I Read 50 Space Operas...the Best Do These 4 Things 

The Lensman series lets you know right off the bat that it's going to swing for the fences: "Two thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other." And it carries through, too; there's a reason there's a trope called "Lensman Arms Race", and it involves planetary masses being thrown around at multiples of lightspeed.

This is brilliant! I am currently writing a space opera. Andrew Wizard and Niko sent me to your channel and discord. I was getting ready to ask pretty much this exact question. Timing was perfect 😁

I think that the Honor Harrington series by David Weber meets a lot of these points. It has a unique method of space travel (two actually when you include wormholes) as well as great characters, interesting technology, and well written battles.

I used wormholes but with a new spin. I used quantum foam, subatomic wormholes that open and close all around that no one notices, and they’re expandable with gravity devices. Theses devices also propel the ships by providing gravity wells to dive in. These wormholes, smaller versions, also gives FTL communications from ship to ship. First contact space opera.

By the way, I think a book like A Fire Upon the Deep definitely deserves a mention in the context of what space opera does best. As does Iain Banks, if course. But let me also take the opportunity to plug Ken Macleod's Engines Of Light trilogy. It plays some rather nifty twists on some genre tropes, while stille having some good ideas and great and rather original world building.

Nice video! I'm about 2/3 done with Redemption Ark now. Can't get enough of Reynold's space operas. Without any spoilers, the spaceship travel (in RA) has some interesting things to it (which relate to other things, and more things). Regarding RA, it'll be interesting to see if Mr. H is actually from a prior book in the series.

I like a sense of deep time-- the story doesn't need to take place over a long period, but I want millions of years behind the story. Have you read Olaf Stapledon? His _First and Last Men_ and _Star Maker_ are epic histories of life, with a stunning variety of sf ideas.

I haven't read many of the newer examples but Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy was the space opera that I loved of the classics that I read (and still love it to this day). The Reality Dysfunction, etc.

The Aliance - Union Universe series by C.J. Cherryh and Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie are interesting series that I read over the years. Combined both military action as well as interesting personal and social aspects to the stories.

The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson is the best I have read. It's very adult content though. Very cerebral writing. It has all three of your criteria as well. One of my favourite things about it though is the space travel method. The Gap. Ships must speed up slowly with the crew strapped in. Taking up to a day or so to reach the appropriate speed. Then they hit the button and punch through space. Like instant warp travel. Then they must brake over the same time period on the other side. The thing is though is the distance travelled through the gap fluctuates. But in general the faster you go the further you go. So it makes for some amazing scenarios and space battles judging where ships will exit the gap and when and such. Very entertaining.

GOD I loved Ring and the unique ship. For me in space opera I need mind-blowing ideas, or dabbles deep into physics. Pandoras Star was perfect at this. I loved the Starflier War so much I am legit mad how much I hate the Void Trilogy. I love the expanse so far, but one of the books grinds to a HALT and turns into a "find the criminal" story that reduces the epic scale down to nothing. I hope the next will be better

In my younger years I definitely remember enjoying "The Icarus Hunt" by Timothy Zahn. More recently, I really enjoyed the Ancillary series by Ann Leckie. The former is more of a guilty pleasure that plays out a bit like an action movie combined with a few mystery elements (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers). But I really like it as a standalone novel. The latter really turned some of my perceptions around in terms of character dynamics in-universe. Also in my younger years I remember being blown away by a lot of the concepts in the Eon series by Greg Bear, but I guess a lot of people think the book is dumb. Probably beating a dead horse, but I really loved The Expanse series for so many reasons.

Loved this video! Excellent work!

Great video. I wasn't sure if Hyperion was considered a space opera or not. It's such a great series. I need to find more like it. Thanks again for suggesting it. I'm working on Childhood's End right now. It's a really good book.

I really liked you method of defining what makes a Space Opera book works, totally agree! Thanks for the recomendations!

Great video! I also enjoy Space Operas and I agree with everything you said about what makes them great 😃

One thing I really like about Scalzi's Old Mar War stories is that Humanity is the bully/big kid on the block that the rest of the galaxy is forced to organize against. We're not quite the bad guys, but we're definitely not the good guys either.

Most of what I read is Space Opera but what is considered Space Opera these days is much different from what I think of when I call something Space Opera. I like the definition in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia by Peter Nicholls: Quoting Wilson Tucker from 1941 "The hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn." I might be the old guy saying get off my lawn but I want my SF to have some fun, exciting space-based character driven adventure.

Excellent look at Space Opera, and some nice food for thought.

Great vid!👍👍👍

I really liked the red rising series number 5 was great dark age . Big world to play in . I always liked Arthur C Clarke books especially the RAMA series . I t was so descriptive that I could see it .

Interesting video! I do love me some space opera.

After reading Peter F Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained I think my expectation from a good space opera is a vast number of details. I loved how Hamilton doesn’t care about the number of pages and just goes on and on with submerging you into his world.

Stop tempting me with more books! Also, I am so bad with subgenres. What, exactly, constitutes space opera, as opposed to something else? I guess this is something I'm drawn to, since I want to read all of these. And I have read (and LOVED) Hyperion. OH, THE TREEEEEEEEEE! * runs to change computer wallpaper *

Where are the women?? :) There are so many brilliant female sci-fi authors. I love Becky Chambers Wayfarer world! Or Ursula Le Guins books.

I love my space opera when it is sprinkled with romance. Not a necessity for me but it's nice to have some. But the biggest factor would be your no.4 point, you gotta go big with your story

I just picked up Dan Simmons ilium today!

Have you evwr read H Beam (or bean i cant remember) piper, his future Terran fed books are my favorite

Days of Glory by Brian Stableford is a good one. It is more a retelling of a Greek tragedy than a modern style of story but it is very good. I read it getting on 40 years ago.

