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Space opera
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Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.
History of space operaIn 1941, science fiction fan Bob Tucker (who would later become writer Wilson Tucker) coined the term "space opera" (by analogy to "horse opera" and "soap opera") to describe what he characterized as "the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn, or world-saving [story] for that matter." "Space opera" is sometimes used in this negative sense, but it can also be used to describe a particular science fiction genre, without any value judgment.
Space opera in its most familiar form was a product of 1930s-40s pulp magazines. Like early science fiction in general, space opera borrowed extensively from established adventure, crime, and thriller genres. Notable influences included stories that described adventures on exotic or uncivilized frontiers, e.g. the American West, Africa, or the Orient. The imagined future of space opera included immense space liners, intrepid explorers of unknown worlds, pirates of the spaceways, and tough but incorruptible space police.
Elements of space opera can be found in late Victorian and Edwardian science fiction, for example, in the works of Percy Greg, Garrett P. Serviss, George Griffith, and especially in Robert W. Cole's The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236. Also in France there were authors who wrote stories related to the genre, such as Star ou Psi de Cassiopée: Histoire Merveilleuse de l’un des Mondes de l’Espace (1854) by C. I. Defontenay and Lumen (1872) by Camille Flammarion. But it was not until the 1920s that the space opera proper appeared in the pulp magazines Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. Unlike earlier stories of space adventure, which either related the invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, or concentrated on the invention of a space vehicle by a genius inventor, pure space opera simply took space travel for granted (usually by setting the story in the far future), skipped the preliminaries, and launched straight into tales of derring-do among the stars.
The first stories of this type were J. Schlossel's The Second Swarm (Spring 1928) in Amazing Stories Quarterly and Edmond Hamilton's Crashing Suns (August-September 1928) and The Star Stealers (February 1929) in Weird Tales. Similar stories by other writers followed through 1929 and 1930; by 1931 the space opera was well-established as a dominant sub-genre of science fiction.
The transition from the older space-voyage story to the space opera can be seen in the works of E. E. Smith. His first published work, The Skylark of Space (August-October 1928, Amazing Stories), merges the traditional tale of a scientist inventing a space-drive with planetary romance in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs; but by the time of the sequel, Skylark Three (August-October 1930, Amazing Stories) which introduces the spacefaring race of the Fenachrone, Smith had moved closer to a space opera mode.
E. E. Smith's later Lensman series and the works of Edmond Hamilton, John W. Campbell, and Jack Williamson in the 1930s and 1940s were popular with readers and much imitated by other writers. By the early 1940s, the repetitiousness and extravagance of some of these stories led to objections from some fans and the coining of the term in its original, pejorative sense.
Eventually, though, a fondness for the best examples of the genre led to a reevaluation of the term and a resurrection of the subgenre's traditions. Writers such as Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson had kept the large-scale space adventure form alive through the 1950s, followed by (to name only a few examples) M. John Harrison and C. J. Cherryh in the 1970s. By this time, "space opera" was for many readers no longer a term of insult but a simple description of a particular kind of science fiction adventure story.
According to author Paul J. McAuley, a number of mostly British writers began to reinvent space opera in the 1970s. Significant events in this process include the publication of M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device in 1975; a "call to arms" editorial by David Pringle and Colin Greenland in Interzone; and the financial success of Star Wars, which closely follows many traditional space opera conventions. This "new space opera", which evolved around the same time cyberpunk emerged and was influenced by it, is darker, moves away from the "triumph of mankind" template of space opera, involves newer technologies, and has stronger characterization than the space opera of old. While it does retain the interstellar scale and scope of traditional space opera, it can also be scientifically rigorous. McAuley identifies Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter, M. John Harrison, Alastair Reynolds, and himself, as practitioners of the new space opera.
A more recent movement of American space opera writers, many writing for the Baen books imprint, developed during the 1990s and 2000s. This new wave of space opera authors include David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Elizabeth Moon, S.M. Stirling, John Ringo and David Weber. This branch of space opera follows more military themes than the British branch and usually features tales of war on an interstellar scale.
Other older, more established writers such as James H. Schmitz and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, among others, had produced space opera and were often reprinted by Baen during this same period, as part of an effort by the publisher to reestablish the market for more military-themed space opera.
Random House's Del Rey division, which had never totally gone out of the space opera business, also increased their output of space opera books during the 1990s and 2000s, including their own versions of military space opera. Stories such as David Sherman and Dan Cragg's StarFist series became increasingly common.
Definitions by contrastSpace opera and planetary romanceSome critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Where space opera grows out of both the Western and sea adventure traditions, the planetary romance grows out of the lost world or lost civilization tradition. Both feature adventures in exotic settings, but space opera emphasizes space travel, while planetary romances focus on alien worlds. In this view, the Martian-, Venusian-, and lunar-setting stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs would be planetary romances (and among the earliest), as would be Leigh Brackett's Burroughs-influenced Eric John Stark stories. Other writers who have produced planetary romances include Jack Vance (the Tschai tetralogy and Durdane trilogy), Philip José Farmer (The Green Odyssey), Robert Silverberg (the Majipoor series), and Frank Herbert (the first three Dune novels).
Space opera and hard science fictionSpace opera can also be contrasted with "hard science fiction", in which the emphasis is on the effects of technological progress and inventions, and where the settings are carefully worked out to obey the laws of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and biology. There is, however (according to some), no sharp division between hard science fiction and true space opera. Many of Robert A. Heinlein's young adult novels, such as Starship Troopers, are seen by his fans to qualify as both.
