What is and isn't Space Opera?

[Paul Farquhar]

Note that Triplanetary, the first of the series, was written in 1948. I think most of us would find much of the stuff of the time to be similarly dry.

1984, I Capture the Castle, The Naked and the Dead, The Little Sister, The Day of the Triffids, I Robot...

 

[Tonguez]

That's a new one on me. Military sci fi is its own sub-genre.

"Space Western" could cover everything from Star Trek TOS to the Mandalorian, but I don't think its generally considered a formal genre, and all those go in the Space Opera bucket, which is really a catch-all for any science fiction that isn't clearly something else.

It has been observed that most early Space Opera was just adapting Western plots to extraplanetary settings, so yeah Im with you that Space Western is just a type of Space Opera.
of course Im a fan of the Planetary Romances, so Im cool with dat

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It has been observed that most early Space Opera was just adapting Wesren plots to extraplanetary settings, so yeah Im with you that Space Western is just a type of Space Opera.
of course Im a fan of the Planetary Romances, so Im cool with dat

I think it's generally accepted that the is a huge overlap between the Western genre and the Space Opera genre. To an extent the Western morphed into Space Opera as the Old West faded from memory.

 

[John R Davis]

But mahoosive western.
Not localised ashtrays in space but gigantic golden ciggarello cases in SPACE!
So not firefly.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But mahoosive western.
Not localised ashtrays in space but gigantic golden ciggarello cases in SPACE!
So not firefly.

You don't want to sell me deathsticks.

You want to go home and rethink your life.

 

[Davies]

Note that Triplanetary, the first of the series, was written in 1948. I think most of us would find much of the stuff of the time to be similarly dry.

Uh, slight correction -- the revised version of Triplanetary was published as a book in 1948, but the original version of it was first serialized in 1934. (And if you want to get really dry, you need to go back to Doc's The Skylark of Space, which was published in 1928.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Uh, slight correction -- the revised version of Triplanetary was published as a book in 1948, but the original version of it was first serialized in 1934. (And if you want to get really dry, you need to go back to Doc's The Skylark of Space, which was published in 1928.)

Really, these books are dry because they are pulp fiction, not because they hadn't invented decent writing in the past!

As was normal for the time, most of these stories where first published in magazines. Smith was a near-contemporary of Burroughs and Howard, overlapping at the other end with Wyndham and Asimov. He wasn't as good a writer as any of those, but he got in before Asimov with the galaxy-spanning empires.

Actually, I think it was largely Poul Anderson who ran with the galactic empire idea whist Asimov was still on Earth playing with robots.

 

[beancounter]

In a space opera, characters are the central focus instead of the technology.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In a space opera no one can hear you sing.

 

[Davies]

Actually, I think it was largely Poul Anderson who ran with the galactic empire idea whist Asimov was still on Earth playing with robots.

Pebble In The Sky, Asimov's first novel (set on a far future Earth that is rebelling against a Galactic Empire of human origin), was published in 1950. Poul Anderson's first Dominic Flandry story came out in 1951.

It's close, but Asimov got there first.