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

[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.