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cellardoor10's review against another edition
3.0
Had its ups and downs, but I struggle with short stories generally. A few intriguing concepts, but not as much exploration as I would like.
yevolem's review against another edition
3.0
This is an original anthology. All the stories were published in 2007. As it says, this is THE NEW SPACE OPERA, not the old sort. The old sort being that which was published in the pulp magazines of the 1950s. It's unclear when the NEW began. In 2008, the next year, Jeff VanderMeer would publish The New Weird, and there are probably other NEW X that I'm aware of. I personally consider very little of this to agree with what I feel space opera to be, but that's fine. The editors say at one point that it's "wide-screen, high-bit-rate, action packed qualities typical of the form". I'm not sure what that means, but I don't think it applies to quite a few of the stories here either. Regardless of semantics and commonalities, there's still some enjoyable stories in here.
Saving Tiamaat - Gwyneth Jones [Buonaratti Transit]
The Interstellar Diaspora has discovered a new planet of sentient bipeds and now seeks to civilize them. Their planet has been ravaged by ethnic civil war, as the dominant ethnicity literally cannibalizes everyone else. Thus, The Interstellar Disapora sends representatives who believe that We Can Fix Them.
Meh
Verthandi's Ring - Ian McDonald
Two universal civilizations decide that there can only be one civilization to exist throughout the multiverse. The scale was too immense for me to take seriously. Any sense of wonder I may have had was obliterated by my constant eye rolling. Early on a single ship destroys 80k planets which kills 20 trillion sentients with a single brilliant strategic attack. Maybe some can read that and be utterly amazed, but when I read it I think, "oh, ok, that's a lot, huh."
Meh
Hatch - Robert Reed [The Great Ship Universe]
I've read at least a few of Reed's Great Ship short fiction, but I've never been interested enough to commit to the novels. Their scale is immense and the characters are functionally immortal superbeings, but it's never quite worked for me. In this one a raider seeks fortune by harvesting rare materials from a swarm of billions of insect-like biological robots, or something like that. There's a lot of speculation about the greater series and talk about plans that stretch into the millennia, to say the least.
Ok
Winning Peace - Paul J. McAuley [Jackaroo]
His side, the Alliance, lost the war against the Collective, and as a prisoner of war he's sold into slavery from one slaver to another. The current slaver sends him off on a suicide mission to a brown dwarf to retrieve what may be a elder culture artifact. It's also his chance to escape.
Ok
Glory - Greg Egan
Researchers travel to a relatively undeveloped planet to study the artifacts of an ancient civilization before the contemporary culture destroys everything because they revere only war and expansion.
Enjoyable
Maelstrom - Kage Baker [Mars]
An eccentric man living on Mars becomes extremely wealthy due to the generosity of his patron. He decides to devote his life and wealth to adapting old stories, especially Edgar Allen Poe, into theatrical plays. He assembles a motely crew, including two z-list actors from Earth and hopes for the best. One of those actors insists on doing Spongebob Squarepants impressions in a Poe story. Both popular culture and old classics are mocked. It's a far funnier story than I would have expected and by the end I was chuckling quite a bit.
Enjoyable
Blessed by an Angel - Peter F. Hamilton [Commonwealth Universe]
A pregnant woman is abducted to test whether she's been infected by a cultural parasite. Their foes work their ways by corrupting children. Most of the time is spent arguing about politics. I may not agree, but it was interesting to read about. It was moderately reminiscent of the relationship between Demarchists and Conjoiners in Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series.
Ok
Who's Afraid of Wolf 359? - Ken Macleod
A man has committed adultery, which is illegal, with a member of the tycoon's harem. He's sentenced to a suicide mission of going to a planet where civilization has collapsed and report back his findings. The story seems to be a set-up for the punchline ending, which made me groan.
Blah
The Valley of the Gardens - Tony Daniel
The farm posts and fencing had stood for 50,000 years, their code preventing the spread of the desert into the pastures. All the soil and everything else was programmed. He was only 1,500 years old, still centuries away from truly being an adult. One day he meets a woman and falls in love, but she was of the desert and he of the pasture. They could neither cross over, but they had width of the fence to express their love. SUDDEN 50K YEARS FLASHBACK TO INTERGALATIC SPACE BATTLES AGAINST AN EXTRADIMENSIONAL LOVECRAFTIAN BEING WHOSE UNLIMTED TENTACLES CAN APPEAR ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME IN THE UNIVERSE. Return to the present and conclusion.
