The new space opera Book

"The New Space Opera" is a somewhat deceptively titled but otherwise very good collection of short stories by what the editors refer to as "new space opera" authors. I put "somewhat deceptively" because, in my opinion, most of the stories don't really qualify as space opera. Space opera is a sub-genre of SF, consisting of over-the-top, galaxy-wide adventure stories, often with larger than life heroes, usually containing lots of space ships, dealing with a numbers of planets or galaxies or even universes. It's adventure, romance and violence. Galaxy-wide intrigues. Multiple societies on multiple planets. Aliens, if at all possible, should be included --- ideally many different kinds of them. Also, space opera doesn't pay too much attention to science - as a matter of fact, I'd go as far as saying that it doesn't count as space opera if it doesn't have some form of faster-than-light or hyper-speed or phase space or whatever else the author comes up with that allows ships to shoot from galaxy to galaxy in a few hours or days.
So anyway. The stories in this collection all range from good to excellent. There are really no clunkers in there (although strangely enough, the very first story - by Gwyneth Jones - comes closest). The odd thing is that many of the stories just aren't space opera. One of them is set entirely under the ice on one of Jupiter's moons. While it's a thrilling story, it's really not space opera. Others are confined to a single city. Kage Baker's story, loosely connected to the "Empress of Mars" novella (and I just figured out this is actually connected to her Company series) deals with someone setting up a theater company on a Martian colony. It's great, but it's just not space opera.
Of course, the short story as a format by definition doesn't lend itself to the epic narrative form you'd expect for space opera, but if you're willing to concede that some of these stories offer slices of a larger epic, a snapshot of a longer story, then they could work as space opera. In fact, some of the stories are presented as part of an author's established SF universe. E.g. Peter F. Hamilton's story appears to be set somewhere between "Judas Unchained" and "The Dreaming Void" (and explains some of the new concepts that popped up in the 1500 year gap between those 2 novels). Other stories are part of a series of short stories that tell a larger story.
There are some great stories in this collection. The final story, "Muse of Fire" by Dan Simmons, is simply excellent. "Minla's Flowers" by Alistair Reynolds is also great (and reminded me of "Tuf Voyaging" by George RR Martin). I'd recommend this anthology to anyone who is looking for new authors to try, and to people interested in the genre. However, if you're new to space opera, you're probably better off trying something by Iain M. Banks (who is missing from this collection, unfortunately) or Peter F. Hamilton.