A Fire Upon the Deep

Extract: The back cover of the paperback edition of this book contains a quote praising this as a great space opera. I'd heard the term. I knew "Star Wars" was considered a space opera, but I wasn't exactly sure of the definition. I did some reading of sources on the net to find one. To my surprise, the definition is fluid. It has been changing, evolving, going from a derogatory term to definition of a legitimate sub-genre. Reviewing the list of Hugo winner's I've read, and having done some preliminary scanning of reviews of those I haven't, it appears to me that the '90s were the decade of the space opera Hugos. "A Fire Upon The Deep" is one of these books.