At last

What do you read when your energies are being sapped by work. Short stories seemed like the way to go. ASIM 30 didn't last very long - they never do - they are just too tasty. Looking for a larger meal that I could still take in manageable bites I turned to The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois. This collection has received some very good reviews and I can see why as it contains a whole bunch of stories that more or less hit the "space opera" button. Since the definition of most sub-genres is fuzzy, just like the whole genre really, it means I can't really quibble with the inclusion of stories. In any case I view terms like "space opera" as being descriptive devices enabling a common vocabulary rather than any form of strict categorisation rule. Under the circumstances all I can say is that this is a bunch of essentially plot driven stories with some degree of technologically oriented setting. Beyond that it gives a good look at some of the ways that science fiction can be expressed. Add to that, that the authors chosen are all well known in the field and you can say that the collection represents a good snapshot of the current commercial state of the art in this area.

I don't want to single out individual stories. They mostly range from good to excellent. Really there were only two that I didn't like all that much. Strange that these two were the first ones in the collection. Conventional wisdom is that you put strong stories up front to grab the reader's attention. I suspect that this is a case of my tastes being different from the anthologists. That would also tally up with these stories being praised by reviewers. An interesting thing personal taste, especially given the overall matching of my tastes that the rest of the collection represents.