“The Space Opera Renaissance,” edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (Tor, 941 pages, $39.95)
Space pirates and interstellar wars are the traditional stuff of space opera. This massive anthology provides all that and more.
As with the companion volume, “The Hard SF Renaissance,” Hartwell and Cramer have their own sense of the term. They describe, almost to the moment, Wilson Tucker coining a phrase that has moved from describing bottom-of-the-barrel dreck to modern, sophisticated, large-scale dramas. The argument is continued in the informative story introductions and biographical sketches.
Hartwell and Kramer try to impose a historical order, although it’s often informed by where they feel a story should go rather than the place indicated by the copyright date. I always want to know where a story was first published, and the editors are unfortunately inconsistent about supplying that information.
The early examples are broad stories by Edmund Hamilton and Jack Williamson. Two-thirds of the stories are from the past 15 years, including the cutting-edge science of Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross.
The generous size allows for longer stories than most anthologies offer, including the complete text of Samuel Delany’s powerful short novel, “Empire Star.” Popular characters are represented by David Weber’s Honor Harrington and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan.
However it gets diced up and analyzed, “The Space Opera Renaissance” is a bargain packed with stories worth reading.
“Mindswap,” by Robert Sheckley (Orb, 216 pages, $14.95)
I loved “Mindswap” 40 years ago when I bought it through the Science Fiction Book Club without knowing anything about Robert Sheckley’s reputation as the sharpest satirist around. Then I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever read. Today, it’s still fresh and funny.
Marvin Flynn would love to travel off the Earth, but space travel is hideously expensive. His wanderlust overcomes his squeamishness, and he answers a newspaper ad placed by a gentleman from Mars who wishes to swap minds with an Earthman for a month.
But the Martian has sold his body to multiple customers. Marvin gets 12 hours to find a new body. Marvin’s only hope is a Melden body, in which he will hunt ganzer eggs without some basic information such as what a ganzer egg looks like.
Sheckley never stands still for long, and Marvin is whisked along. Before he started, Marvin was warned the human mind can handle only so much interstellar weirdness before the process of metaphoric deformation takes over. Then Marvin interprets the life of the bug body he is in as a Western adventure or a musketeer adventure.
“The Grays,” by Whitley Strieber (Tor, 335 pages, $24.95)
The grays are the aliens who take children up in their UFOs and do unspeakable things to them. Dan Callaghan doesn’t remember what happened to him as a child or realize the little girl he once saw in the spaceship is now his wife.
Lauren Glass has just buried her father. Like her father, she is in the Air Force. She knows only that he died on duty and doesn’t know how that could happen in Indiana. Her new orders take her to where he worked. She learns she has a genetic talent for empathy and must take over as a translator for the alien that has been secretly imprisoned for 50 years.
Meanwhile, the grays’ plan is coming to fruition with Connor Callaghan. The preservers of the secrets are taking ever more demented actions to keep things in place, including gratuitous mass destruction that seems like a special-effects opportunity included for a possible movie.
I enjoyed the dramas of Lauren’s quest to understand her father and Connor’s need to be accepted. It’s the other level, where are all pawns in a pair of massive conspiracies, that is hard to accept.
Finally, there’s another unbelievable layer where Strieber presents the book as an attempt in fiction to tell the difficult truth about the grays. Maybe I’ll be surprised one day when he’s proved right, but I don’t think so.
Fred Cleaver is a freelancer who writes a monthly column on new Science Fiction.
