FAQ/GUIDE
BACKGROUND : Inspired by Dozois and Strahan’s New Space Opera and Hartwell and Cramer’s Space Opera Renaissance, I thought I would break out all the Space Opera I have already rated and going forward to see the difference, and look at how much better the New Space Opera was.
RATING
Novels are rated as novels.
Non-fiction that is related is rated as non-fiction.
Short stories are rated as short stories.
Anthologies, collections and magazines are rated like this :- take the fiction, apply the formula found in ‘The Mathematics of the Anthology’ at Not Free SF Reader http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/06/mathematics-of-anthology.html. If the non-fiction part is good/useful, give a bonus. At least, after I invented that rating formlua, anyway, which is most of them except some earlier magazines.
Omnibuses are rated based on the books they contain, vaguely the same as a collection.
So, they are not directly comparable as such, and possible might label separately if I come up with a good way to do it that isn’t too clunky.
GUIDE
There are a few ways to approach browsing or using Space Opera Reader.
1) The main page has the last 100 posts, which you can scroll down to look at.
2) The grid of labels at the top breaks the posts down into sections. Each section has 20 posts per page, and at the bottom of each of these pages are previous/next navigation arrows that will let you go through these a page at a time.
The sections are by category of book, and also by rating of book, if you want to browse that way.
If you scroll down to under my profile image, these labels will be reproduced vertically, with counts of how many posts are in each section, but otherwise function identically to the labels at the top of the blog.
3) If you scroll further down than that, you will find a blog archive section, where posts are archived by month. You can navigate through this in a similar manner to navigation of the sections above.
4) Google Search – you can use the search box to search, the same as you normally would, but this will rely on googlebot’s indexing. It may turn up other interesting links/ads when you do this, however.
5) I have now put a list of what has been rated on Space Opera Reader on the sidebar on the right. If you scroll down, you will see. It is separated into the ‘S’ labels, and is also alphabetical by author. This will be updated periodically as more are rated on the blog.
6) Anyone is welcome to comment on the posts. There is an email address on my profile, or you can write to aussievamp2@gmail.com if you have suggestions about books to add to the list, or want to talk to me for some other reason.
This email address is also displayed at the top of the blog.
Eventually I am going to try and post about everything I have read that I can remember, but this will take a considerable time. 
Rating System
5 = Outstanding
4.5 = Very Good
4 = Good
3.5 = Above Average
3 = Average
2.5 = Below Average
2 = Poor
1.5 = Bad
1 = Very Bad
LABELS
As everyone knows, this sort of thing is tricky, fluid and blurry, but anyway :-
Elder Space Opera – Published up to 1959.
Modern Space Opera – Published 1960 to 1989.
New Space Opera – Published from 1990 onwards.
Spoof Space Opera – Sendups, satires and parodies.
Pastiche Space Opera – Continuations by other authors. e.g. Dune.
Study Space Opera – Non-Fiction books, essays, internet resources, etc.
Media Space Opera – Tie-in work like Blake’s 7, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, movie novelisations, etc.
Planetary Romance – The cousin of space opera, from Burroughs John Carter to Frank Herbert’s Dune to Chris Roberson’s Paragaea. That sort of thing. Should be on a planet that is not Earth, to qualify, your Lost World tales will not be found here, but are again a cousin of this sort of thing.
Analysis – Occasional posts looking at numerical breakdowns of the blog or other issues, or the very rare other thing like Best SF breakdowns and others topics.
Fiction Classifications – pretty self-explanatory. The t is in front of them so they all sort together nicely at the end in the label tabs and list.
t anthology – Label for anthologies (multi-author story books).
t collection – Label for anthologies (single author story books)
t magazine – Label for fiction magazines.
t non-fiction – Label for non-fiction books and pieces.
t novel – Label for novels.
t omnibus – Label for books containing more than none nove.
t short stories – Label for a single short story post.
t excerpts – Label for parts of a work
t serial – Label for serialised works