Ok
Dividing the Sustain - James Patrick Kelly
This story literally seems like it's almost all talking in a few different rooms, except for the sex, which I found nice in its own way. A courier has deceived his way onto a vessel filled with Consensualist heading to their homeworld. They don't make any decisions unless a consensus is reached. The courier feels like he's going to die if he has to stay with his pod so he schemes to leave them and and live with the pregnant ex-wife of the captain, with whom he's infatuated. I enjoyed the strange transgressive twist.
Enjoyable
Minla's Flowers - Alastair Reynolds [Merlin]
A reluctant uplift/savior story where a planet's people must use science to escape from an upcoming calamity that will doom their planet. Knowledge without wisdom, let alone empathy, may create monsters.
Enjoyable
Splinters of Glass - Mary Rosenblum
A man leaves his lover's house and sees his ex-lover who believes that he's been dead for ten years. Memories rush back. There's a lot of motorized snowboarding scenes, including fight scenes, which were rather neat. It takes places on Europa, which is now livable, but still entirely ice. There's silly backstory stuff and I'm conflicted about it ended, but overall I enjoyed it.
Enjoyable
Rememberance - Stephen Baxter [Xelee]
Only one person, The Rememberer, still remembers the true past regarding the Squeem invasion and the atrocity they committed upon the Earth, but he slips up and is arrested. And so, he begins the tale that has been passed down for centuries.
Ok
The Emperor and the Maula - Robert Silverberg
This basis for this story's structure seems to be 1,001 Nights. A woman meets the emperor of the alien species who has conquered Earth and tells him stories and although she's meant to be executed, it keeps being delayed day after day, because the emperor must hear another story from her. It's fine, but I was never engaged with it.
Meh
The Worm Turns - Gregory Benford [Worm]
A woman is deeply in debt, but she's offered a suicide mission to clear all of it, which involves a wormhole. I didn't think the humor went well, especially the sex humor, and I thought it was an awkward story with a style that I disliked. I've read over a dozen short fiction stories from Benford, some of which I've quite enjoyed, and as far as I can remember this is the one I've liked the least by far. Disappointing.
Blah
Send Them Flowers - Walter Jon Williams
Two space drifters, one a relatively average guy, and the other an improbably successful seducer of women are on the run due to the latter's cuckoldry and theft. They travel through the multiverses until they run out of food and have to dock. They have a choice of spending their remaining money on food or partying. They choose the latter, getting drunk, high, and whoring. The average guy thinks he needs to turn his life around, but change is hard.
Enjoyable
Art of War - Nancy Kress
A captain is tasked with assessing and recovering the art looted by the Tali, with whom they are at war. There's one terrible problem though, the general is his mother, and they have a terrible relationship. So terrible that when he stresses out about her he goes hysterical, seizes, and passes out. More than anything else this story is about his relationship with her. The ending is atrocious and petty. I don't know why Kress wrote this story, let alone why it was accepted, but it's awful, annoying, and fixated. As with the Benford story, I've read more than a dozen stories from her, but this surely has to be the worst.
Blah
Muse of Fire - Dan Simmons
A spacefaring troupe of Shakespearean performers have to put upon plays for ever increasingly powerful beings, which have enslaved humanity, until at least they play for the one who may be the the most powerful of all. It's infused from start to finish with Shakespeare. There's some sexism, racism, and sex scenes, one with a girl who was "very young but old enough for me not to feel too guilty" which is stated to be the usual for the twenty year protagonist. I couldn't go along with the silliness this time.
Meh
Saving Tiamaat - Gwyneth Jones [Buonaratti Transit]
The Interstellar Diaspora has discovered a new planet of sentient bipeds and now seeks to civilize them. Their planet has been ravaged by ethnic civil war, as the dominant ethnicity literally cannibalizes everyone else. Thus, The Interstellar Disapora sends representatives who believe that We Can Fix Them.
Meh
Verthandi's Ring - Ian McDonald
Two universal civilizations decide that there can only be one civilization to exist throughout the multiverse. The scale was too immense for me to take seriously. Any sense of wonder I may have had was obliterated by my constant eye rolling. Early on a single ship destroys 80k planets which kills 20 trillion sentients with a single brilliant strategic attack. Maybe some can read that and be utterly amazed, but when I read it I think, "oh, ok, that's a lot, huh."
