space opera

[coraa]

I'm a huge sucker for space opera, by which I mean science fiction with lots of adventures on a grand scale, usually involving some combination of space travel, space stations, and aliens. They usually focus more on story and character than on the technology, and in fact it's generally just fine to use a lot of handwavium in space opera. (I will be honest: I'd rather get handwavium than five pages of stultifying technical detail. The red matter in the Star Trek reboot didn't even bother me, so, y'know.)

I think of the Vorkosigan books as space opera, along with Cherryh's Known Space books, and the Ender's Game series. The Honor Harrington books are, too, although like the Vorkosigan books they blend over into milSF. And of course I love Star Wars, Babylon 5, Star Trek, Cowboy Bebop, and Battlestar Galactica, all of which are space opera-y.

(I also like planetary romance, which is a similar thing but largely confined to a single world: think Darkover, or Pern.)

But I've had a hard time finding written space opera recently (in movies and TV, it's all over the place). I see a lot of books about the Singularity (the Singularity bores me to tears, not gonna lie), and dystopian SF (particularly in YA), and hard SF, and milSF that is too mil to be my thing, but not a lot of space opera.

Is it not being published much right now, or am I just missing things? I would love you to recommend me good written space opera, especially if it's fairly recently-written. Short stories or novels are fine. Manga is also fine. Strong characters are really important to me, and if you rec me stuff with good female characters I will love you forever. But mostly: help me find some space opera! (Or planetary romance. That works, too.)

(Feel free to link this if you know someone else who might have a better idea.)

Comments

[ajk]

Some series and books that I've recently read that don't appear on your list above and which are, in my judgment, space opera:

(Books marked with an asterisk are recent, and books marked with a double asterisk are forthcoming.)

The Liaden series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller is a space opera / romance crossover, with different emphasis in different books. There is little outright military stuff. The books are, in one possible reading order: Local Custom, Scout's Progress, Mouse and Dragon*, Conflict of Honors, Agent of Change, Carpe Diem, Plan B, I Dare, Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, Balance of Trade, Fledgling*, Saltation*, Ghost Ship**. Some of the books are currently out of print, but omnibus reissues are in progress.

Grand Central Arena* by Ryk E. Spoor is a straightforward, old-fashioned space opera.

David Drake's Leary series (With the Lightnings, Lt. Leary Commanding, The Far Side of the Stars, The Way to Glory, Some Golden Harbor, When the Tide Rises, In the Stormy Red Sky*, What Distant Deeps**) is in my opinion very good space opera but, judging from your post, it's probably too military for your tastes.

(I could go on with the list, but I'll see what response these draw:-)

[rivkat]

I think of many of Elizabeth Moon's books as fitting into the space opera category. Further out, but possibly also still satisfying, are several of C.S. Friedman's books, like Madness Season.

[donaithnen]

Oh yeah, i've been reading/listening to Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series and have found it pretty good. (In fact i think i may have mentioned it to you at some point earlier coraa)

Also agree very much on "Madness Season" (how can i of all people not thought to have recommend that? =) And while we're on the subject of C.S. Friedman, "This Alien Shore" is totally awesome space opera as well.

[oyceter]

Woe, I think all my stuff is OOP!

I really like Scott Westerfeld's space opera Succession (also in two books as The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds), which has fighter pilots, zombies, lesbian alien lovers, and much more! When I got it it was going OOP, but I think it may have been reissued... It starts really slowly because of the POV switching, but I found sticking around worthwhile.

This is also old and OOP, but a lot of people like Jane Emerson's City of Diamond. It's part of an unfinished series, which is annoying, but has character and politics. I don't remember much of it, but Mely and Yoon and Rachel all rec it.

And you may have already read them, but Ann Maxwell's SF is very fun but sadly OOP. (She now writes romances as Elizabeth Lowell.) The prose is very purple, but her worldbuilding is on crack, and her gender stuff in her SF is much better than in her romances. My fav is Dead God Dancing, although Jaws of Menx has an unintentionally hilarious melting disease and the unfinished Fire Dancer series has UST like whoa.

