Farscape, Arkady Martine, and More from Space Opera Week 2023!

To view this email as a web page, go [here.]( [Tor.com Newsletter]( [Forward to a Friend]( SPACE OPERA WEEK [Yes, Women Are Still Writing Space Opera]( Welcome to Space Opera Week on Tor.com! To start things off, Judith Tarr is here to celebrate and pay tribute to some of the amazing women and nonbinary authors who have been breaking new ground and expanding the genre over the last decade. Tarr discusses just a few of her current favorites and asks you to share your own recommendations in the comments! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( GOODBYE, GEORGE CLOONEY [Every Space Story Is a Horror Story]( If you find yourself hurtling through the empty void of space, don’t panic. Not because you’re safe—you’re very definitely not safe, actually. Mostly it just won’t help. There are relatively few ways for humans to exist in outer space that end well, and thousands of ways that end very, very badly. Space is, simply put, horrifying. Emily Hughes is here to tell you why. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( FRELL ME [Farscape and the Narrative Beauty of Screwing Up]( Most shows featuring space travel involve a group of people who chose to be on their respective journeys. But Farscape begins with an astronaut getting Buck Rogers’d across the galaxy via a wormhole. The show asks: What if no one on the ship ever wanted to be here in the first place? And thus begins an adventure of screw-ups, hijinks, and generally making things worse. Emmet Asher-Perrin discusses Farscape’s unlikely heroes and adventures across the stars. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( FOR YOUR BOOKSHELVES [Ten Great Young Adult Space Operas]( Thank you to the authors that looked at young adult fiction and space opera and thought “why not both?” There’s adventure, there’s romance, there’s danger, there’s high stakes, there’s a pack of outcasts who have the fate of the galaxy in their hands. What more could you want? Alex Brown highlights ten great YA space operas from the last few years. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( CLASSIC SCI-FI [Five Works of ’80s SF That Feature Earth’s Alien Overlords]( Many space operas depict an all-conquering humanity, dominating the galaxy. But others feature humans vastly outmatched by galactic powers, a world for whom first contact was synonymous with being conquered. Here, James Davis Nicoll recommends five classic science fiction stories about Earthlings unwillingly incorporated into sprawling galactic empires. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( RECOMMENDED READING [Read the First Chapter of Some Desperate Glory, a Space Opera From Emily Tesh]( We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Emily Tesh’s debut novel! A queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory arrives April 11th from Tordotcom Publishing. Read the first chapter here, with further chapters running throughout the week! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( THE TEIXCALAAN SERIES [A Memory Called Empire and the Echoes of Cultural Imperialism]( Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire centers on political intrigue in a fictional galaxy-spanning empire, in whose language the word for “world” is synonymous with the name of the empire itself. Martine’s novel deftly portrays cultural narrative-making and how language upholds empire by mythologizing its origins and imposing its values onto the colonized. In this essay, Anastasia Klimchynskaya discusses how the themes of the novel continue to resonate with works and ideas she encounters in the real world, from The Aeneid to NASA’s latest mission on Mars. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( SF ORIGIN STORIES [The Age of Sail: Nautical Fiction and the Origins of Space Opera]( When the early writers of American science fiction were looking for a setting for grand adventures, they looked to the past for inspiration, to the centuries where sailing ships carried explorers across the globe. So when writers looked to the future, it’s not surprising that many of them imagined ships sailing through the vastness of space being like ships of the sea in many ways. Here, Alan Brown discusses space opera’s roots in nautical fiction. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( CREATIVE LIFE [Parenting an Idea in Saga]( Having celebrated its ten-year anniversary a year ago, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ long-running space fantasy comic Saga hasn’t abandoned its opening line (This is how an idea becomes real ), but rather has embraced how it’s not as simple as releasing an idea into the ether; you have to nurture it, even when you feel that you can’t possibly do so, to ensure its survival. Natalie Zutter dives into the comic’s thesis, and how you have to let go of your expectations for what ideas your idea wants to create. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( ORIGINAL FICTION [“Even If Such Ways Are Bad” by Rich Larson]( A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there. 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