Meh
Hatch - Robert Reed [The Great Ship Universe]
I've read at least a few of Reed's Great Ship short fiction, but I've never been interested enough to commit to the novels. Their scale is immense and the characters are functionally immortal superbeings, but it's never quite worked for me. In this one a raider seeks fortune by harvesting rare materials from a swarm of billions of insect-like biological robots, or something like that. There's a lot of speculation about the greater series and talk about plans that stretch into the millennia, to say the least.
Ok
Winning Peace - Paul J. McAuley [Jackaroo]
His side, the Alliance, lost the war against the Collective, and as a prisoner of war he's sold into slavery from one slaver to another. The current slaver sends him off on a suicide mission to a brown dwarf to retrieve what may be a elder culture artifact. It's also his chance to escape.
Ok
Glory - Greg Egan
Researchers travel to a relatively undeveloped planet to study the artifacts of an ancient civilization before the contemporary culture destroys everything because they revere only war and expansion.
Enjoyable
Maelstrom - Kage Baker [Mars]
An eccentric man living on Mars becomes extremely wealthy due to the generosity of his patron. He decides to devote his life and wealth to adapting old stories, especially Edgar Allen Poe, into theatrical plays. He assembles a motely crew, including two z-list actors from Earth and hopes for the best. One of those actors insists on doing Spongebob Squarepants impressions in a Poe story. Both popular culture and old classics are mocked. It's a far funnier story than I would have expected and by the end I was chuckling quite a bit.
Enjoyable
Blessed by an Angel - Peter F. Hamilton [Commonwealth Universe]
A pregnant woman is abducted to test whether she's been infected by a cultural parasite. Their foes work their ways by corrupting children. Most of the time is spent arguing about politics. I may not agree, but it was interesting to read about. It was moderately reminiscent of the relationship between Demarchists and Conjoiners in Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series.
Ok
Who's Afraid of Wolf 359? - Ken Macleod
A man has committed adultery, which is illegal, with a member of the tycoon's harem. He's sentenced to a suicide mission of going to a planet where civilization has collapsed and report back his findings. The story seems to be a set-up for the punchline ending, which made me groan.
Blah
The Valley of the Gardens - Tony Daniel
The farm posts and fencing had stood for 50,000 years, their code preventing the spread of the desert into the pastures. All the soil and everything else was programmed. He was only 1,500 years old, still centuries away from truly being an adult. One day he meets a woman and falls in love, but she was of the desert and he of the pasture. They could neither cross over, but they had width of the fence to express their love. SUDDEN 50K YEARS FLASHBACK TO INTERGALATIC SPACE BATTLES AGAINST AN EXTRADIMENSIONAL LOVECRAFTIAN BEING WHOSE UNLIMTED TENTACLES CAN APPEAR ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME IN THE UNIVERSE. Return to the present and conclusion.
Ok
Dividing the Sustain - James Patrick Kelly
This story literally seems like it's almost all talking in a few different rooms, except for the sex, which I found nice in its own way. A courier has deceived his way onto a vessel filled with Consensualist heading to their homeworld. They don't make any decisions unless a consensus is reached. The courier feels like he's going to die if he has to stay with his pod so he schemes to leave them and and live with the pregnant ex-wife of the captain, with whom he's infatuated. I enjoyed the strange transgressive twist.
Enjoyable
Minla's Flowers - Alastair Reynolds [Merlin]
A reluctant uplift/savior story where a planet's people must use science to escape from an upcoming calamity that will doom their planet. Knowledge without wisdom, let alone empathy, may create monsters.
Enjoyable
Splinters of Glass - Mary Rosenblum
A man leaves his lover's house and sees his ex-lover who believes that he's been dead for ten years. Memories rush back. There's a lot of motorized snowboarding scenes, including fight scenes, which were rather neat. It takes places on Europa, which is now livable, but still entirely ice. There's silly backstory stuff and I'm conflicted about it ended, but overall I enjoyed it.
Enjoyable
Rememberance - Stephen Baxter [Xelee]
Only one person, The Rememberer, still remembers the true past regarding the Squeem invasion and the atrocity they committed upon the Earth, but he slips up and is arrested. And so, he begins the tale that has been passed down for centuries.
Ok
The Emperor and the Maula - Robert Silverberg
This basis for this story's structure seems to be 1,001 Nights. A woman meets the emperor of the alien species who has conquered Earth and tells him stories and although she's meant to be executed, it keeps being delayed day after day, because the emperor must hear another story from her. It's fine, but I was never engaged with it.
