I love Neal Asher’s books, found him a long time ago in one of those “year’s best” collections of short stories from the library (though the ones with fantasy and horror were always the best, I think I read every single collection for every year and found so many good writers that way.)
They are full of action, good characters and worlds and ideas, sweeping and huge settings. Feels almost more like watching a movie to read them.
Who among us likes these action packed stories?
Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton.
I really love the Culture series.
There are so much fantastic space opera out there. Some high-points for me, but depends on what you want out of a space opera:
- Alistair Reynolds, “revelation space” and its’ series
- James Alan Gardner: “expendable” and its’ series
- Timothy Zahn: lord, he has probably dozens
- Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Sten series
- Simon R. Green: Deathstalker series
- Alan Dean Foster: A Call To Arms and trilogy
- Brandon Sanderson
- John Scalzi did a trilogy a couple of years ago
- John Varley’s “Seven Worlds”(?) series.
- Vernor Vinge: Fire Upon the Deep
- Ken MacLeod’s “Fall Revolution “ series
- Kim Stanley Robinson “Mars” Series
- The Expanse
Saga of the Seven Suns was good from my recollection. I wonder when he’ll revisit, Kevin J Anderson is prolific
isnt Expeditionary force a space opera? at least Skippy would like it to be.
For me, the favorite of the genre to date are the Mass Effect games, Star Wars (the good ones, at least), Asimov’s Foundation books, Stanislav Lem’s Solaris book and, even if it’s more grimdark than space opera, Warhammer 40k. I still have to delve into The Expanse but I don’t have the time yet
