Spectra of Space Opera

One feature of a lot of mid-20th century science fiction was its restriction to our own solar system. Plenty of adventures happened across the galaxy but authors often played among the planets and moons that accompany us around good ol' Sol. Some of that work became dated as we learned more and more about the other planets and bodies nearest us, but the idea still gives an interesting frontier flavor to stories that use the same kind of system. Rather than speculated planets orbiting other stars, we deal with places the average person might see with a backyard telescope.

Writers Glynn Stewart and Terry Mixon use that kind of setting for an old-fashioned style interplanetary adventure that carries more than a whiff of those older stories in their "Vigilante" duology and followup series, "Bound by Stars." Brad Mantruso is the only survivor of a vicious pirate attack on his family's freighter, rescued by a passing military spacecraft. Swearing vengeance for his lost kin and fellow crew, Brad changes his name and begins his mission of revenge by developing a company of space mercenaries who can help him search for and eventually defeat the pirate band that attacked him. The first novel in the series, Heart of Vengeance, outlines how Brad begins that quest and learns that fulfilling it will be more complicated than he at first believed -- because there is more than meets the eye to the pirates he hunts and the depth of the conspiracy could be far more than one man -- or one crew -- can handle.

Stewart and Mixon have taken full advantage of modern technology in both self-publishing and working with their own independent publishers. Each has an output well past the dozen-book threshold without the use of smeary Xerox machines and more typos than all those monkeys who are supposed to be turning out Shakespeare, and without the presence of a traditional publisher. Though some of that output isn't as polished as it might be with a traditional press, it's tough to write a couple dozen books without seeing some improvement (There's hope, Dan Brown readers! There's hope! Even if it is about 20 years off), so Heart of Vengeance runs smoothly most of the time.

The pair paint a background of Heinlein juveniles and Tom Corbett's square-jawed interplanetary heroism and in front of it stage stories with 21st century sensibilities, scientific knowledge and levels of violence, and it's enough fun to occupy a reader for several hours.

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On the other end of the scale is Christopher Ruocchio's galaxy-spanning "Sun Eater" series, a tale related by Hadrian Marlowe near the end of his life. Hadrian is humanity's savior from the alien Cielcin but also its greatest villain, as he brought salvation at the cost of four billion human lives when he destroyed a sun.

Empire of Silence is the first of the series, telling of Hadrian's early young adulthood as a princeling being groomed for a life as a member of his planet's elite. But when he learns that his father plans a different path than he himself desires he decides to flee that future and the suffocating control it represents. His father has never been a warm man but Hadrian's attempts to thwart his will bring out a level of cruelty and brutality that nearly shatter the young man. He eventually escapes, at a great cost, and begins the path that will lead him to the adult Hadrian who is telling us the story we're reading.

Space opera works share a lot of DNA -- that's one the reasons its ancestor name of "horse opera" was coined for Westerns -- so the tale of a privileged young technocratic man who finds himself when he has to rebuild his life under trying and primitive circumstances is not going to break a lot of new ground. Dune is the most obvious antecedent, but Frank Herbert was more concerned with explaining ecology while Ruocchio seems more invested in exploring characters. Empire also echoes a lot of Patrick Rothfuss and Lois McMaster Bujold's work, but this might also stem more from working with some of the same ideas than deliberate derivation.

Nevertheless, the similarities combine with the length to weaken Empire's appeal. And Ruocchio's decision to make the whole work an exploration of character also works against it because our central viewpoint character is a selfish and callow jackass. Speeding up his arc of improvement and significantly trimming some of Ruocchio's "world building" wouldn't hurt the story at all. I may wind up waiting awhile to to see if those moves are made before dishing up the rest of the Sun Eater series  once it's finished.