A review by chan_fry
Space Opera by Cynthia McQuillan, Robin Wayne Bailey, Lyn McConchie, Peter S. Beagle, Jim Burns, Elisabeth Waters, Mary C. Pangborn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Steven Brust, Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint, Suzette Haden Elgin, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Alan Dean Foster, Margaret Ball, Paula Lalish, Anne McCaffrey, Leslie Fish, Warren C. Norwood, Jody Lynn Nye

3.0

I rated each of the 20 stories separately (in my longer review), and came up with an average of 2.5 stars for the book, rounding it up to three. Like most anthologies, this one is hit-or-miss; some stories simply weren’t worth my time and others were wonderful. Mostly, I enjoyed the variety, and the kinds of stories I wouldn’t normally find.

One downside of the book overall, for me, was how many misogynistic tropes I saw, especially in a book as recent as 1996 and one edited by two women. Many of the female characters required a man for help or explanation or something else, for example. Also weird: almost all the music mentioned herein was either classical or folk music — possibly an artifact of the authors’ average ages. Almost no mention was made of modern popular music’s many genres: rock, metal, blues, jazz, dance, techno, R&B, hiphop, etc.

One last oddity: both the front cover and back cover specifically use the descriptor “science fiction” while avoiding the term “fantasy”. Yet I counted only five stories that avoided magic, gods, fairies, and so on — meaning 75% of the stories have a hard time counting as “science fiction” by many definitions (and mine).