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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8244420" data-attributes="member: 18">I wouldn't have thought a modern definition would have stressed either good writing or characterization. Those are assessments that seem irrelevant to genre. So it's odd if there are definitions that contain those.The definition quoted and attributed to Aldiss, I believe allegedly from his Trillion-Year Spree (not from his anthology "Space Opera", which I believe defines space opera as "the good old stuff" or something similarly simple, which was already a somewhat outdated view in 1974), is as follows:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The world must be in peril.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There must be a quest,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">And a man or woman to meet the mighty hour.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">That man or woman must confront aliens and exotic creatures.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Blood must rain down the palace steps,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">And ships launch out into the louring dark.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There must be a woman or man fairer than the skies,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">And a villain darker than a Black Hole.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">And all must come right in the end.</li> </ol>And he apparently states it would have most if not all of those characteristics. If we look at Iain M. Banks for example, you have work fairly hard to even get to get to a definite "most" in with a lot of his work, and you pretty much never find 8 and occasionally 9 and rarely 10, often 6 is skipped, sometimes 4 or 5 or 7 is, I think there's at least one where 1 isn't the case, and 2 is sometimes arguable - almost always 3 happens at least! Yet you and I would both agree Banks generally wrote space opera (even if Use of Weapons feels like an opera in a more traditional sense!).My point, which perhaps this makes more clear, is that his definition appears intentionally constructed in such a way that few things are definitely space opera (as few things hit all 10), but can easily be suggested that something is somewhat space opera-ish (as many things hit 6 or more, especially if you stretch it a bit), if you want to. As such I don't find it very useful. I also get the vibe from it that he's still very much mentally picturing Lensman or the like, which by 1987 was really a bit much.(Now, it may be that this definition is not his, and is being falsely attributed to him - but it's the one I was responding to. I don't have a copy of Trillion-Year Spree to hand and the internet is being unhelpful.)</blockquote>

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