An Annotated Space Operae!

by Michael R. Collings

Collings's SPACE OPERAE! built on the traditions of science fiction, fantasy, and Lovecraft-based horror to create a new vision of 1950s Space Opera ... with bug-eyed monsters galore, space conquerors, and planets under thread of annihilation. The only elements missing were humans.

Now, in AN ANNOTATED SPACE OPERAE! that lack is remedied ... in the form of five expressly human annotators commenting upon actions, characters, phrases, even individual words, to discover sources, allusions, connections--some even surprising the author himself.

But the real twist: All five annotators represent different parts of Collings' own psyche. And none of them agree ... about anything.

374 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 23, 2015

About the author

Michael Robert Collings is an American author, poet, literary critic, and bibliographer, and a former professor of creative writing and literature at Pepperdine University. He was Poet in Residence at Pepperdine's Seaver College from 1997-2000.

Collings has had multiple collections of his poetry published on subjects such as Latter Day Saint theology, Joseph Smith, Christmas, science fiction, and horror. He is known for his literary critiques and bibliographies of the works of Orson Scott Card and Stephen King, though he has also published critiques and bibliographies of the works of Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, C. S. Lewis, Brian W. Aldiss, and Piers Anthony. His In the Image of God: Theme, Characterization and Landscape in the Fiction of Orson Scott Card was the first book-length academic look at Card's works.

Michael Robert Collings was born on October 29, 1947 in Rupert, Idaho. He graduated from Bakersfield College in 1967 with an Associate's degree, then graduated with a Bachelor's degree in English from Whittier College two years later. After graduating with a Master's degree in English from the University of California, Riverside in 1973, Collings received his Ph.D. in English literature from UCR in 1977, specializing in Milton and The Renaissance.

Before he began teaching creative writing and literature at Pepperdine University, Collings taught at UCR, San Bernardino Valley Community College, and UCLA. He taught at Pepperdine from 1979 until 2010, when he retired. He now lives in Idaho with his wife, Judi. His son, Michaelbrent Collings, is a fantasy and horror writer.

Reviews

[Frank Errington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review copy

Michael R. Collings writes novels, short fiction, poetry, reviews, critical essays, and scholarly studies of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His novels include The Slab, The House Beyond the Hill, and Static! He has twice been a finalist for the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award®.

A short time ago, Michael reached out to me with a request to read his new book and provide a review. I took a chance. Sometimes you discover a real gem when in these circumstances. Unfortunately, this was not one of those times.

Conceptually strong, Space Operae! A Tale of Three Planets, "...is about aliens...alien nations, alien worlds, alien Gods. It is, in the most fundamental way, of the Aliens, by the Aliens, and for the Aliens."

The crux of the the story is the terraforming and seeding of alien worlds by the Koleic. The author goes to great lengths to establish his non-humanoid characters and the framework of their command structure aboard their God-ships. Basically it's a numeric system with numbers closer to one being higher up on the food chain, with higher numbers becoming more and more dispensable There's even a scene where a group of nines were all wearing red sashes. Get it?

When one God-ship returns to a previously seeded world and finds nothing, things start to get interesting, later a God-ship encounters a Great Old One. A bit of a Lovecraftian twist.

I'm not saying Space Operae! A Tale of Three Planets is without it's merits, it just wasn't something worth getting excited about. The bonus story, "Wer" Means "Man", was even less enjoyable. Again the idea of a twist on the age old werewolf story was interesting, but it never seemed to get off the ground for me.

Space Operae! A Tale of Three Planets is self-published and available now in both paperback and ebook formats. The good news is, if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you can read this book at no additional charge and if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can read it for FREE as your monthly selection in the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

I can't really recommend Space Operae! A Tale of Three Planets, however as is always the case in these situations your mileage may vary.

[Michael Okon · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine are watching a movie, I want to say it was Chunnel, and they are having a dialog, a running commentary throughout the entire movie. Michael Collings has done a similar feat. He has created an opus for B space movies with a Greek chorus interpreting, interrupting, and raising a rousing ruckus that tickles not just the funny bone but the entire cerebral cortex.

You can't measure the true love and dedication of Trekkies, Star War fans, Space Station Nine Groupies, or even people who adore The Blob, The Thing, or The Ring fanatics. Their attention to detail, the hours devoted to discussions on non-existent technology, the obsession over getting the minutia of artificial universes to make perfect sense and is as amusing as it is admiral. Michael Collings takes a sharp stick and pokes fun at the neurotic interests of sci-fi geeks and raises the bar for the genre in his book An Annotated Space Operae!

