Quote:
Originally Posted by Dopedangel
I read thru the thread for recommendations most either I have already read or are in pile.
But no one has mentioned one of my favorite series so I am mentioning it.
Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall
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I love Walter Jon Williams, but my favorites are the Drake Majistral books.
Drake is the protagonist of a series set in a future in which humanity has encountered and been conquered by a dog-like alien species. He's the son of a human noble in the alien empire, but has a small problem: humanity has successfully revolted against their conquerors - the first time this has happened in the alien's history - and his family wealth is a casualty of the rebellion.
The aliens take the attitude that various crimes are acceptable if done with sufficient style, so Majistral makes his living as an Approved Burglar, whose crimes are carried out under the watchful eye of news service remotes, and he competes for ratings as well as treasure.
These are comedies of manners, resembling the old Alexie Panshin "Anthony Villiers" novels. For instance, the aliens have an ancient and rather static culture, where status is critical and there are a nearly infinite number of fine distinctions involved in knowing one's place and where one ranks in the society. The traditional alien greeting has been a polite sniff of the ears, but humanity has introduced the handshake, and the aliens are still happily sorting out the ramifications. They don't simply offer the whole hand. One may offer one or more fingers, dependent on one's status relative to the one being greeted. Offering too few fingers may be seen as looking down upon the one being greeted. Offering too many may be an admission of inferior position. The aliens are all agog at the possibilities.
There were only three, alas: The Crown Jewels (1987), House of Shards (1988), and Rock of Ages (1995) (collected as Ten Points for Style by the SF Book Club), but they are well worth reading if you like this sort of thing.
Another Williams work I recommend, though not space opera, is _Hardwired_. It's perhaps the best cyberpunk novel I've read (and yes, that includes William Gibson.) The protagonist is a panzerboy: a smuggler piloting a hi-tech speedster by direct neural interface through a balkanized future United States in a world conquered by orbital habitats. The space dwellers control the high orbitals, and when hostilities broke out, shot the attacking groundside fighters out of the sky before they could even reach the upper atmosphere. The space dwellers consider themselves superior to those below and keep those on Earth in a state of subjugation, valuable only for their contribution to the orbital's wealth and power. It's a meditation on the aftermath of shattered dreams in a future where there seems little left to believe in, and the difficulty of trust when it's each for himself and chance circumstance may determine whether another is friend or enemy.
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Dennis