Growing up I used to read my dad's books and his collection of E.E. Doc Smith was basically my introduction to sci-fi and I think why I'm heavily biased towards the space opera end of things. I fell in love with these massively expansive ideas about what space is and how technical advances propel us (because it's always basically humans of course) forward into new environments with their planets, systems, species and weird technology. That's the heart of sci-fi for me. So I'm nervously embarking on his work - starting with the Skylark series and then moving onto Lensman. I say nervous because of the times and societal attitudes those books were written in and the fear of poisoning my own nostalgia. Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie in their own halcyon dreams.