5 must read space operas

Hi everyone. Today, I’m looking at 5 must read space operas – a staple in any science fiction diet. Hope you enjoy.

#spaceopera #scifi #booktube
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MY SCI-FI NOVELS

DELPHINE DESCENDS -
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf – to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.

When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.

She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.
But, to beat them she must play their game. She must become worse than them all.

BLACK MILK -
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.

Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:

Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...

The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…

Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...

Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS:
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[Sci-FiOdyssey]

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoy reading through the books on this list. There are SO many great space operas out there so this list certainly isn't exhaustive. I'll be looking at more space opera must reads soon... of which there are plenty. Thanks for watching.

[peterbroom]

Lensman series by EE 'Doc' Smith, is I think the first sci fi story to describe inertialess flight, as well as hyperspace and a galactic civilisation. Real pageturners and great fun to read, the depictions of huge space battles and tactics are well thought through. Published in the 1930's !

[ranterofall]

Book List with timestamps:
Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov 0:49
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds 2:53
Tau Zero by Paul Anderson 4:17
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey 6:14
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks 8:04

[steverliu]

I’ve really enjoyed John Scalzi‘s Old Man’s War series as well as his The Collapsing Empire Series.

[Setebos]

The Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, and the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon.

[plamentd]

i think larry niven's "known space" and especially ringworld series are the very definition of the genre

[ttrestle]

The greatest space opera ever written is by Peter F Hamilton. In order—
Pandora’s Star
Judas Unchained
The Void Trilogy (3 books)

[donsample]

The Honor Harrington books by David Weber. The series starts out as Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE, but quickly adds all sorts of political intrigue and other shenanigans.

[nickross]

i loved pandora's star series but how about a little love for Lois McMaster Bujold. Vorkosigan saga may be the most space opera space opera. Thanks for the video

[NomadShadow]

My favorite Space Opera is David Weber's Honor Harrington series, the second book in the series "For The Honor Of The Queen" is fantastic and what got me hooked

[MalcolmBrenner]

Glad you mentioned Poul Anderson’s “Tau Zero.” When I interviewed him in Seattle in 1980, I met a gentleman of the old school, kindly, humorous but not rude, thoughtful and intelligent. He said his degree in physics wasn’t intended to make him a better SF writer, but it did. Concepts of time dilation led him to the idea that each chapter would cover 10X the time of the previous one!

[davestr]

Anne Leckie’s Ancillary series! best space opera of the past few years.

[wtk]

For those interested in the pulp origins of space opera, the original father of the space opera sub-genre was Edmond Hamilton in his "Interstellar Patrol" stories in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and they still hold up today. After the Interstellar Patrol, he became the third most prolific writer for Weird Tales Magazine after only Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, plus he was the lead writer and creator of Captain Future, a space opera pulp hero who was basically Doc Savage in space. Hamilton was Isaac Asimov's favorite writer growing up, and the influence is obvious in the precise "style-less" prose they both used and with Foundation being full of space opera tropes whose origins go back to Hamilton and Doc Smith, the "second father of space opera" very shortly behind Hamilton. If you ever check out any of the collections of pulp stories that Asimov edited in the seventies and eighties, several of them begin with Edmond Hamilton stories as the very first story. Along with fellow pulp writers like Otto Binder and Manly Wade Wellman, Hamilton escaped the collapse of pulps by moving into comic books, where he wrote Superman and Batman for decades. He also got to apply some of his space opera tropes to remake a series created by Jerry Siegel, The Legion of Super-Heroes. Incidentally, Hamilton's wife was Leigh Brackett, who was nicknamed the "Queen of Space Opera" in the 1930s. Today, she is most remembered for her later screenwriting on movies like "The Big Sleep, "The Empire Strikes Back", and a number of John Wayne westerns.

[davidunderwood]

Whenever I hear the term "Space Opera", I automatically think of Iain M Banks and was starting to think he was not featuring lol. I love those novels and have been half-looking for another author to follow!

[carl]

I guess I am getting too old. The only series I read from these is Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. Anything by Asimov is good reading. The R. Daneel Olivaw Series, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire are also excellent books. If I remember correctly, they tie into the Foundation universe.
And being old, when I think of space opera, I automatically think of E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensman Series.

[GavP]

Old man’s war, John Scalzi, would be on my list.

[UnwashedPearl]

What always comes to mind first for me is the German pulp series, Perry Rhodan, that has been published weekly since 1961 (!). The first 126 of them were published in English by Ace Books from 1969-1978 under the direction of Forrest J Ackerman. They would be classified as novellas today since they were around 125 pages.

[peakrider]

Currently reading through The Expanse series. I think the TV series is great and it has prompted me to get the books and delve deeper into the storytelling that you don’t get in adaptations. Other space operas I have really enjoyed is the Nights Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton, which I would love to see come to life on screen, and Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee time series of books.

[mikepope]

Lots of great sci-fi suggestions, but not all sci-fi is space opera. One of my favourite space operas (along with the Honor Harrington series that others have mentioned) is the Vorkosigan Saga series by Lois McMaster Bujold. Really, really well-written and entertaining.

[TheTozmoGaming]

Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton is my favourite space opera (all 7 of them). I also loved the revelation space trilogy, and I'm on the last book of the Expanse right now and loving that too.