Robert Folsom writes in the Kansas City Star:

This being the gift-giving season, here are some suggestions for the sci-fi reader on your list—or for yourself.

You’d better wrap this one. The heft alone of The Space Opera Renaissance (941 pages; Tor; $39.95) will keep someone guessing. Compiled by World Fantasy Award-winning anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, this tome covers the space opera genre from its infancy as pulp fiction to today, when it’s a seriously considered category. Hartwell and Cramer’s introduction is historically informative and entertainingly written. Then the stories are presented in six chronological sections from “Redefined Writers” to “Next Wave (Twenty-First Century),” covering writers from Edmond Hamilton to John C. Wright.