The New Space Opera 2

By: Gardner Dozois - editor, Jonathan Strahan - editor

Narrated by: Tom Weiner, Bahni Turpin, Caroline Shaffer, Richard Powers, Hillary Huber, Marguerite Gavin, Xe Sands, Erica Sullivan

Following the success of their Locus Award-winning anthology The New Space Opera, editors Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan up the ante with The New Space Opera 2, in which more of the most beloved names in science fiction spin stunning tales of interstellar adventure and wonder.

Authors include: Neal Asher, John Barnes, Cory Doctorow, John Kessel, Jay Lake, John Meaney, Elizabeth Moon, Garth Nix, Mike Resnick, Justina Robson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Scalzi, Bruce Sterling, Peter Watts, Sean Williams, Tad Williams, Bill Willingham, Robert Charles Wilson, and John C. Wright.

Featuring additional narration by Neil Shah, R. C. Bray, Lloyd James, Tristan Morris, Kevin Kenerly, and Terri McMahon.

©2013 Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan (P)2013 Blackstone Audio

Variety of new space operas

Plenty of modern day writers in the space opera genre. Only the last is pretty bad. Nice that the chapters are by story and labeled which is not always the case. A very good buy considering the number of good stories difficult to get elsewhere.

Solid stories, some sketchy performances.

I know that not every book can justify a top-level, expensive narrator...but someone should have been listening to these performances and making corrections. Sci-Fi is often about technical terms and spacey-sounding names. When the narrators don't have a clue it's embarrassing and off-putting. If you don't recognize a word, people, ask. If it doesn't appear to be English, it probably isn't. At least strive to pronounce the *title* correctly. Sheesh. Short words in all caps are often acronyms. EVA isn't a woman's name in a space story. Try, really try, to determine which character is saying which line of dialogue before applying one of your oh-so-crafty character voices to them. Please.

Anyway...this is a book of solid, enjoyable sci-fi stories, most of which are narrated well, and a few of which are narrated so horribly that they are all I remember from the experience.

Mostly entertaining

Most of the stories were good, the last and longest was just the author playing with their vocabulary, like they wrote down fun words they found over 20 years that sounded exotic and just dropped them in the story.

Overall, Meh

I'm pretty sure I won't remember any of these stories next week. As opposed to other stories I read thirty years ago and still remember.

I begin to think that anthologies of "original" stories are anthologies of stories that couldn't be sold elsewhere. In future, I'll concentrate on collections of Hugo/Nebula award winning stories.