Infinite Stars

Starred review from September 4, 2017
Space opera is celebrated in this capacious anthology with stories from a stellar lineup of its best contemporary practitioners. The 24 selections—which include classics from luminaries such as Robert Silverberg (who also contributes an informative historical introduction), Anne McCaffrey, Poul Anderson, and Cordwainer Smith, as well as 15 works original to this volume—illustrate the wide variety of themes that space opera can accommodate: galactic empire building across space and time in Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton’s “Stark and the Star Kings”; the peculiar lives of extraterrestrial fauna in Orson Scott Card’s “Renegat” (a new episode in his long-running Ender saga); interstellar piracy in Elizabeth Moon’s “All in a Day’s Work”; cultural identity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo-winning “Binti”; and military adventures (a staple of the subgenre) in stories by Lois McMaster Bujold, David Drake, and Bennett R. Coles. Although these short stories don’t always have the sweep and scope of novel-length works, the new episodes of several series—among them “The Waters of Kanly” by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, set amid the events of Frank Herbert’s landmark novel Dune—will make this book irresistible to space opera enthusiasts.

October 15, 2017

Hugo Award-nominated editor Schmidt has gathered 24 stories from some of the most popular authors in space opera and military sf. Many selections are reprints, such as the novella "Borders of Infinity" from Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga," Nnedi Okorafor's marvelous novella "Binti," or Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton's final Stark story, "Stark and the Star Kings." Others are original contributions, often filling in gaps in their author's most popular series, including a "Skolian" story from Catherine Asaro, a "Dune" tale from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, a "Revelation Space" entry from Alastair Reynolds, and Orson Scott Card's "Renegat," which features Ender Wiggins in his role as speaker for the dead. The preference of series entries over stand-alone stories guarantees that readers unfamiliar with these books will get a tantalizing taste of the introduced universes. VERDICT With the likes of David Weber, Jack Campbell, Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Moon, Charles Gannon, and Robert Silverberg, this is also a great anthology for those who want to sample the best authors in sf.--MM

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
This collection gathers together a wide range of space-opera stories, with a special focus on the space-opera subgenre known as military sf. While new entries in ongoing military sf series by popular authors such as Elizabeth Moon, David Drake, and David Weber are featured prominently, and many of the older reprints hereincluding a Vorkosigan installment from Lois McMaster Bujoldare also military sf, the anthology nevertheless provides a diverse representation of the space-opera genre. These military-themed selections share space with classics such as Cordwainer Smith's The Game of Rat and Dragon and Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang as well as tales from more recent major authors such as Nnedi Okarafor, whose Binti, a story of cultural and racial identity and interspecies contact, is one of the major standouts of the anthology as a whole. While the broad sampling means readers may not enjoy every tale, the wide variety on offer makes this volume worth a look for any sf reader, regardless of their particular genre tastes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)