His story is mundane in the world of outer space. Bug-eyed monsters, travel the universe feeding, killing, their mission parodying the legions of space travelers we've adored before them. Whether it's Captain Kirk, Commander Piccard, or even Darth Vader, the pattern of speech is easily recognizable, the situations a puzzle fitting into it's prescribed spot as if it always belonged there. His prose is beautifully rendered, descriptive, never vague, the words chosen wisely. His insect men use their bodies, making us see, hear,smell, and feel them. "But even better, the slight crackle of roasted tissue as Torq and his numbers strode triumphantly across the blackened landscape, treading on the crusted remains of the now-vanished aboriginals. His ventral plates quivered rhythmically." What makes the book stand out is his panel of advisers, the uber-educated annotators filling in the gaps with snarky commentaries, excuses, and explanations. Criticism mix with witticism creating a side-show, a story within a story that steals the spot-light like young ingenue from an aging starlet. Move over Eve, a new hybrid has arrived. They pop in and out of his tale, debunking, steering, and finally mocking the author into compliance to their wishes. Note what his annotator PIP has to say when a new character is introduced. "PIP—Our Author can’t have intended this, can he? SFX—What? PIP—The verbal paradox. How is it possible to have a Cwrth (pronounced cooth) that is not only uncouth but that epitomizes that state? CSI—Well, there are inhuman humans, aren’t there? PIP—I would argue not. There are humans whose actions are—or seem—inhuman, but the individuals remain human. Otherwise those actions would not be heinous, merely another order of bestial. CSI—So … when is a Cwrth not a Cwrth? When it is uncouth. 217 LPG—Now, this is more like it. Surely we are entering Lovecraft territory, with unfamiliar geometries and an inherent sense of darkness. SFX—Possibly, but the description also suggests C.S. Lewis’s “Objective Room” from That Hideous Strength..." Wordplay at it's finest.

Who are these characters,the arbiters of this novel, you ask. Collings explains them- "Let me give it a try. An annotator who never actually existed but whom we have “no longer got” and who never had a voice in the first place, speaks from somewhere, where he no doubt is not, and the sounds, which do not exist, echo from a reflective surface, which we have not got, to repeat the words of a character, who also does not exist, in a story, which has no tangible reality, made up by Our Author … who we apparently cannot trust. CSI—He’s got it. By George, I think he’s got it." And by George, I think he's on to something spectacular.

They serve the purpose for the explainable, the annoying process of assigning human traits to the inhuman making it palatable for our reasonable brains to process. They discuss the facts as if they were written from ancient laws, the results of endless study on the subject, with the same attention to details as a series on The History Channel discussing theories on crop circles or Big Foot. " SFX—An additional touch of SciFi jargon. I find it fascinating to note how much our Author has taken for granted about the Koleic thus far: no discussion of their ships’ propulsion systems, for example; no systematic discussion of their lives, if any, beyond their numerical functions; not even any specific height, weight, or other dimensions. It is almost as if he doesn’t care. LPG—Also note that the assertion of science and technology is immediately undercut in the next paragraph by a conscious shift to a supernatural, paranormal explanation. PIP—The shift reminds me of the transition from science fiction to fantasy in Stephen King’s original edition of The Stand (1978), as otherwise science-oriented characters begin having premonitory..."

In Collings' capable hands, the subject is real, happening in real time. He has given it the respect as a scholar, mixed in legitimacy, tempered it with respect, yet infused it with humor and warmth. He is not making fun of the genre, he has embraced it with love, finding the sweet spot to laugh with it, not at it. If he writes another, all I have to say is , "Beam me up, Scotty!

[Craig Nybo (Author of Allied Zombies for Peace) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Space bugs verses a Lovecraftian Old One? Why wouldn't you want to read Space Operae! by the unconquerable Michael Collings? You will not find a human anywhere in site in this novel. This story is strictly alien to alien. Michael Collings flexes his unstoppable world and culture building muscles to create a mixture of alien creatures that exude out-of-this world sentimentality and reason. Space Operae! follows the invasion of a bug like species of warrior creatures of a planet inhabited by a single creature. That single creature, however, is tapped into godly forces the likes of which the bug invaders can never fathom. The results: an epic struggle between defending creatures and a Lovecraftian god. Don't miss this one.

[Nathan Shumate]

It's instructive that I read this right after my periodic re-read of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." In that short novel, Lovecraft brilliantly posits a completely alien form of intelligent life -- one based on a radiate physiology, a la starfish -- and then completely undermines the effect by having their motives and viewpoint be completely intelligible to a casual observer of their artwork, which renders their history in such comprehensible-to-humans detail that Lovecraft's protagonist can even tell that their government was a form of socialism. The aliens once again turn out to be just humans in (really good) monster suits.

