Was texting today with a lady about space operas, a genre she never heard of:
She enjoys action films (we were mocking the latest Godzilla flick), and liked my description of the genre, asking for suggestions. After verifying she has no problem starting a 600 page book which may be the first of three, I told her I would throw the suggestions open to the coolest kids in school and see what y’all would suggest.
So… best entry-level space opera? Book or TV, she’s seen all the popular franchises (SW, ST, Marvel, this week she binged on Lara Croft movies), really wanting book suggestions for her and TV for me (or is it just The Expanse?)
Bonus points if it’s a self-contained work w/o a sequel.
You could go with Dan Simmons’ four Hyperion books. Heavy on the SF, but also references and allusions to The Canterbury Tales, The Wizard of Oz, Huckleberry Finn, and the life and works of John Keats, five feet tall.
There is also David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, but that’s slightly more than three books, albeit you could probably get to Flag in Exile (#5) and stop there with a coherent story. Definite space opera but pretty well grounded in science (excluding hyperdrives…).
And of course the grand-daddy of space opera series, E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman or Skylark series, if you can find them. Different style of writing, but any Space opera fan has to have read them (IMHO. YMMV).
Regardless of the ‘is SW space opera’ question, the distinction I was trying to make is that Dune does explore the implications of how the society developed and how the technologies impacted culture and civilization, and Star Wars (and in my mind I’m really thinking 1st three movies here - she wants an intro, not a deep dive into the Extended Universe (EU)) does not. It’s purely plot. The Empire develops a weapon which can destroy planets and the implications of that on the larger society are never explored. In the sort of suggestions I’m looking for, that would be something mentioned: ‘Alderaan stock market plunges on explosion rumors!’ In SW, they destroy a planet, everyone, even Leia, just acts pained for 5 seconds, and that’s it. You’d think someone would complain about the hit to their 401(k)!
Anyway, in short, there’s a qualitative difference between the first 3 SW films and Dune and, to me, this distinction is the difference I meant, even if badly explained and likely wrong when the larger EU is considered.
Ryk E. Spoor’s “Grand Central Arena” books are a deliberate harking back to golden-age space opera, while keeping all the trimmings and (relative) sophistication of moden fiction…and they’re an absolutely glorious romp:
Unfortunately, IME, it’s extremely rare for space opera to be published as stand-alone novels and not in a series. Some of them, however, are better at standing alone.
If you’re talking about the difference between Dune and Star Wars, though, that’s not a difference I usually see described as “Space Opera.” If you want stuff that makes the created society and its implications a major focus, I might modify my list slightly: take off Three Body Problem and Collapsing Empire, and add the quiet and lovely Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. This last one is in the same universe as some of her other books, but is a standalone book and focuses on how people have created a long-term society on a space station, which they maintain even when given the option of moving to a planet.
It is a problem of definition. What you are describing about Star Wars that makes you concider it not space opera is part of the definition of what space opera is. It sounds like you are wanting not space opera.
No, I get it and I’ll accept SW as a SO for this thread so we can consider the sidebar over.
Regardless, I’m looking for stories which explore the implications of technology and social development on an interstellar scale, not stories where the tech is little more than a backdrop to the plot.
I honestly have a hard time with this one, as I find Space Opera works better for TV series/movies/miniseries than books. If I’m reading something, I generally am less able to accept the hand waving away of the science elements I find enjoyable. Having said this, I’ll definitely add a second to the Vorkosigan books (with the caveat that it’s a long series) and the Grand Arena series. I’d probably say the Vorkosigan books are better, but Grand Central Arena are by far the more traditional space opera.
While closer to the ‘Sword and Planet’ subgenre, I’d also suggest the classic World of Tiers series by Philip Jose Farmer - which while it doesn’t have the space/battle many consider essential to Space opera, it has more intense focus on the larger than life hero elements and myth building.
The reason I’m not coming up with many suggestions is that for many of my favorites the plot is little more than a backdrop for the tech. I love tech-porn, but it is a little much to drop a newbie directly into. (So no Iain Banks, no Peter F. Hamilton, no Alistar Reynolds, no Neal Asher, etc.)
Okay, maybe Hamilton’s recent Salvation series, but not his seven Commonwealth novels, which are some of my favorites.
So, what kind of lady? The reason I ask, is I tried to do this with “a lady”, and pretty soon “That was no lady, that was my wife.”
And a little bit before we got engaged, she admitted that she’d just been “trying to be gentle”, but she couldn’t stand a lot of my recommendations (Asimov, ANY superhero movie, Douglas Adams, Bradbury, The Shadow, every single graphic novel, all reggae, Gilbert & Sullivan, B&W movies, even The Seventh Seal). They all left her lukewarm at best.
So try recommending one easily-approachable book that stands on her own, then leave it to her to find or ask you for the other books in the series. Hopefully she’d tell you what she thought, and if she’d like something bigger, smaller, scarier, funnier, or “something with fewer tigers” (sorry, I’m mentally categorizing “universe-building works”, and just thought of the Kzinti).
Totally–I’m not sure whether your “bonus points if” in the OP means “but I’m fine with non-self-contained works” or if you’re really wanting to avoid series.
That said, Collapsing Empire might not be great for folks who aren’t into the genre, if their hesitation has any whiff of litcrit snobbery about it (which is a mean way of saying it, but I’m too sleepy to think of a nicer way). Scalzi is great fun in the way that a Popeye’s sandwich is great food, and I read damn near everything he writes. But if they want something that’s a little more thoughtful and a little more beautiful, it’s not near the top of the list of stuff I’d recommend.
