What is your favorite space opera (book, not movie)

Stranger In A Strange Land
(uncensored edition)

I’ve liked the ones I’ve managed to read through:

Starship Troopers
Foundation (series)
Honor Harrington (series)

… though I’ve abandoned and forgotten quite a few.

The Merchant of Venus

Xenogenesis

It’s very hard to top Dune.

I’m not sure I would put Dune in the “space opera” genre would you?

I guess “epic” would be more fitting.

Agree with that.

As a teenager I read pretty much everything Arthur C Clarke and Heinlein ever wrote.

It’s been a very long time since I read it but I loved Harry Harrison’s ‘Bill the Galactic Hero’.

@Zaku I powered through most of the Honor Harrington stuff, but it jumped the shark for me after awhile. Starship Troopers and the Foundation series were awesome.

I like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of space opera and low fantasy.

It’s more Grey’s Anatomy than House, if you follow my space opera to medical drama analogy.

Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.

Foundation. (I always considered Asimov to be the Dave Brubeck of the genre)

Close second is Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Whispering Swarn, a recent entry by veteran author Michael Moorcock, is not technically a space opera, is a good sf/fantasy swashbuckler that has me waiting for the next installment.

Love Moorcock.

@Seek What did Moorcock write that was space opera? I know he writes a lot of fantasy.

::shrug:: I dunno. I like The Eternal Champion, especially Elric of Melnibonë. @Strauss brought up Moorcock’s new sorta-spacey-thing, but this is the first I’m hearing of it.

Jack Vance is good. You should try “The Eyes of the Overworld.”

@Seek It’s not a space opera, but I enjoyed it so much I was kind of an honorable mention…sorry if it was misleading.