By contrast, Collings here creates an alien life form which is both (a) completely non-human in its goals, psychology, and social structure, and yet (b) rendered in such plausible detail that (presumably) human readers can actually follow and understand the aliens as viewpoint characters. It's a wonderful balancing act, the like of which we see far too rarely.

Also, because Michael Collings is first and foremost a logophile/linguaphile, the book is peppered with the kind of high-level linguistic jokes that can only come from a deliberate application of every word.

(Full disclosure: Two stories which were incorporated into this novel were originally published in anthologies I edited.)

[Johnny Worthen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Space Operae, Michael Collings weaves a refreshing alien science fiction story where our own little race need not even apply. A deft merger of hard science fiction, alien perspective and Lovecraftian horror, I’ve never read the like. A thoroughly enjoyable novel, surprising, interesting and alien. Recommend to all lovers of speculative fiction. A fine example of the craft and genre.

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a huge space opera fan but this was highly recommended to me by a fellow author. So I gave it a shot. It was well-written and very sci fi-y. I just didn't connect with the characters and found myself skimming (always a bad sign). But hey, you might like it.

My Rating: 3 stars

[Hal Bodner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll preface by saying that I'm not particularly a science fiction fan. My tastes in that genre, such as they are, tend toward the "soft" sci-fi of authors like Alan Dean Foster and his ilk. Thus, I have no idea how my opinions concerning SPACE OPERAE may resonate with more experienced readers of the genre.

I liked SPACE OPERAE quite a bit. To my mind, it was fresh and unlike anything I've encountered before. Collings tells the story--three stories actually--from the point of view of members of an alien race. For this reason, it was a trifle difficult for me to get into the book at first, simply because I had no idea what to expect. Once I "bought in" to the concept, I had no problem and I found the novel quite enjoyable.

Collings does a masterful job in the creation of his aliens, their society and culture. His creatures are just strange enough to be interesting but not so alien that the human reader has no context into which to place them. His craft is so well honed, in fact, that the reader begins to actually think in accordance with the alien structure as the story progresses. In other words, we start to truly expect the characters to act in specific, alien ways with which Collings has already acquainted us.

By the same token, Collings ends up hoisted upon his own petard to a certain degree. By virtue of his skill in creating a non-human societal structure populated with aliens whose motivations and goals we humans would consider warlike and cruel, Collings makes it almost impossible for the reader to sympathize with any of the characters. We remain interested in the plot throughout; but our attention is held more by curiosity as to what comes next as opposed to the reader actually caring about the outcome, or how it will affect the characters. In spite of this, the novel remains entertaining throughout.

Another minor quibble may be unique to me. There is a distinct Lovecraftian undercurrent to this novel. I believe it is inappropriate for someone writing a review to tell an author what the author "should" have done with their novel. A critic's job is normally simply to ascertain what the artist was trying to do, and then to render an opinion as to whether the artist's goal was accomplished.

Collings was not only aware of the Lovecraftian influence, as the sell copy on the back of the book suggests, it was intentional. Yet, I found the mention of Old Ones, the Cthulu-esque creature, and the general homage to Lovecraft to be mildly annoying, even precious at times. Though I understand that one of the foundations of the novel was an homage to Lovecraft, I cannot help feeling that Collings is a good enough writer, and that the premise of the novel is interesting enough, to have done without it.

This criticism is, in its own way, a testament to Collings' talent. I think he could have easily relied solely on his own creations to hold a reader's interest. Nevertheless, the Lovecraftian "distraction" is a minor one; I found the plot compelling in spite of it.

As a horror novel, I'm not sure that SPACE OPERAE entirely succeeds. But I suspect that aficionados of science fiction will greatly enjoy its unique approach and, on that basis, I can firmly recommend it.

[Aaron French · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can count on Michael Collings to deliver good writing/prose and interesting ideas. I have enjoyed his nonfiction, especially his book on writing horror literature, CHAIN OF EVIL, out from JournalStone Publishing last year. Additionally, his science fiction Lovecraftian stories in the SPACE ELDRITCH books are quite good. SPACE OPERAE!: A TALE OF THREE PLANETS continues this trend, which is terrific for fans of weird, horror, and sci-fi. Collings uses his academic eye for detail to great effect in the world-building of these alien worlds, with cultural and intellectual details that really keeps one interested and turning the pages. He also draws on interesting scientific (the alien world-seeding reminded me of Panspermia, which is super cool), arithmetic, and linguistic ideas that are surprising and unusual. But that’s not to say the storyline is TOO detail heavy or bogged down; the prose and action moves along nicely, keeping the reader engaged. Hard science fiction—well and space opera of course—meets Lovecraft (no humans, get it?). What could be better than that?