Space opera and military science fictionOne subset of space opera overlaps with military science fiction, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons (example: Honor Harrington series by David Weber). In such stories, the military tone and weapon system technology may be taken very seriously. At one extreme, the genre is used to speculate about future wars involving space travel, or the effects of such a war on humans; at the other it consists of the use of military fiction plots with some superficial science fiction trappings.
ParodiesFredric Brown's What Mad Universe has as its protagonist a sober-headed science fiction magazine editor who suddenly finds himself transported to an alternate history timeline where all the Space opera clichés (a larger-than-life space hero fighting evil aliens who are totally bent on humanity's destruction, etc.) are concrete, daily life realities.
Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero and Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, and Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy parody the conventions of classic space opera. The 1987 film Spaceballs, directed and co-written by Mel Brooks, is a Star Wars parody with many space opera characteristics. The American animated television series Futurama, created by Matt Groening, plays with the space opera genre from time to time, for example in the over-the-top military officer Zapp Brannigan. Stephen Colbert, in his character as host of the Colbert Report, is the author of a so-called "un-published and shopping it around to publishers" epic novel called . He occasionally reads excerpts from the novel, and later aired several animated shorts based on them, and it then was spun off to a comic book series by Oni Press.
In the comic strip world, the adventures of Spaceman Spiff, an alter ego of Calvin, eponymous hero of Calvin and Hobbes, parodied many space opera conventions.
The Buzz Lightyear character in the 1995 film Toy Story is a bombastic galactic hero and quite unaware that he's a child's action figure, many of his actions parody those of stereotypical space opera heroes.
ExamplesBelow are listed the best-known examples of space opera in all media. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are multimedia franchises, such as Star Trek or Star Wars, both of which include films, television series, novels, and comics. Many other examples of space opera can be found in .
Literature
Novels & Series
* The Known Space series, (1964-1995) by Larry Niven, USA
* The Uplift Universe novels, (1980-1998) by David Brin, USA
* The Vorkosigan Saga, (1987-present) by Lois McMaster Bujold, USA
* The Saga of the Skolian Empire (1995-present) by Catherine Asaro, USA,
* The Crest of the Stars series, (1996) Banner of the Stars series, (1996-present) by Hiroyuki Morioka, Japan
* The the Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999) by Peter F. Hamilton
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Anthologies & Collections
* Space Opera, ed. Brian Aldiss (1974)
* The Plenty Principle (1997) by Colin Greenland
* The Space Opera Renaissance (2006) ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
* The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (2007)
Short Fiction
*"Buck Rogers" series (1928-present) by Philip Francis Nowlan and others, USA *
*"The Swordsman of Varnis" by Clive Jackson (1950), USA; a story important to the redefinition of the term Space Opera in the 1950s
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Film
Television - franchise, (1966-1969) created by Gene Roddenberry*
- The works of Leiji Matsumoto including Space Battleship Yamato, Captain HarlockSpace Pirate Captain Harlock, also transliterated ...
, and Galaxy Express 999 (1974-present)* - Babylon 5, (1993-1998) created by J. Michael Straczynski*
- Battlestar Galactica, (1978-1980), created by Glen Larson
- Battlestar Galactica, (2003-2009), created by Ronald D. Moore
- Cowboy Bebop, (1998-1999), created by Shinichiro Watanabe and produced by Sunrise
- Macross, (1982-1983), created by Shoji Kawamori and Studio NUE, later adapted into part of Robotech by Carl Macek and Harmony Gold USA*
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes, (1988-1997), created by Yoshiki Tanaka*
- , (1995-1996) created by Glen Morgan and James Wong*
Comics
Stage
Pen & Paper or Board Games
Computer/Video Games- Elite series, (1984-1995) designed by David Braben and Ian Bell
- Star Control series, (1990-1996) developed by Toys for Bob
- Wing Commander, (1990-present) developed by Origin Systems *
- Master of Orion, (1993-2003) developed by Simtex
- X series, (1995-2005) developed by Egosoft
- Escape Velocity series, (1996-2002) developed by Ambrosia Software
- StarCraft series, (1998-present) developed by Blizzard Entertainment *
- series, (1998-1999) developed by Volition, Inc. *
- Homeworld series, (1999-2003) developed by Relic Entertainment
- Halo series, (2001-present) developed by Bungie Studios *
- Galactic Civilizations, (2003-2006) developed by Stardock
- Mass Effect, (2007-Present) developed by Bioware
Online Projects- A biweekly e-zine dedicated to space opera and golden age sci-fi
- A Transhumanist space opera world-building project (see main)
See alsoOverlapping genres
Editors and publishers
Themes and ideas
Articles- Dave Langford: "Fun With Senseless Violence," in The Silence of the Langford (NESFA Press, 1996, ISBN 0-915368-62-5)
- David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer,
- Locus, : Special section on "The New Space Opera." Articles by Russell Letson & Gary K. Wolfe, Ken MacLeod, Paul J. McAuley, Gwyneth Jones, M. John Harrison, and Stephen Baxter. with Alastair Reynolds. with Charles Stross.
- by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, 1995.
- Gary Westfahl's in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Farah Mendlesohn & Edward James, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- , Locus, December 2003. Harrison discusses his view of the nature of space opera in depth.
External links
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