Rating System:5 Excellent4 Very Good3 Good2 Fair1 Poor0 Awful“Saving Tiamaat” by Gwyneth Jones - 2“Verthandi’s Ring” by Ian McDonald - 2“Hatch” by Robert Reed - 4“Winning Peace” by Paul J. McAuley - 3“Glory” by Greg Egan - 3“Maelstorm” by Kage Baker - 5“Blessed by an Angel” by Peter F. Hamilton - 5“Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken Macleod - 4“The Valley of the Gardens” by Tony Daniel - 5“Dividing the Sustain” by James Patrick Kelly - 4“Minla’s Flowers” by Alastair Reynolds - 5“Splinters of Glas...

Very good collection. The term "new space opera" -- like other trendy genre labels of recent decades such as "cyberpunk" and "slipstream" -- seems all too vaguely defined. In this case perhaps it's little more than a marketing tag, or to be more generous, "what the editors think is cool this year." That's a quibble, I suppose, since it still resulted in a nice anthology, even if a number of the stories really didn't fit the editors' own description of "new space opera."The only two stories I rea...

Stronger of the two. Go-to review is David's, below: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Standout for me, from memory: “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken Macleod. One of his "fast burn" stories, clever & fun. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/macle... I should reread it. OK, I did, in 2016, so not just yet. Shorts are good for rereading, because I forget then so fast....

Rating for each story:***** Saving Tiamaat • (2007) • shortstory by Gwyneth Jones***** Verthandi's Ring • (2007) • shortstory by Ian McDonald***** Hatch • [The Great Ship Universe] • (2007) • shortstory by Robert Reed*** Winning Peace • (2007) • novelette by Paul J. McAuley*** Glory • (2007) • novelette by Greg Egan** Maelstrom • (2007) • novelette by Kage Baker***** Blessed by an Angel • (2007) • shortstory by Peter F. Hamilton*** Who's Afraid of Wolf 359? • shortstory by Ken MacLeod**** * The

"The New Space Opera" is a somewhat deceptively titled but otherwise very good collection of short stories by what the editors refer to as "new space opera" authors. I put "somewhat deceptively" because, in my opinion, most of the stories don't really qualify as space opera. Space opera is a sub-genre of SF, consisting of over-the-top, galaxy-wide adventure stories, often with larger than life heroes, usually containing lots of space ships, dealing with a numbers of planets or galaxies or even u...

Greg Egan is the hardest SF writter of all times and in this short novel is not less,he introduce advanced quantum physics comcepts as quantum Zeno effect and as ever extrapolates the most advanced physics known ,but rigurously and beliavly to astounding limits.This narration, with a very fitted title , is about the possible evolution of advanced civilizations as Seekers is to say,that once reached material confort is aimed , witout go out its planet, to pure mathematics,music,art,literature and...

GR Personal Rating System:★★★★★ 5 Stars ~ LOVED ★★★★☆ 4 Stars ~ ENJOYED★★★☆☆ 3 Stars ~ LIKED ★★☆☆☆ 2 Stars ~ MEH★☆☆☆☆ 1 Star ~ NOPEAnthologies are such a mixed bag. 2.6 Star average.This 24-hour audiobook collection was a beast to get through. I found a couple of authors I'd like to follow further, and a ton of authors that I'm turned off from. What is it with so many male authors using their stories as a license to write these masturbatory vignettes? It popped up so often enough that it's worth...

Some decent stories in here but because it's an anthology there are some terrible ones as well. Dan Simmons finished it up with a relatively strong entry, Muse of Fire. Gregory Benford's The Worm Turns was uh, not so good.I skipped Mary Rosenbaum's story because it was clearly going to be utterly offal (see what I did there?). For some reason there are very few female genre writers that can write male characters at all. To be fair there are many genre writers (of any gender) that don't write wel...

Nothing terribly impressive in this collection.I had already read the two standouts - "Minla's Flowers" (Alastair Reynolds) and "Muse of Fire" (Dan Simmons). Of the remaining, the best is Tony Daniel's "The Valley of the Gardens" and the absolute worst is Robert Silverberg's "The Emperor and the Maula," a retelling of The Arabian Nights.My dissatisfaction with many of these stories is philosophical more than literary. There's a tendency in the New Space Opera and other hard-SF novels toward a co...

