The space opera is a classic subgenre of science fiction. It
developed in the late 1920’s as fiction that romanticized space, space ships
often at war with somebody, space battles, lasers, aliens etc. Think Star
Trek or Star Wars. But space opera began in written form. The pulp science fiction magazines like Weird
Tales, Astounding Science Fiction, and Amazing Stories. The giant of
the early days of space opera was E. E. “Doc” Smith, in particular his Lensmen
series.
But in the 1940’s consumers of written science fiction began
to grow tired of the subgenre. Anything done to excess tends to wear thin.
People were seeing too much repetition and were maybe beginning to think that
all the best space opera stories had already been told. It was time to move on
to other forms of science fiction. Hollywood didn’t get the memo about the
death of the space opera. That is just about the time that Hollywood caught the
science fiction bug. Often inspired by comic books, serials played in almost
every movie house, and a number of them in the 30’s and 40’s like Buck
Rogers, and Flash Gordon were space operas. The 1950’s were a golden
age of cinematic science fiction and many of those films were space operas
Destination Moon, Forbidden Planet, This island Earth, and many more lower-budget
outings. Television also had an occasional foray into space opera. One of the
problems with doing a space opera on film or TV was that special effects were
required. Producers, figuring the only audience for this stuff was teenage
boys, weren’t disposed to spend a lot of money on special effects . . . or
scripts . . . or sets, so they tended to look cheesy.
Star Trek came along in 1966 and this was the show that fans
of the genre were waiting for, but low ratings eventually doomed it and producers
figured, that was the end of that. The conventional wisdom that space opera was
just for teenage boys and there was no money in it, seemed to be a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Space opera was essentially dead.
Then Star Wars happened. Star Wars changed everything. It
broke every record at the box office. Merchandising and sequels led it to be
the most financially successful film franchise of all time. Movie studios who
had refused to green light science fiction movies suddenly couldn’t find new
properties fast enough. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek had a fan base that had
been steadily growing since the cancellation of the series, but even so, they
were not able to get a film made until Star Wars blew open the flood gates.
Before Star Wars, written science fiction had turned its
back on the space opera. If you wrote a space opera it was hard to be taken
seriously. If you read a list of the Hugo and Nebula Award winners from the
1950’s to the mid 1970’s you will find a few novels that qualify as space
opera, but more often they are about things like artificial intelligence, time
travel, technological marvels, alien cultures, fantasy, alternate histories,
and biological breakthroughs.
Science fiction writers don’t usually follow the lead of
Hollywood. But it was almost like the success of Star Wars gave them
permission to explore new ideas in the space opera style. It turns out the well
was very far from dry. Writers like Lois McMaster Bujold, Jack McDevitt, Iain
M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Ann Leckie, David Drake, C. J.
Cherryh, and Alistair Reynolds have written inventive space operas that stretch
our imagination and keep the subgenre fresh. Yes, space opera can be cliché and
derivative, but not in the hands of these masters.
Full disclosure, I have an admitted bias because my novel Star
Liner is a space opera of sorts. But I say, long live the space opera as
long as it is done well, with compelling characters, plots and ideas, it can be
just as good as any kind of fiction.
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