[bookshare-discuss] Next Meeting of the Science Fiction Club, Thursday, September 9, 2009

From: "EVAN REESE" <mentat3@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <scifi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:42:29 -0400

Hello Folks,

We had a great meeting last night. Although noone raved about it the way I did, 
everyone liked A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

That book was pretty long, but this month, we decided to go for one even 
longer: a hefty anthology of modern space adventure stories.

For the next meeting, we're reading:

The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan.

This one is only available from NLS on BARD and on tape so far. The download 
link is at:

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.67821

Here's the NLS synopsis:

Eighteen tales of interstellar adventure. In Stephen Baxter's "Remembrance," an 
old man's recollection of
a legendary resistance fighter who battled Earth's alien conquerors inspires a 
new generation of dissidents. Includes Greg Egan's "Glory," Nancy Kress's "Art 
of War," and works by Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, and others.

Here's some more info about this anthology from Amazon's Editorial Reviews 

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
 The new space opera shares with the old the interstellar sweep of events and 
exotic locales, but Dozois and Strahan's all-original anthology shows how the 
genre's purveyors have updated it, with rigorous science, well-drawn characters 
and excellent writing. Many of the 18 stories play with the scope that 
characterizes classic space opera. In Greg Egan's Glory, creatures embody 
themselves as aliens to perform archeological research, only to get caught up 
in a struggle between two worlds. Robert Reed's Hatch, limited in locale to the 
hull of a giant ship, proves that the scope of the struggle
for life is always epic. Stephen Baxter's Remembrance walks a line between the 
personal and the global as resisters against Earth's conquerors remember one 
man's struggle against the alien invaders. Kage Baker's humorous Maelstrom, in 
which an acting troupe on frontier Mars puts on a Poe story for the miners 
there, tells a personal story in an epic setting. The new space opera teaches 
us that despite the bizarre turns humanity may take to conquer these outré 
settings, a recognizable core of humanity remains.

From Booklist
The rich space opera tradition, extending from the off-world voyages of Verne 
and Wells to this galaxy-embracing anthology, is arguably sf's most prolific 
subgenre. Veteran anthologist Dozois and coeditor Strahan present some of the 
newest boundary-stretching variations on the category's many themes. 
Accordingly, the roster of contributors includes some of contemporary sf's 
brightest innovators, such as Peter Hamilton and Robert Silverberg, as well as 
such rising stars as Tony Daniel and Mary Rosenblum. Ian McDonald brilliantly 
sketches entire future cultures and histories in Verthandi's Ring, the main 
concern of which is millennia-old intergalactic battles. In Hatch, Robert Reed 
describes the precarious lifestyle of a small human society eking out a living 
on the surface of a Jupiter-sized starship. Other tales monitor 
species-changing scientists, an eccentric Martian arts colony, and Earth's last 
traumatized survivor. In sheer breathtaking, mind-expanding scope, this 
collection of some of the finest tale-spinning the subgenre has to offer 
delivers hours of exhilarating reading.

Sounds like great fun, so hope lots of you can make it to the next meeting to 
talk about it.

Evan

[bookshare-discuss] Next Meeting of the Science Fiction Club, Thursday, September 9, 2009

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