Space opera

Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes outer space adventures set in a universe in which faster-than-light travel has become common. The plots often play out against a backdrop of space warfare, alien civilizations and galactic empires. The sub-genre is sometimes thought of as a futuristic homage to earlier adventure sagas, such as those found in mythology and chivalric romance.

The term does not refer to opera music, but instead originally referred to the melodrama, scope, and formulaic stories of operas, much as used in "soap opera", a melodramatic domestic drama, and "horse opera", a 1930s phrase for a clichéd and formulaic Western film. Prototypes of space opera emerged in the early twentieth century, and the genre today enjoys great popularity in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games.

An early serial film which was based on space opera comic strips was Flash Gordon (1936), created by Alex Raymond. Perry Rhodan (1961–), a German franchise by multiple authors, is one of the most successful space opera book series. The Star Trek TV and film series (1966–) created by Gene Roddenberry, the Star Wars films (1977–) created by George Lucas, and the long-running British television series Doctor Who (1963-) have brought a great deal of attention to the sub-genre. A wave of "new space opera" works starting in the 1970s, in conjunction with the enormous success of the media franchises, helped space opera to become a critically acceptable sub-genre. From 1982 to 2002, the Hugo Award for Best Novel was often given to a space opera nominee.

Space opera has been defined as "a television or radio drama or motion picture that is a science-fiction adventure story". Some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. 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.

The term "space opera" was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in Le Zombie (a science fiction fanzine). At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term "horse opera" had also come into use to describe formulaic Western films. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent: A "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn". 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 of Galaxy Science Fiction. 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".

Beginning in the 1960s, and widely accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, following Brian Aldiss' definition in Space Opera (1974) as – paraphrased by Hartwell and Cramer – "the good old stuff". Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the editorial practice and marketing of Judy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband and colleague Lester del Rey. In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, and Del Rey Books labeled reissues of earlier work of Leigh Brackett as space opera. By the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, and the label was attached to major popular culture works such as Star Wars. Only in the early 1990s did the term space opera begin to be recognized as a legitimate genre of science fiction.

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.