Manga-wise, the OOP Planet Ladder is a blend of space opera and Japanese mythology (Princess Kaguya), and it also has a robot chicken and an unintentionally hilarious disease that involves randomly falling off body parts.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden series is space opera, the handwavy kind that's more or less fantasy romance with spaceships. Mostly the books aren't in print right now, for reasons of multiple publishing disasters, although Baen Books is working on a reprint. Let's see, how do I describe it to you?

Terrans are human, more or less. Liadens, while interfertile with humans, are aliens who are shorter than humans and have a culture of very complicated and very rigorous honor issues. Liaden men, especially those from the very powerful, incredibly wealthy and really eccentric Clan Korval, keep falling in love with Terran women who can kick ass. Oh, yes, there are also wizards and lifebonds and mercenary troops and sentient turtles and a gazillion-year-old psychic Tree. Don't expect Great Literature or complete internal continuity. Do expect good banter, hurt/comfort, adventure, interesting cross-cultural encounter and delightful brainless fluff.

Start with Agent of Change, then Conflict of Honors, Carpe Diem, Plan B and I Dare. There are more books in the series, but they're not part of the main plot sequence and they're generally not quite as good.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I should note that the series began in 1988 but Lee and Miller are still writing in the universe, if that counts as recent.

There's also Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series, which is delicious space opera, consistently providing strong women characters and high Bechdel passes, and also extremely handwavy as far as science, culture and, er, plot consistency goes. One of her later books had me throwing it across the room and saying, "Wait a second, wasn't there a war in the first chapter? What happened to it?"

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

paper copies may be out of print, but Baen's good at cheap DRM-free ebooks. E.g. five books for $25
http://www.webscription.net/p-599-korvals-legacy-collection.aspx
or $5 for individual
http://www.webscription.net/s-117-sharon-lee.aspx?pagenum=2
No free books for those authors, but they do have sample chapters.

AFAIK Liadens (also Yxtrang) are basically human. Liad isn't their ultimate homeworld, they arrived as refugees from an older human(?) empire. I've seen doubt among fans whether "Terra" in the stories is the actual 'real' Earth, biological homeworld and such; the Crystal Foo books make things confusing.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Sharon and Steve have lj accounts. Sharon is rolanni. They've been reissuing volumes of the series, and just did a twitterblast of excerpts from the new one.

She posts info on the series regularly, and tells people where to find it.

[jmpava.livejournal.com]

I believe I have a space opera short story anthology at home you haven't looked at yet.

This reminds me even more that you REALLY need to read Foundation. I think, being Asimov, that you are expecting it to be hard sci-fi. You would be wrong. They just didn't have the term back then ;->

(The robot books too, which are more... mystery then hard sci-fi. Not including 'i, robot', becuase I don't).

[jmpava.livejournal.com]

Re-reading the post, I missed the 'recent' part altogether. Yeah, that's, um, anything but. But you should still read it ;->

[sthaddeus.livejournal.com]

The Stars, Like Dust. Which coraa will hate because it's so ridicuously sexist, but worth a mention.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Old-fashioned (because old) but check out C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories. The gender roles are... uh... old-fashioned, but the atmosphere is fantastic and there's some interesting constructions of masculinity deconstructions, as in the very end of "Shambleau."

Similarly, Leigh Brackett's short stories. Grand old-fashioned space opera pulp, again with old-fashioned gender roles though.

ETA: RECENT. Oops!

Wait, I have a good relatively recent one. Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire (I think published in 2 books in the US). Rousing actiony space opera with zombies and cool ideas and characters of color and an incredibly sweet lesbian romance. Negative: the ending is a bit WTF and made me wonder if a sequel had been intended but never written.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Not THAT recent (1980s) but still good: Ann Maxwell's Fire Dancer and two (less good but enjoyable) sequels. The last two survivors of their exploded planet travel through a very densely worldbuilt, colorful galaxy, helping people, searching for a new home and other survivors, and experiencing tons of sexual tension.

ETA: The heroine is a strong female character with fire powers, the hero is supportive of her total badassery, and there is a logical in-story reason for the enormous amount of sexual tension and why they don't just pounce and make out.

[oyceter]

Haha! I just left recs for the same (and the Westerfeld) in the DW post!

