Continuing to answer queries from Ask Me Anything! August 2011….
Lynn has a couple of good ones:
Imagine that Star Wars, Star Trek, and Firefly do not exist. What would be your favorite space opera?
Wow, this is a very tough question. Those are some of the big space opera franchises, aren’t they? Without the first two, I’m not sure I even have a deep love of space opera to begin with. And Firefly is just all kinds of great, even if it is a bit uneven at times.
I think that my favorite space opera outside of those would be a literary one — but, which one? For mind-blowing hugeness, you can’t go much wrong with the “Commonwealth” novels of Peter J. Hamilton. (Thus far I have only read Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained.) And I’ve loved what I’ve read thus far of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan stories. And there are the Lensmen novels of E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith…which I need to continue reading one of these days.
Favorite? I suppose I’d go with the Commonwealth novels. It’s the universe I’d most want to live in: traveling to distant worlds via train, the conquering of death without a whole lot of Singularity weirdness, and, of course, space ships galore.
Lynn also asks: If you could live on any of the Firefly worlds for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Probably Ariel. I’m a city guy, I think. Not a big fan of the Alliance, though….
More to come…wrapping it up next time, I promise!
So, if Star Wars and Star Trek did not exist, what would the Science Fiction genre look like today?