For this week’s column, I’ll be featuring a review of the book The New Space Opera 2 edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. Of particular interest to the regulars of this site, this new short story compilation features the work of authors Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Sean Williams. There are nineteen contributors in all, and after the break I’ll give you the lowdown on what you can expect as well as a special surprise.

Short Story Compilations just seem to go with Summer for me. Maybe it’s a case of the chicken and the egg, do I feel that way because publishers often come out with these kinds of books around summertime, or do they only do that because that’s when the demand is highest? Either way, it doesn’t matter, one of the reasons I like this kind of book in the summer is that it’s perfect for taking to the beach. The nature of short stories means I can get in a whole bite-sized story while sitting down between other activities. And I’m especially fond of compilations that feature multiple authors, because even if you find yourself not enjoying one particular story, you know that you’ve got something else waiting only a few pages away, written by another author. And who knows, you just might find an author who’s work you want to check out beyond the compliation you’re currently reading.

Before I get into the details of some of the stories featured in The New Space Opera 2, I’d like to talk briefly about Space Opera for those wondering what the heck that means. I’m not going to go into the whole history, but suffice it to say Star Wars is Space Opera. Space Opera is science fiction that’s less worried about the ’science’ and more interested in using the setting to tell fantastical tales of adventure and intrigue, loves and lives lived. Space Opera stories can certainly incorporate elements from lots of other types of Science Fiction sub genres (not to mention other genres entirely) but at it’s heart, these are swashbuckling tales. And in many cases, The New Space Opera 2 succeeds in giving those types of stories, and even when they might not be pure ‘Space Opera’ I still found what I read intriguing.

I moved all over the book picking and choosing the stories I wanted to read, and I will admit I have not finished reading every story within. But again, the joy of reading a short story compilation is that you don’t have to read them in order, and you can keep coming back to the book to read more. And I don’t have to read the entire book to tell you I can recommend it. If you’re waiting to hear that, you need read no further - if you enjoy short stories, great science fiction, or are even looking for a way to get introduced to some new authors, pick up The New Space Opera 2 - it doesn’t disappoint.

So, I started with Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Defect. I haven’t read anything by Rusch since Star Wars: The New Rebellion, but what I remember was that I really liked her writing in that novel. And that’s exactly how I felt about this short story too. Here the author introduces us to a spy of the future, someone who’s looking to leave that life behind after refusing to complete her latest assignment. She wants to reconnect with her family, even though she left them behind long ago and isn’t even really sure if she’s capable of feeling for them. But when she goes to meet up with the space cruise her husband and son are onboard, the ship has suffered a terrible fate, all aboard but her son are dead. This is meant as a message to her, you’ll pay the price for leaving. What was really interesting to me about this story is how mother and son start at one place and switch sides by the end, with mother going from not knowing how to care about other people, to wanting to protect her son; and son who cares deeply for his death father, to a boy who wants revenge against those who perpetrated this crime. Not high adventure type Space Opera, but still a great story.

Then I read Sean Williams’ Inevitable, which very much reminded me of other Sean Williams science fiction books I’ve read. Lots of big concepts, with interesting twists and turns to the story. Here we’ve introduced to a wounded suicide bomber, who somehow managed to survive the blast. Now he’s under interrogation by the people he was trying to keep from the Structure.  The Structure creates time loops of a sort, and this man’s people do not want it falling into the wrong hands.  But as his interrogator forces him to reveal the location of the Structure, time loops back around on itself, and we see just how this wounded man wound up in her possession and how that bomb still managed to go off. Time travel stories can be interesting when done right, and this one definately succeeded, I loved how the end feeds right back into the beginning again. 

I read The Fearless Space Pirates of the Outer Rings by Bill Willingham, whom some may know from his work on the comic book Fables. I love that comic, and for the most part I really enjoyed this story too. The bulk of this story is about a space pirate crew raiding their latest find, introducing the ecclectic crew and dealing with the aftermath of the plundering as well. All the characters were memorable, and I liked the flashback where the reader is shown how this one human wound up a part of the crew. But ultimately, the end of the story didn’t really work for me. I think it fits what I should have expected from Willingham, as it’s very much like Fables in that it turns things around in an unexpected way. But aside from the ending, I enjoyed this story a lot, and it’s one of the most ‘pure’ Space Opera stories I’ve read so far in the compilation.

I also read Neal Asher’s Shell Game, which is set in his Polity universe of stories, so it can serve as both an introduction to that series as well as his writing. This was an interesting tale about two immortal humans learning how to want to live again (instead of longing for death) and how a religiously dominated species intent on destroying the universe because no one else could possibly be God’s Own Creation might be brought to it’s knees.

There’s Elizabeth Moon’s Cameleons, like The Transporter movies in a Science Fiction setting, and I mean that in only a good way. A bodyguard to two teenage boys is forced into a layover on the space station where he grew up, a dangerous place that he never really wanted to return to. And as the coincidences keep piling up and a trap for he and his charges has been sprung, will the woman from his past help or is it all part of the plan?

 I’ve read some others in this 500 page TPB; John Salzi’s The Tale of the Wicked and Mike Resnick’s Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz to name a few, and I’ll be happy to talk more about those and the rest of the stories in the forum post attached to this review, but for now, I think I’ve given enough hints about what lies in store for you should you choose to pick up The New Space Opera 2.

And for those of you who’ve read this all the way to the end and are wondering what the special surprise is, you have the chance to read this book for free. NJOE has an extra copy of The New Space Opera 2, and we’re giving it away to one lucky reader. All you have to do is send an e-mail to contest@njoe.com with SPACE OPERA in the subject line. Please include your mailing address in your entry. And if you send your submission before the general contest announcement on Monday, July 6th, your name will be be entered twice to win. The contest will run until Monday, July 13th, and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, July 14th.

As mentioned, I plan to continue to review more of the short stories in the discussion forum topic linked, so you can see how I feel about the rest of the stories as I go. I’d love to hear your thoughts too, should anyone else pick up The New Space Opera 2, and especially from the winner of the contest. Good luck.