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire books seem to meet all your criteria:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Empire%27s_Fall

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

I don't have any ideas (I love watching scifi, but hate reading it), but since you have so many more bookish folks on your friends page than me, I'm wondering if next time I need book recs I should ask you to post my request in your LJ rather than posting it in mine! ;)

[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

Well, this suggestion most assuredly does not follow especially if it's fairly recently-written, but The Series That Started It All was E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, written in the late '30's and early '40s. And lost out to Asimov's Foundation series in the Hugo competition for Best All-Time Series.

Some of the technology is obviously dated (there is some discussion of vacuum tubes of a particular design), but the plot is fast-paced, with strong characterizations, some interesting alien races, nasty humans, Great Battle Scenes, True Heroes who most assuredly do not have an ego to match, and, well, it's your basic story of Good v. Evil, and good pretty much wins by the end of the set.

I haven't seen a full set for sale in quite a while; I bought mine, lord, has it been 30 years ago?, so you'll have to do a bit of searching in good used-book stores.

It was the first great Space Opera series, and bears the same relation to following Space Operas that C.S. Forester's Hornblower series does to Napoleonic-era British sea stories: many succeeding books were bad, some were so bad as to be unintentionally funny, and only a few were as good. Smith's work was often satirized, as was Forester's; it is, admittedly, fairly easy to do so - but the originals still retain a lot of their charm for me, and when I want something that's just a good ripping yarn, I look to Smith.

(In order of plot: Triplanetary, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, Children of the Lens. There are works by later authors, none of which I've read, and one ancillary novel by Smith (The Vortex Blasters) which, well, is unreadable. Stick with Smith's originals, and you should do fine.)

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

Best line from the Lensman series has to be:

"She was a slick chick with a classy chassis".

;-)

But given your love for B5, bellwethr says you'd probably be able to overlook awesome lines like the one I quoted above.

[bellwethr.livejournal.com]

The Lensmen series certainly is the progenitor of most modern space opera. JMS talks about how B5 was heavily influenced by the Lensmen. Interestingly, Green Lantern (and the Green Lantern Corp) was also spun out of the Lensmen --- it's interesting the different directions that a single influence can be taken.

It's definitely extremely dated though--I re-read it in grad school, and the language & perspective is a bit hard to take with a straight face. The above quote that morganlf provided is a fine example. :)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Space opera anime:
Crest/Banner of the Stars (recommended)
Legend of the Galactic Heroes (haven't seen but is recommended a lot)
Tytania (dubious)
Macross Frontier (I liked it, and suspect it's a distillation of everything good about anything Macross)

mentioned for completeness: Irresponsible Captain Tyler and Captain Harlock.
more on the order of planetary romance with yuri-powered mecha: Simoun. Never saw the whole thing.

Crest is based on Japanese novels by a wannabe Tolkien, complete with conlang, but I'd recommend watching the series first, then if you fall in love with it you can suffer through the Tokyopop novel translations for the extra material and scenes.

Recent written stuff in English, I dunno. :)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

As far as written goes, I got nothing, although it is a nothing with the mention that I found Elizabeth Moon's Serrano-Suiza books to be enjoyable popcorn with strong female characters and a whole bevy of various people's awesome great-aunts. Start with Hunting Party, which is the first although it reads as though there was one before it.

As far as anime goes, this is where I rub my hands together, cackle evilly, and ask you if you've watched any of the various flavors of Gundam.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Clearly all his work is not for you, given the bit about the Singularity, but Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" is pretty much a space opera. If you like that you may also like "A Fire Upon the Deep." "Marooned in Realtime" is a harder sell, it's about 1/3rd murder mystery, 1/3rd space opera, and 1/3rd Singularity (in my mind at least.)

If you haven't checked them out already, David Brin's "Startide Rising" and sequels are kinda space opera. (I don't remember if it has strong female characters or not, but it does have strong dolphin characters =)

Ian M. Banks also does space opera, although i've had trouble finding his books in anything other than that awkward oversized paperback format.

I've also heard that Alastair Reynolds does space operaish stuff, but i haven't read anything buy him yet, so can't speak as to the quality.

[avani.livejournal.com]

Good, someone got Banks. ++ Lots. Also, Neal Asher writes similarly.

