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Suggestion Form
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Contact Info:
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This list was originally created using the label "women" to refer to "cisgender women." It has since been updated. Unless otherwise noted in the sheet's title, those sheets will feature work by cisgender women. Further changes may occur in the future. Thanks to Dr. Andee Krafft for the suggestion.
Twitter: @shaunduke
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Email: shaun.duke@bemidjistate.edu
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The spreadsheet includes three lists:
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Pre-2010s (Lesser Known)
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This list will include works considered to be "lesser known" (not a statement of quality) published before 2010. It also includes series in which the majority of the work was published before the 2010s.
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Pre-2010s (Well Known)
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This list will include works considered to be "well known" or "classics" published before 2010. "Well known" will be assumed to refer to works regularly cited by the general public as examples of space opera or aligned subgenres OR by noted authors of the same. It also includes series in which the majority of the work was published before the 2010s.
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Post-2010s Space Opera
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This list will only include works published in the 2010s OR series in which the majority of the series was published in the 2010s. Some authors who are noted space opera writers such as Lois McMaster Bujold will be included in the Pre-2010s (Well Known) list for obvious reasons. The purpose for this list is to house all of the new work being published, which is too "fresh" to mark as "less known" or "well known."
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For the purposes of consistency, "space opera" will be understood to have two primary meanings:
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1. "Colorful, dramatic, large scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character, and plot action and usually set in the relatively distant future and [in interstellar space, especially settings in which the central character interacts with multiple worlds or in which interactions among many worlds is explicitly referenced]. [It is also] characteristically optimistic in tone." -- Modified from Space Opera Renaissance edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
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2. Science fiction which places less emphasis on the melodrama of classic space opera (especially the reduction to formula) and places more emphasis on character development, literary considerations in prose and narrative, and on social criticism (especially anti-colonial). Narratives of this type are typically less optimistic and feature a darker tone overall, focusing instead on human-scale stories and richly detailed cultures in which no single "Big Idea" dominates the plot or conversation. The setting typically involves the idea of a "junk yard" universe rather than a stage for human supremacy. -- Modified from Paul McAuley's "Junk Yard Universes" in Locus.
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This spreadsheet was created and is being maintained using a combination of resources, including the personal resources of the creator (Shaun Duke), the Internet Science Fiction Database, and Cora Buhlert's private list of space opera written by women. Additional resources include @quartzen's Twitter list (https://twitter.com/quartzen/status/864239042795376645)
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This spreadsheet was created by Shaun Duke as part of a future academic project on forgotten women space opera writers. Naturally, it will also serve as a useful tool for the general public, especially those who wish to expand their space opera reading. If you have any questions about this list, you can contact him directly on Twitter via @shaunduke. You can also support his efforts by joining his Patreon at The Joy Factory OR donating to his PayPal or his ko-fi.
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Current Total (Individual):
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P2010LK190
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P2010WK192
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Po2010473
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NBT21
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Total876
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