The Centauri Device

Before Iain Banks, there was M. John Harrison, and this new wave space opera is probably one of the major influences on Banks's own space operas. Harrison did pretty much everything he could to undermine all the clichés of space opera. His hero, John Truck, isn't going to save the universe. The various planets we visit are an industrial wasteland where it always seems to be raining. Space battles are over in seconds. Yet the whole thing adds up to a novel that has the wide vistas and the thrills that you expect of a space opera.   It's not just that The Centauri Device is, if you like, the grandfather of the New Space Opera, but it also demonstrates how subtle and how supple space opera can be. This is a much richer and more engaging sub-genre than you might have expected from E.E. "Doc" Smith and his imitators.