Space Opera: It’s the (stupid) science

The trappings of space opera are beautifully illustrated here.

The recent arguments over the merits of Interstellar (is it good SF, is it crappy, is it too serious, is the science BS, etc, etc) has been ringing in my ears this week.  One poster even tried to label Interstellar as space opera.  Which reminded me of a post in IO9 a few months back about space opera and its merits.  Part of the discussion revolved around what, exactly, is considered space opera.

Wild Cards Winter cometh

I just learned yesterday that there would be a new Wild Cards novel coming out in November.  Lowball is a Wild Cards “Mosaic” novel (which should mean that the various parallel-running stories and characters meet up in a grand finale at the end), the followup to the WC novel Fort Freak.

Then, in checking the Amazon pages for the drop date of Lowball (November 2), I discovered that the ebook reissue of the fourth Wild Cards novel, Aces Abroad, will be released on January 13.  So, good winter to come for us Wild Cards fans!

Before Game of Thrones… there was Wild Cards

Before George R. R. Martin brought Game of Thrones to television, he’d acted as writer and editor to a group of science fiction writers who had discovered a joint fascination with the pulp and superhero genre.  Under Martin’s direction, the group became the Wild Card Trust, and began penning the incredible series known as Wild Cards.

This ingenious series of books had a wonderful premise, that of developing a science-fiction-based world of superheroes, as realistic as they could be within the SF framework, and creating an alternate of our world that was forever changed by the characters.  It became a cult hit, spanning (so far) 21 books and (so far) three decades, rewriting our world’s history from 1946 on, and has been recently begun the process of re-release to a new world of fans.  And as this was one of my favorite books series, I am brimming over with the desire to tell you readers all about it.