Space opera is asubgenre ofscience fiction[1] that emphasizesspace warfare, with use ofmelodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, andchivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely inouter space, it features technological and social advancements (or lack thereof) infaster-than-light travel,futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop ofgalactic empires andinterstellar wars withfictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term does not refer toopera music, but instead originally referred to the melodrama, scope, and formulaic stories of operas, much as used in "horse opera", a 1930s phrase for a clichéd and formulaicWestern film,[2] and "soap opera", a melodramatic domestic drama. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games.
An early film which was based on space-opera comic strips wasFlash Gordon (1936), created byAlex Raymond.[3]Perry Rhodan (1961–) is the most successful space opera book series ever written.[4][5] TheStar Trek TV series (1966–) byGene Roddenberry and theStar Wars films (1977–) byGeorge Lucas brought a great deal of attention to the sub-genre.[6] After the convention-breaking "new wave", followed by the enormous success of the franchises, space opera became once again a critically acceptable sub-genre. From 1982 to 2002, theHugo Award for Best Novel was often given to a space opera nominee.[7]
Space opera has been defined as "a television or radio drama or motion picture that is a science-fiction adventure story".[9]Some critics distinguish between space opera andplanetary romance.[10] 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 ofEdgar Rice Burroughs would beplanetary romances (and among the earliest), as would beLeigh Brackett's Burroughs-influencedEric John Stark stories.
The term "space opera" was coined in 1941 byfan writer and authorWilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article inLe Zombie (a science fictionfanzine).[11] At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known assoap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers.[12] The term "horse opera" had also come into use to describe formulaicWestern films. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent: A "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn".[13][11] Fans and critics have noted that the plots of space operas have sometimes been taken from horse operas and simply translated into an outer space environment, as famously parodied on the back cover of the first issue ofGalaxy Science Fiction.[8] During the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the stories were printed in science-fiction magazines, they were often referred to as "super-science epics".[2]
Beginning in the 1960s, and widely accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, followingBrian Aldiss' definition inSpace Opera (1974) as – paraphrased by Hartwell and Cramer – "the good old stuff".[7]: 10–18 Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the editorial practice and marketing ofJudy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband and colleagueLester del Rey.[7]: 10–18 In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, and Del Rey Books labeled reissues of earlier work ofLeigh Brackett as space opera.[7]: 10–18 By the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, and the label was attached to majorpopular culture works such asStar Wars.[7]: 10–18 Only in the early 1990s did the term space opera begin to be recognized as a legitimate genre of science fiction.[7]: 10–18
Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as:
... colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.[7]: 10–18
Author A.K. DuBoff defines space opera as:
True space opera is epic in scale and personal with characters. It is about people taking on something bigger than themselves and their struggles to prevail. Though a setting beyond Earth is central, being on a spaceship or visiting another planet isn't the only qualifier. There must also be drama and sufficiently large scope to elevate a tale from being simply space-based to being real space opera.[14]
Space opera can be contrasted in outline 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. Examples are seen in the works ofAlastair Reynolds or the movieThe Last Starfighter. At other times, space opera can concur with hard science fiction and differ fromsoft science fiction by instead focusing on scientific accuracy such asThe Risen Empire byScott Westerfeld. Other space opera works may be defined as a balance between both or simultaneously hard and soft science fiction such as theDune prequel series byKevin J. Anderson andBrian Herbert or theStar Wars series created byGeorge Lucas.[15]
Early works which preceded the subgenre contained many elements of what would become space opera. They are today referred to as proto-space opera.[16] Early proto-space opera was written by several 19th century French authors, for example,Les Posthumes (1802) byNicolas-Edme Rétif,[17]Star ou Psi de Cassiopée: Histoire Merveilleuse de l'un des Mondes de l'Espace (1854) byC. I. Defontenay andLumen (1872) byCamille Flammarion.
