The Space Opera Renaissance

"Space opera", once a derisive term for cheap pulp adventure, has come to mean something more in modern SF: compelling adventure stories told against a broad canvas, and written to the highest level of skill. Indeed, it can be argued that the "new space opera" is one of the defining streams of modern SF.

Now, World Fantasy Award-winning anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have compiled a definitive overview of this subgenre, both as it was in the days of the pulp magazines, and as it has become in 2005. Included are major works from genre progenitors like Jack Williamson and Leigh Brackett, stylish midcentury voices like Cordwainer Smith and Samuel R. Delany, popular favorites like David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Ursula K. Le Guin, and modern-day pioneers such as Iain M. Banks, Steven Baxter, Scott Westerfeld, and Charles Stross.

David G. Hartwell, called "an editor extraordinaire" by Publishers Weekly, is one of science fiction's most experienced and influential editors. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award thirty-one times. Kathryn Cramer co-edited the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology The Architecture of Fear and was the editor of its widely-praised sequel Walls of Fear. She has edited and co-edited several other anthologies. Hartwell and Cramer co-edit the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF series. They live in Pleasantville, New York.