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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 5096381" data-attributes="member: 30936">Then you need better sources. The world thing is the main criteria, they stuff you list is typical of the genre, but not necessary or sufficient.There have been several definitions of space opera over time. Until the 1970s it was a pejorative for bad science fiction. In the early 1970s it slowly changed meaning to "the good old science fiction adventure story" as opposed to the then ascendant, more philosophical style. Staring in the very late 1970s and the 1980s it morphed again into it's current form, which is closest to your definition, but scope and scale are again neither necessary or sufficient to make something a space opera. The primary component of the definition is a focus on characters and romantic (in a literary sense) or melodramatic plots over technology and it's effects and is largely or entirely set in space and other worlds. Large scales, sweeping plots, and such are typical, but not essential. Farscape is space opera, Galactica is space opera, Mass Effect is space opera, John Carter and Eric Stark are space opera.Similarly, Kim Stanly Robinson's Mars trilogy spaces two centuries, several wars, massive changes to society, and a cast of thousands. It's hard science fiction though, not space opera.That's a distinguishing line between epic fantasy and (in this case) sword and sorcery. The high and low terms refer to the amount of fantasy in a work, not to it's tone, character, or size.</blockquote>

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