite novel of his to date has been Path Of The Fury which I read some years ago. I admit that I stayed away from his HH books primarily because I find it hard to accept that type of universe: a far future where humanity is ruled by some King or Emperor and the heroes serve in some “royal” starfaring navy overseeing a benevolent empire. I know it’s a popular setting but it generally doesn’t work for me. I’ve only been able to swallow it a couple of times such as in Larry Niven’s The Mote In God’s Eye and Walter Hunt’s The Dark Wing. Weber’s “Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington” is just as readible and accessible as anything of his I’ve read before. That said I didn’t find it quite as interesting as other work of his I’ve read. This HH story is straightforward military SF with much of the usual familiar elements and very few surprises. I can partly see why this series is popular because in a sense the science fiction aspects are on the light side—the story could just as easily been set aboard an eighteenth century Royal Navy warship or a WWII U.S. Navy destroyer—which is exactly what it’s supposed to be. I don’t mean this as a criticism, only that there isn’t enough science fiction meat in it for my tastes. That said the characterizations, the character interactions and the action passages are quite good.

Catherine Asaro’s “Aurora In Four Voices” is something like romantic adventure with reversed roles. In this case it’s a man held captive on an alien world and a woman who comes to rescue him.

I’ve never cared for cyberpunk and that’s partly why I just couldn’t get through R. Garcia y Robertson’s “Ring Rats.” I tried to keep focused, but my mind kept drifting away. The Matrix is pretty much the only cyberpunk like thing I’ve ever been able to enjoy.

On the other hand Allen Steele’s “The Death Of Captain Future” was rather fun in its own way. Early 20th century space opera romanticism butts up against the grittiness of contemporary hard SF. There’s some decent allegory here in depicting that “larger than life” can be a matter of perspective. A lot of us would like to feel that our actions can matter. A lot of us—particularly in our youth—like to imagine being seen as something better or grander than we are. Some never grow out of it. We often don’t see or realize the degree of hard work, routine and even mundanity of those that do make a difference. That’s why film, television and literature is brimming with larger than life cops, lawyers, doctors, soldiers and astronauts—we can live vicariously through them. And the real irony is that usually those real people don’t see themselves as we feel a need to see them.

It took me awhile to realize that I had already read Donald Kingsbury’s “The Survivor” several years ago. It’s one of many Man/Kzin Wars stories set in Larry Niven’s Known Space universe published in a collection of books about The Man/Kzin Wars. The story is told primarily through the perspective of an unusauly cowardly yet highly intelligent Kzin and his part in the wars. It’s not bad and very readable, but I found myself losing patience reading it through a second time. It’s also rather disturbing to read the depiction of humans being brutalized as disposable lab animals.

Sarah Zettel’s “Fool’s Errand” was more cyberpunk and I only got through it because it was short.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Shobies’ Story” bored me right off only a few pages in. I passed on the rest though maybe I’ll try again later.

Robert Reed’s “The Remoras” is one of his Great Ship stories. Not much adventure here but I’m interested in learning more about his Great Ship universe because I very much enjoyed his novels Marrow and The Well Of Stars.

I've picked up the first volume of The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, but haven't read it yet, and the second's already out.

I tried The New Space Opera Vol. 1 and was generally disappointed. I'm liking the Space Opera Renaissance much better overall.

 

[Steve Roby]

Hmm... I'm becoming less interested in this one, though I suspect our tastes don't overlap a great deal. I didn't care much for the Weber and Bujold I read ages ago, and I like Cordwainer Smith and cyberpunk. On the other hand, I never cared for R. Garcia y Robertson's writing style.

This really gives the impression of being at least as much about military SF as it is about space opera, and I'm just not very interested in military SF, or for that matter the kinds of stuff that Baen Books publishes (several Baen authors seem to be included in this book).

 

[Warped9]

^^ What this collection (as well as The New Space Opera) is showing is that the "new" space opera can be rather broad and allow many things under its umbrella.

I still may give The New Space Opera Vol. 2 a look, but after I've picked up and gotten through The Hard SF Renaissance and a couple of novels on my radar.