I’ve been working out what to post here. Lots of family stuff happening in the background. My mother’s been unwell, which has been difficult, and we’re getting ready for young Sophie’s fifth birthday this Saturday, which should be pretty terrific. Other than that, it’s read, read, read.  I’ve sent out contracts to fill about two thirds of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and am reading and re-reading to make sure that the rest of the book is just right. I’m a little torn about how I feel about this book at the moment. I’ve had lengthy, and very worthwhile conversations about it with my publisher. It’s a long book, but it’s short for what it is. He said the other day that if dropping a story from the lineup hurts, then you’re doing a good book. If that’s the case, then this should be a strong book.  There are stories I want to get in there that I can’t get rights to, stories I want to get in there that just won’t damn well fit, and the constant spectre of there being another story just around the corner.  On that, if you’re a writer, editor, or publisher, or are a reader who’s read something wonderful, please drop me a line by Sunday. I need to get everything read, rights contracted, and manuscript assembled and to the publisher in just 27 days!!

Like the white rabbit, I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year must, must, be done by 7 November. That means story selections, contracts – the whole nine yards. With that in mind, I’m stopping reading anything new on 15 October. That means you have nine days to post, email or semaphore me anything you’d like me to consider for the book. If you’re not sure if I’ve seen it, please drop me an email and I’ll let you know. And my sincerest thanks to everyone who’s already sent in stuff or gotten in touch. This book’s going to be the best one yet!

The email’s gone off and should be in the relevant editors in-boxes, so I think it’s safe to tell you all that Gardner Dozois and I have delivered The New Space Opera to HarperCollins in Australia and the US. The 200,000 word anthology will be published in trade paperback in June 2007, and will feature the fabulous artwork of Stephan Martiniere on the cover (as mentioned here earlier).  I’m very happy with the book, and can’t wait to see what you all think of, once it hits the shelves. Oh, and Gardner and I have been hard at work, and are in the planning stages for a possible NSOII (fingers crossed).

I’ve been discussing this with Ellen Datlow in the comments to the previous post, but I thought I’d encourage comments here on this question:

What do you mean by ‘space opera’?

Come one, come all. I’d love to know. I have a pretty broad definition of it, but I’d love to hear what others think.

Here’s a thought: there’s no such thing as the new space opera. It’s not that there haven’t been profound developments in the evolution of space opera over the past twenty five years. There have been. It’s not that those developments don’t coincide with what people (myself included) have been calling the ‘new space opera’. They have. The problem is that there’s been an error of perspective.

If you step back just a little over a hundred years Garrett P. Serviss wrote a novel, a media tie-in actually, that has some claim to being the first major pre-space opera novel. It had most of the characteristics of space opera that we recognise today. The next major work, Doc Smith’s Skylark of Space in 1928 took things a step further, ramping up the scale and drama incredibly, and Smith did it again with the Lensman novels. Campbell rang his changes on it, as did Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt, Kuttner, Moore and others. Blish, Vance and others improved the quality of writing, characterisation etc through the 50s, and in the 60s you began to see more experimental works, as well as work by Dickson, Anderson, and Delany. The mid-70s saw a major shift with Mike Harrison’s space opera killer The Centauri Device, and then Interzone ran it’s call to arms in the early ’80s, Iain Banks introduced the Culture, and Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley et al improved the science, the quality of writing etc that was common in space opera. Writers like C J Cherryh also made major contributions, especially in a world building sense, with detailed and intense portrayals of socio-economic forces in novels like Downbelow Station. You can then skip across Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty, Baxter’s work of the ’90s and on to writers like Alastair Reynolds, who bring a darkness and density to what they’re doing. It’s all space opera. A continuous evolution in the field.

So, what do I mean? Well, if all of that stuff is ‘space opera’ and not ‘new space opera’ or ‘old new space opera’ or ‘new old space opera’, then is there something else? Yes. Space opera has always been popular. It has always been science fiction’s dominant form, even when it wasn’t cool or whatever. And throughout space opera’s history there have been writers of ‘retro space opera’: writers who continue to create older forms of space opera for reasons of art or commerce. They effectively pastiche space opera, rather than partake of its continuing evolution. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it creates the impression that there’s space opera (that old stuff) and something new. It’s an error of perspective. There’s actually space opera and that other old stuff. I’m just saying.