Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Great setup, great list of writers assembled here by Dozois & Strahan.Four standouts (the Wilson, the Asher, the Scalzi, and the Wright) and decent level with the others.Certainly the only good original anthology of 2009 and a worthy sequel.
It took me AGES but I finally completed this beast of a compilation. Short stories don't tend to work for me as well as tomes, novels and even novelettes. Ultimately I enjoyed less than half the stories presented. But a few of these deserve special mention. • Utriusque Cosmi • (2009) • novelette by Robert Charles WilsonInteresting. Unsure if it was real or imagined? Great concepts of expansive time and space. Update: this one has actually stuck with me. (view spoiler)[The idea of an organizatio...
I usually enjoy collections by Dozois, as I get to read stories in new settings, ones that I have not even heard about.I recommend you give this one a pass, though. Many of the stories felt like repetitions of each other and only two of them were worth the time it took to listen.
I do have a bad habit with anthologies I’ve been published in. I tend to receive them then stick them on a shelf as eye-candy yet, of course, they probably contain lots of stories I would like to read. The other day I changed that habit by picking up The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. It contains a story by me called Shell Game, and has been sitting on my shelf since 2009. I did enjoy this and out of the 19 stories enclosed there were only two I didn’t finish and
Mostly excellent stories here, though there were a couple I didn't care for. Doctorow's riff on some "Star Trek" cliches was a blast!
As usual, some good, some not-so-much, a lot of worth reading.Good: "Chameleons" by Elizabeth Moon; "The Tale of the _Wicked_" by John Scalzi; "Defect" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Not-so-much: "The Far End of History" by John C. Wright (the mythical and astronomy babble of the first 3 segments stopped me from going further; YMMV, as they say); "Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz" was just too cutesy.
Listening, on the road with my husband. Would probably be a better experience for you if you weren't so distracted, so consider these notes as not particularly helpful...3 • Utriusque Cosmi • (2009) • novelette by Robert Charles Wilson "Go fast. Go now." I really liked the narrator.27 • The Island • (2009) • novelette by Peter Watts Too much left out, I think. Ralph and I discussed what we understood to be going on, and pretty much got it, but didn't really understand the point of it.63 • Events...
This anthology was a mixed bag of stories by some of today's top sci-fi talent. Some of it was great, some not so great, and some I thought was pretentious artsy garbage more interested in impressing critics than telling stories. Of course YMMV. Here's a short breakdown.Liked:Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance by John Kessel - neat take on human religion and spirituality in a space opera settingThe Lost Princess Man by John Barnes - This had great potential. The premise is a new take on...
LOVED this collection. Think I'm on a hard sci-fi kick though, so this really rung true with me! All the stories were interesting (a few too pretentious in that hard sci-fi way, but surprisingly few). Particularly liked Elizabeth Moon's, and Sean Williams (always forget how much I like this author!) I know this ground might feel familiar to aficionados of this genre, but especially for ppl not as immersed, this is really a good compilation!
This is a fascinating collection of stories, spanning the SF gamut through planetary romance, science fantasy, noir mystery, New Age, galactic saga, and more, including good old-fashioned Space Opera, as the title suggests. A good read.
The idea of machine minds has permeated the 'new' space opera quite thoroughly. A side effect is that it is no longer Westerns In Space (if it ever really was) and is more of its own thing. It does what all good science fiction does: explore being human, the requirements and the ramifications.
Excellent anthology; 19 stories from totally different authors than NSO1; big time highlights from John Barnes and JC Wright with highlights from RC Wilson, P. Watts, E. Moon, new author Bill Willingham, N. Asher, S. Williams, KK Rusch, J. Robson, J. Meaney and quite good stories from Jay Lake, John Kessel, Mike Resnick and Tad Williams.Only the Doctorow, Nix, Sterling (none surprisingly since neither of these authors is readable by me) and Scalzi (surprising since I generally like his work) did...
Meh. It would probably be better in print. Audible books can be great but not in this case.
Dozois is my go to editor for science ficiton. I have been reading Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction for twenty years now and he almost never disappoints me (his co-editor, Honathan Strahan is no slouch either). I find it strange and wonderful that my editorial aesthetic matches so closely with his. This usually means that I can't wait to get into a Dozois anthology. Usually. The New Space Opera 2 is the follow-up anthology to last year's The New Space Opera. New space opera is one of my favor...
Boring.
As a fan of both fantasy and SciFi I feel as though I've been neglecting half of my soul. Time to rectify that. My favorites have always been good old fashioned space operas. Poul Anderson. Isaac Asimov. But I'm not too familiar with contemporary authors. Thought this would be a good collection to start with.I never know how to review short story collections. By an average? By my favorites? Today I've decided to go with the second choice. So not every story here is worth a four star rating. But
An enjoyable read. Recommended.
There were some great story's.
What do people mean when they say something was "well written". It's always bothered me, and this compendium of stories yet again makes me wonder. A lot (most) (actually, nearly all) of these stories I found difficult to read for one reason or another. Either they were too simple: "The Tale of the Wicked" by John Scalzi "Fearless Space Pirates of the Outer Rings" by Bill Willingham.or they were too hard (tiresome) to figure out:"The Island" by Peter Watts.or they seemed, once the first few parag...
Please remember this review is only my opinion. Overall rating for the anthology: 3.5.I got the book for “The Island”, by Peter Watts, a great story.I gave this story, and one other, the John Scalzi story, a 4 rating.Bear in mind that space opera is not my favorite genre. That said, this is probably as good and varied a collection of space opera short stories as one could have found anywhere. One could have wished for a more diverse group of writers (most were men from America, Britain, or Austr...