As for the oversized format, if you get the US published versions, they're smaller. I have a few of them I wouldn't mind getting rid of, since I actually like the larger format :P

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, these are all good. Didn't think of them, not entirely recent (though Reynolds is more so. Also grimmer and semi-hard.) Banks has a whiff of the Singularity.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Er, that is to say, if you like "A Fire Upon the Deep" (which is a space opera) you may also like "A Deepness in the Sky," which is only kinda sorta a space opera (they're in ramscoop ships, which aren't the kind of fleet-footed things you normally expect in a space opera) but is a prequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep" and involves one of the same characters.

[archonsengine.livejournal.com]

I was just about to recommend A Fire Upon the Deep. It also has puppies!

[clairebaxter.livejournal.com]

I was just gonna recommend Alastair Reynolds -- House of Suns was the book I read of his. I haven't read A Fire upon the deep, but really enjoyed A Deepness in the Sky, also by Vinge. (Another by him that you may enjoy, The Snow Queen, is more a planetary romance.)
Larklight is a silly tale you may enjoy. The writing is okay, but the steampunk space travel is pretty much worth it.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Snow Queen is Vernor's ex-wife, *Joan* Vinge. She also did Psion -- sort of psychicpunk space opera, more on the punk -- and some Heaven's Belt stories I liked, sort of intrasystem space opera.

[clairebaxter.livejournal.com]

Oops. That's what happens when I search my reading database for "Vinge".

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Dave Trowbridge and I wrote the Exordium series. The writing is awful (we wrote it in the late seventies and sold it in 1990) and I'm in the process of rewriting it, but the plot still holds up (once you get past the first 100 pages of the first one, which is a simultaneous attack that sets up the storyline) and the worldbuilding actually pretty much also holds up.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, i'm not sure if it's _exactly_ space opera or not, but i really like the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell/John G. Hemry. It has a pretty heavy milSF side, but it also has a reasonably strong romance subplot, so that may make up for it, not sure.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I'd second the Elizabeth Moon Serrano Legacy/Familias Regnant rec (with the caveat that I've only read the first three Heris Serrano books, and have not yet got around to the Esmay Suiza stuff). The worldbuilding and plot are nothing at all revolutionary and the tech is pure handwavium, but the characters and their relationships are sufficiently appealing and stuff moves along at such a good clip that I really didn't mind in the slightest. Great non-sentimental female friendships based on respect on competence, and middle-aged and elderly female characters who are active, intelligent protagonists instead of the usual somebody's-mom-or-grandma cardboard cutout in the background. And they're also full of horsey stuff! (Just...try to ignore the covers: Heris is supposed to be middle-aged and dark-skinned, so of course the cover art all shows light-skinned ingenues...)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Dave Trowbridge and I wrote Exordium. (The writing is pretty crappy, but the story still holds up.) Very strong women characters.

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

Since bellwethr is lazy, I'll respond for him:

Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi are his favorites. And we probably have the books if you wanted to read any!

[bellwethr.livejournal.com]

These three are probably writing the best space opera (plots + characters) that I've read in the last few years. Banks' books tend more heavily towards characters, while Reynolds' writes amazingly interwoven galaxy & time-spanning narratives. Reynolds also really fulfills the promise of SF by inventing some new science and really exploring how it changes society.

_House of Suns_ mentioned above is excellent and has strong female characters, I'd also look at his Revelation Space series -- it's fairly short (three books, I think, plus a couple related novels) and enthralling. I inhaled the books.

Re: Scalzi -- John Scalzi is fantastic. Start with Old Man's War or The Android's Dream. You won't regret it! :)

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Huh. I definitely agree that Scalzi is awesome (especially The Android's Dream) but i wouldn't have classified it as space opera myself. Perhaps i should look up an actual definition :)

[sthaddeus.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a few books in a series called the Helmsman. Not especially recent (80s?) and military-ish, but swashbuckling.

I don't know how you feel about tie-ins, but I have fond memories of the early Star Trek Pocket Books. (By "early", I think I mean before TNG started - there was more room to play then.) The Wounded Sky, Chain of Attack, and Enterprise are 3 titles that seem be sticking in my head. Oh, and How Much For Just the Planet?, which should be on high-school reading lists. Or something.

Do you read any mags? F&SF and Asimov's both carry space operas once in a while. Asimov's is available on the Kindle; not sure about F&SF.

[sthaddeus.livejournal.com]

And how could I forget! Because I always recommend this: Nova, by Samuel Delaney.

Also, Pohl and (solo) Pournelle have written some good planetary romances.