Meh
The Worm Turns - Gregory Benford [Worm]
A woman is deeply in debt, but she's offered a suicide mission to clear all of it, which involves a wormhole. I didn't think the humor went well, especially the sex humor, and I thought it was an awkward story with a style that I disliked. I've read over a dozen short fiction stories from Benford, some of which I've quite enjoyed, and as far as I can remember this is the one I've liked the least by far. Disappointing.
Blah
Send Them Flowers - Walter Jon Williams
Two space drifters, one a relatively average guy, and the other an improbably successful seducer of women are on the run due to the latter's cuckoldry and theft. They travel through the multiverses until they run out of food and have to dock. They have a choice of spending their remaining money on food or partying. They choose the latter, getting drunk, high, and whoring. The average guy thinks he needs to turn his life around, but change is hard.
Enjoyable
Art of War - Nancy Kress
A captain is tasked with assessing and recovering the art looted by the Tali, with whom they are at war. There's one terrible problem though, the general is his mother, and they have a terrible relationship. So terrible that when he stresses out about her he goes hysterical, seizes, and passes out. More than anything else this story is about his relationship with her. The ending is atrocious and petty. I don't know why Kress wrote this story, let alone why it was accepted, but it's awful, annoying, and fixated. As with the Benford story, I've read more than a dozen stories from her, but this surely has to be the worst.
Blah
Muse of Fire - Dan Simmons
A spacefaring troupe of Shakespearean performers have to put upon plays for ever increasingly powerful beings, which have enslaved humanity, until at least they play for the one who may be the the most powerful of all. It's infused from start to finish with Shakespeare. There's some sexism, racism, and sex scenes, one with a girl who was "very young but old enough for me not to feel too guilty" which is stated to be the usual for the twenty year protagonist. I couldn't go along with the silliness this time.
Meh
its_boots_baby's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
"Literary" short stories I do not typically enjoy; SF shorts are hit and miss. Most of these are quite well done, but there are some inclusions of which I wonder why they were included. Lots of standouts though. Not the best collection, but I did enjoy it
kaiysea's review
adventurous
4.0
I liked most (maybe all?) of the stories. However, I forgot to note my favorites. C'est la vie.
spikeanderson1's review against another edition
1.0
This is a must miss The 2nd one was much better. I really hated this compilation...I read about half of them... one or two was 'ok' , the rest sucked
sadiemay7's review against another edition
Good, esp. if you like the authors in it.
benlundns's review against another edition
3.0
This was really a book full of hits and misses. The book grabbed my interest because there were a few authors names I recognized and I was very interested in short stories by them. Unfortunately the first several stories were severe disappointments, I seriously considered giving up on the book altogether a few times. But eventually the stories did start to run more to my liking. Minla's Flowers was an especially nice surprise.
However the stories that were unenjoyable tempered by the ones that left me wanting more lands the book in 3 star territory. If I only enjoy half the book, is it really worth it? The hallmark of a good anthology (in my opinion) is that I want to read more by that author, usually reading a collection of stories like this lets me add new books to my want-to-read list. I want to dive deeper into the universe that author has created. Too many of these stories left me wanting to get the first spaceship out of there.
However the stories that were unenjoyable tempered by the ones that left me wanting more lands the book in 3 star territory. If I only enjoy half the book, is it really worth it? The hallmark of a good anthology (in my opinion) is that I want to read more by that author, usually reading a collection of stories like this lets me add new books to my want-to-read list. I want to dive deeper into the universe that author has created. Too many of these stories left me wanting to get the first spaceship out of there.
spinnerroweok's review against another edition
4.0
There are good stories here, and there are great stories here.
My favorites:
The Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons - A Shakespearean acting troupe travels the galaxy.
Minla's Flowers by Alastair Reynolds - A man tries to save a planet, but they don't listen.
Remembrance by Stephen Baxter - Are there some things better left forgotten?
The Emperor and the Maula by Robert Silverberg - 1001 Nights in space.
Art of War by Nancy Kress - Someone has mommy issues.
I would listen to these again.
My favorites:
The Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons - A Shakespearean acting troupe travels the galaxy.
Minla's Flowers by Alastair Reynolds - A man tries to save a planet, but they don't listen.
Remembrance by Stephen Baxter - Are there some things better left forgotten?
The Emperor and the Maula by Robert Silverberg - 1001 Nights in space.
Art of War by Nancy Kress - Someone has mommy issues.
I would listen to these again.