I love space opera. I agree Reynolds is great, yet I'm having the hardest time finding a book that is not so far flung. I want something that is based in reality. 1979s film Alien comes to mind. Not so much alien factor but the ship, it's purpose of mining ore, that with a bit of human drama mixed in. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thanks.

I read the Hyperion and Endymion series, I love those books I prefer the Hyperion series as it has so much lore that sadly is not explored/or is "retconed" in Endymion, for example the war in the future. I like Endymion but not the same way as Hyperion series. I love it because the book is not written from your classic POV of the Hero, Raul is a side character who just acompanies the Hero and tels his own story and the story of the Hero and I love it. What I don't like about Endymion is how some of the lore is "retconed" from previous books and the extremely long descriptions of T'ien Shan everytime it is mentioned. The worlds are really alive, the technological progress is really shown. I love how Hyperion is shown to really change betwean the books. I also love De Soya, his my favourite Catholic character from that series.

Go see an opera! :) Great video - thanks!

Space Opera needs to have a new idea at the core. Dune had the idea of the dangers of a charismatic figure; Foundation had the idea of predicting and shaping human history. And so on. Also, it should make us Think. Exercise the mind AND point us towards an important real world issue. Using Dune as an example, thebook was one of the first (the first?) to seriously tackle environmental questions. And, of course, it must bring something new to the genre, plus be interesting into itself. One of the major problems I have with much of modern Space Opera (looking at you, Honor Harrington) is that they just take the napoleonic wars and put it in space. Same titles, same societies, same tactics. Hell, half the covers have ships with sails and masts on them.

It's too bad Dan Simmons doesn't put the same thought and care into his newer material.

You must read ,,Heechee'' saga by Frederik Pohl

What did you think of Battlefield Earth, by Ron Hubbard? Did that hit 2 of the 3 points?

Could you post a list of the novels you cover?

Gets a tiny bit murky and subject to interpretation, what is and what isn't space opera. Into the 2nd half of his career, Robert A Heinlein started to tie his stories and worlds together. He came up with an idea of World as Myth, where a world / alternative universe, becomes 'real' when enough people know it and imagine it and live out some of the lives and awareness in it. So the world of Gulliver's Travels is very much real, and so is Dorothy and Toto and the Wizard of Oz. If enough people read your stories and think and dream in them, they become real. So the fact we are aware of multiple worlds, means it is possible to travel between them. Many of those worlds feature time travel, so in most worlds, time travel is possible. That means you absolutely need a Time Police, to stop the future from messing with the past. That's kinda like the Oval Office, that's where the real power is... Most of this stuff wasn't originally written to be part of this, but late in life, he started to tie it together. So you got some really fascinating characters, like Lazarus Long, (Time Enough for Love, then featured in a dozen or so follow-ups) who may or may not have been his own father...

Funny, the term Space Opera originally meant a soap opera set in space, a genre og cheap, trivial sci-fi from the 60'es, and the complete opposite of what it means to most people today.

definitely agree with point 4, but I find what matters is going big in the story, not just the world. I think that's a reason I'm not a big fan of the Culture books, it's set in this huge universe yet all the books (I have read) seem very confined to a small part of that world. Compare that to Simmons/Reynolds/Corey/Hamilton where often all of humanity is at stake.

Tell me if you think this idea for a space opera is good: Aeons ago, a powerful race of creatures couldn't decide what to do with their criminal underclass. So, they came up with the idea of sending to their criminals to a quiet planet somewhere in a nearby spiral galaxy. They built a fleet of spaceships and designed them to look "retro", similar to vehicles designed thousands of years previously when that race was just learning how to fly in heavier than air vehicles. They took these criminals to the planet, tied them up around a volcano and dropped atomic bombs into the volcano, detonating it and exploding the people into tiny pieces, that somehow seemed to float around. Aeons later that planet would develop life, one species of which eventually became sentient and dominate. The parts of the star criminals latched on to the intelligent life! A brilliant author of the best space opera classics on the planet realised this was happening and created a religion that could remove those parts of the star criminals from the people, eventually freeing those poor people who would then become the best people on that planet, capable of operating on a different level to those not freed this way. Somehow, because the star criminals had remembered their last flight in those spaceships, when the intelligent life developed heavier-than-air flight, one of the most popular designs was known as the "DC10". This plane looked exactly like the ships used to ferry the criminals to that planet. What was the name of this planet? Kepler 62e ... Anyway, enjoyed the video, thanks for making.

There are some terrible space operas out there. EE Doc smith and his Lensman series always bored me. He had a group of super characters with no arc. There was no development ever. They were always great at everything ll the time. I think he'd do well right now as a lot of shows seem to be creating one note heroes or heroines who always are just great. Yawn. Big fan of Webers Harrington series but I'm a military history buff so I would. also enjoyed Elizabeth Moon and her Vatta's war. Also like Lois macmaster Bujold and her Miles Vorkosigan books. Again a lot of military history interspersed in her story. Also read and enjoyed Chris Bunch's Lost Legion series which is a more military nuts and bolts view of Asimov's Foundation series which itself is a retelling of the decline and fall of the roman empire with a person attempting to make sure a great and just society springs up as quickly as possible after the fall of the current galactic empire. Canticle for Leibowitz isn't Space Opera but it has that historical view I like. Ditto for Asimov's foundation series. Lot of asimov and heinlein stuff is informed by their experience of the second world war. I will have to read Leviathan Wakes. Someone here lists CJ Cherryh's books and yeah I like all her series. She has an interesting touch on characters and aliens. I definitely got lost down the Foreigner Rat Hole (21 books to date, take that robert jordan) which is a multi-book series dealing with the first contact problem. The merchanter alliance books are good, as is the Chanur series and the Mri war.

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