Not widely popular, proto-space operas were nevertheless occasionally written during the lateVictorian andEdwardian science-fiction era. Examples may be found in the works ofPercy Greg,Garrett P. Serviss,George Griffith, andRobert Cromie.[18]Science fiction scholarE. F. Bleiler citesRobert William Cole'sThe Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 as the first space opera in his 1990reference workScience-Fiction: The Early Years.[18] The novel depicts an interstellar conflict between solar men of Earth and a fierce humanoid race headquartered onSirius. However, the idea for the novel arises out of a nationalistic genre of fiction popular from 1880 to 1914 called future-war fiction.[19]
Despite this seemingly early beginning, it was not until the late 1920s that the space opera proper began to appear regularly inpulp magazines such asAmazing Stories.[7]: 10–18 [16] In film, the genre probably began with the 1918 Danish film,Himmelskibet.[20] 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. Early stories of this type includeJ. Schlossel's "Invaders from Outside" (Weird Tales, January 1925),[18]The Second Swarm (Amazing Stories Quarterly, spring 1928) andThe Star Stealers (Weird Tales, February 1929),Ray Cummings'Tarrano the Conqueror (1925), and Edmond Hamilton'sAcross Space (1926) andCrashing Suns (Weird Tales, August–September 1928).[16] Similar stories by other writers followed through 1929 and 1930. By 1931, the space opera was well established as a major subgenre of science fiction.[citation needed]
However, the author cited most often as the true father of the genre isE. E. "Doc" Smith. His first published work,The Skylark of Space (Amazing Stories, August–October 1928), written in collaboration withLee Hawkins Garby, is often called the first great space opera.[16] It merges the traditional tale of a scientist inventing a space-drive withplanetary romance in the style ofEdgar Rice Burroughs.[7]: 10–18 Smith's laterLensman series and the works ofEdmond Hamilton,John W. Campbell, andJack 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 return of the term in its original and pejorative sense.[citation needed]
Eventually, though, a fondness for the best examples of the genre led to a re-evaluation of the term and a resurrection of the subgenre's traditions. Writers such asPoul Anderson andGordon R. Dickson had kept the large-scale space adventure form alive through the 1950s, followed by writers likeM. John Harrison andC. 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.[7]: 10–18
According to authorPaul J. McAuley, a number of mostly British writers began to reinvent space opera in the 1970s[21] (although most non-British critics tend to dispute the British claim to dominance in the new space opera arena).[7]: 10–18 Significant events in this process include the publication ofM. John Harrison'sThe Centauri Device in 1975 and a "call to arms" editorial byDavid Pringle andColin Greenland in the Summer 1984 issue ofInterzone;[21] and the financial success ofStar Wars, which follows some traditional space opera conventions.[7]: 10–18 This "new space opera", which evolved around the same timecyberpunk emerged and was influenced by it, is darker, moves away from the "triumph of mankind" template of older space opera, involves newer technologies, and has stronger characterization than the space opera of old.[21] While it does retain the interstellar scale and scope of traditional space opera, it can also be scientifically rigorous.[21]
The new space opera was a reaction against the old.[22] 'New space opera' proponents claim that the genre centers on character development, fine writing, high literary standards, verisimilitude, and a moral exploration of contemporary social issues.[22] McAuley and Michael Levy identifyIain M. Banks,Stephen Baxter,M. John Harrison,Alastair Reynolds,McAuley himself,[21]Ken MacLeod,Peter F. Hamilton,Ann Leckie, andJustina Robson as the most-notable practitioners of the new space opera.[22][21] One of the most notable publishersBaen Books specialises in space opera and military science fiction,[23] publishing many of the aforementioned authors, who have won Hugo Awards.
Several subsets of space opera overlap with military science fiction, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons in aninterstellar war. Many series can be considered to belong and fall in two genres or even overlap all likeEnder's Game series byOrson Scott Card or theHonorverse byDavid Weber. 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 infictional planets with fictional civilizations andfictional extraterrestrials. The term "military space opera" is occasionally used to denote this subgenre, as used for example by critic Sylvia Kelso when describingLois McMaster Bujold'sVorkosigan Saga.[7]: 251 Other examples of military space opera include theBattlestar Galactica franchise andRobert A. Heinlein's 1959 novelStarship Troopers. The key distinction of military science fiction from space opera as part of thespace warfare in science fiction is that the principal characters in a space opera are not military personnel, but civilians orparamilitary. That which brings them together under a common denominator is that military science fiction like space opera often concerns aninterstellar war. Military science fiction however does not necessarily always include an outer space or multi-planetary setting like space opera and space Western.[24]
Space Western also may emphasize space exploration as “the final frontier”. These Western themes may be explicit, such as cowboys in outer space, or they can be a more subtle influence in space opera.[25]Gene Roddenberry describedStar Trek: The Original Series as a space Western (or more poetically, as “Wagon Train to the stars”).[26]Firefly and its cinematic follow-upSerenity literalized the Western aspects of the genre popularized byStar Trek: it used frontier towns, horses, and the styling of classicJohn Ford Westerns.[27][28] Worlds that have been terraformed may be depicted as presenting similar challenges as that of a frontier settlement in a classic Western.[29] Six-shooters and horses may be replaced by ray guns and rockets.[30]
Harry Harrison's novelsBill, the Galactic Hero andStar Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, as well as thefilm adaptation of the former, the filmsGalaxy Quest andMel Brooks'Spaceballs, andFamily Guy'sLaugh It Up, Fuzzball trilogy parody the conventions of classic space opera.[31]
A full description of more than 3,000 science-fiction stories from earliest times to the appearance of the genre magazines in 1930, with author, title, and motif indexes.
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