I read a lot of short fiction in the SF and Fantasy genre, but I rarely read an entire anthology from cover-to-cover. This is one of those where my effort was rewarded; every story is worth checking out.

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.

The whole thing gets just barely 3 stars out of 5. There were some great stories and some not so great ones; there were also some great narrators and some not so great ones. The following is more quick notes (some including spoilers) than actual reviews of most of the stories, so I'm putting it under a spoiler tag. I have rated each story on its own, and averaged those to get the book rating.(view spoiler)[Saving Tiamaat by Gwyneth Jones (read by Carrington MacDuffie)3.5/5People will be people,

An excellent collection of SF short stories. Not all of them are space opera in the classic sense of the term, but since they are all good that will trouble only the pedants among us. If you are looking for new authors to read (or more from authors you already know you like), this is a good resource.

A superb anthology courtesy of Messrs. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. Definitely worth a second reading. Highly recommended. Mr. Dan Simmons's "Muse of Fire" is unforgettable.

VERDICT: Average ~ 3.2 suns (mostly goodthink). REVIEW: Not all tales within are "space opera," in my opinion. Not a keeper, but good enough to recommend.BREAKDOWN: (view spoiler)[3/18 stories were 2 stars or lower for me. 5/18 rated 4 or more stars:Saving Tiamaat by Gwyneth Jones - 1.6Verthandi’s Ring by Ian McDonald - 1.7Hatch by Robert Reed - 3 Winning Peace” by Paul J. McAuley - 2.8 Glory by Greg Egan - 3.3Maelstorm by Kage Baker - 2 Blessed by an Angel by Peter F. Hamilton - 4.6Who’s Afraid...

THE NEW SPACE OPERA IS RATED 81%18 STORIES : 2 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 7 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF I was halfway through this anthology before I realized that it was an original anthology. Before that I’d assume that it was a themed anthology of modern Space Opera similar to The 2020 Look at Space Opera Book, edited by Allan Kaster (85% Positive.)Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan have certainly assembled a list of excellent writers, even if the stories in this collection are not their best work. The t...

Review for GLORY by Greg EganAn ingot of metallic hydrogen gleamed in the starlight, a narrow cylinder half a meter long with a mass of about a kilogram.A very abstract beginning. I skimmed past most of that science-tech babble, I confess. I liked the story that followed the info dump.However...“There’s more to life than mathematics,” Joan said. “But not much more.”Math was always one of my best subjects at school, but still... too much! Math Fiction? Mathematical SF?It was ok, nice idea of a va...

01 The New Space Opera (anthology)Average Rating: 60/18 = 3.33 StarsMy favorite story was by Alastair Reynolds called Minla's Flowers - 4.5 StarsMy least favorite stories were by Gwyneth Jones called Saving Tiamaat AND James Patrick Kelly called Dividing the Sustain. BOTH were rated at 2.5 Stars.Short stories are using rated lower for me, since I really do not enjoy this medium. I enjoy long form story telling...500 plus pages and long standing series...so that we can live in this world for a LO...

So far, this book isn't thrilling me. The stories are okay, but the book feels like it's thumbing its nose at what I always thought space opera was: from Star Wars to the Honor Harrington.Basically, the New Space Opera would feel like the Old Hard Science Fiction if not for the foreward which basically says that the familiar tropes of current science fiction (hence everything in the collection): huge ships, FTL, etc. are impossible and cannot happen.Leave it to science fiction to take all the fu...

Evidently the New space opera is not much to my taste, since it seemingly involves a lot more space than opera these days (notwithstanding the last story, by Dan Simmons, which is about half Shakespeare.) Galactic empires are only fun if you have Han and Luke, R2 and Chewy, an Ewok or two - heroes, that is, with something to fight for. Otherwise it's all Rosencrantz and Guildenstern waiting for Godot, pointless and not even tragic.But I loved the Kage Baker story.