Harare Review of Books

336 pages. Published Aug. 13, 2024 by Tachyon Publications. SFF anthology.

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Sooooo much fun! This is an absolute treat for science fiction fans, a collection from some of the best authors in the business today. Tobias S. Buckell’s Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance is a brilliant thought experiment on bodies and othering-in space, with robots, from a (kind of?) non-human perspective. Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee is about spy-assassins and factions. In the profoundly sad Belladonna Nights by my personal fav, Alastair Reynolds, the world has ended, but not everyone realises it. T. Kingfisher’s Metal Like Blood in the Dark is a little like a space age Pinocchio story, and is also bittersweet—post-Edenic—on the loss of innocence. Lavie Tidhar’s The Old Dispensation is Jewish lore (and biblically-accurate angels, eek) on another planet. The deeply moving A Good Heretic by Becky Chambers is about not being the same as others, and learning to find yourself and your purpose in that. So is Anya Johanna DeNiro’s A Voyage to Queensthroat, while also evoking the US’s current cultural wars. Ann Leckie’s The Justified is gory and bloody and fun—not words I ever thought I’d use together in a sentence, and is about unjust rule and class stratification.

Arkady Martine’s All The Colours You Thought Were Kings, Charlie Jane Anders’s very wacky A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime, Aliette de Bodard’s Immersion, Seth Dickinson’s Morrigan in the Sunglare, Sam J. Miller’s Planetstuck, and Karin Tidbeck’s weird and wonderful, now classic The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir are the other stories rounding out this superb collection.

But that’s not all. In his excellent introduction, worth reading in itself, editor Jonathan Strahan takes readers through the definition and history of space opera, its evolution from its earliest days, through pulp and then sci-fi’s Golden Age, the rise of “hard” sci-fi with its scientific rigour, to today’s new socially conscious, diverse, politically aware stories. It’s excellent on things like the move away from fixation on, and new awareness of the consequences of, empire and colonization; increasing inclusivity, in representation both of characters and authors; and awareness of and commentary on today’s social problems. It’s an excellent overview. SF (and space opera with it) has some way to go, still, but it’s come a long way.

So, New Adventures in Space Opera is a fantastic, fun, and eye-opening read; very, very highly recommended. Many thanks to Tachyon Pubs and NetGalley for an early copy.