What exactly is The New Space Opera? Following a comment from RobB, I realised that I may not have updated you all on what this project is, and when it’s headed your way. The short version is that it is an original science fiction anthology co-edited with Gardner Dozois that will be published by HarperEos in the United States and HarperCollinsVoyager in Australia. We don’t have a definite publication date yet, but it should be Fall 2007 (so probably August or September of that year).  

Where are we at with it? Gardner and I have been reading submissions for the past few months, and are pushing towards having 200,000 words of really topnotch new science fiction stories for the book. So far we’ve got some terrific stuff by Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton, Robert Silverberg, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Alstair Reynolds, Gwyneth Jones, Mary Rosenblum, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Tony Daniel, Robert Reed, Ken Macleod, and a handful of others. If all goes to plan, we’ll be handing the book in soon-ish, so I’ll have a final list of contributors soon-ish. And, if Gardner and I have our way, we hope to be able to work together on a New Space Opera 2 at some point.