With Gary about to leave for the World Fantasy Convention to be held in New Orleans next week, and with Jonathan in the process of assembling anthologies on the most recent iterations of space opera, we spend most of our time discussing the characteristics, history, and too-common misuse of that venerable term.
While we do touch briefly on the etymology of 'space opera', and on the pulp-era adventures that Wilson Tucker had in mind when he rather contemptuously coined the term in 1941, most of the discussion focuses on how the idea has evolved since M. John Harrison set out to demolish the old-school space opera with The Centauri Device in 1974, the efforts of Paul J. McAuley and others to define a new space opera in the 1980s (and Jonathan and Gardner Dozois’s The New Space Opera anthologies of 2007 and 2010), the influence of media, and more recent examples ranging from James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series to Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya universe, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series, and other authors who have energetically begun to reclaim space opera for a more diverse cast of characters. We fully expect enthusiastic disagreements.
As always, we hope you enjoy the episode. See you all again after World Fantasy!
Episode 491: Ten Minutes with Sarah Gailey
Episode 487: Ten Minutes with Maureen McHugh
Episode 490: Ten Minutes with Amal El-Mohtar
Episode 489: Ten Minutes with Daniel Abraham
Episode 488: Ten Minutes with Brooke Bolander
Episode 486: Firing the canon
Episode 485: Ten Minutes with A.T. Greenblatt
Episode 484: Ten Minutes with Cheryl Morgan
Episode 483: Ten Minutes with Alec Nevala-Lee
Episode 482: Ten Minutes with Arkady Martine
Episode 481: Ten Minutes with Molly Gloss
Episode 480: Ten Minutes with K.M. Szpara
Episode 479: What Comes Next?
Episode 478: Ten Minutes with Sarah Monette and Katherine Addison
Episode 477: Ten Minutes with James P. Blaylock
Episode 476: Twenty One Minutes with Peter Watts
Episode 475: Ten Minutes with M. John Harrison
Episode 474: Ten Minutes with Jane Yolen
Episode 473: Ten Minutes with Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead
Episode 472: Ten Minutes with Kij Johnson
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