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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1219059" data-attributes="member: 177">To my mind, what many people here are calling "science fantasy" I'd call "space opera".  The fact that the mechanics of guns and space ships in Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers go unexplained doesn't make them qualify as science fantasy.  Laser guns and space ships go without explanation in most hard science fiction, too.  It is assumed that the reader knows they are technological in origin.Science fantasy is science fiction with fantastic elements that clearly aren't science.  Midichlorians be darned, The Force is magic.  Star Wars is Science Fantasy.  Dune as well - the powers displayed there are more a matter of spiritualism than science.  IIRC, Doc Smith's Lensmen books also probably qualify.  The issue here is that the powers invovled are explained more as supernatural, spiritual matters than as matters of technology.  In Flash Gordon, the gizmos go unexplained, but they are still gizmos.  Ming the Merciless has no special spiritual nature that gives him access to them.Space Opera is often loosely defined as a work that's got all the trappings of science fiction, but if you change the names the thing still holds together.  Much of original Star Trek was Space Opera.  Give Captain Kirk a six-shooter instead of a phaser, and make the Enterprise into a horse, and the show goes on.  The recent series Firefly was also a Space Opera by this measure.  John Carter of Mars also probably fits the description closely (and Flash Gordon somewhat less so).  All he is is a pulp action character placed upon the exotic location of Mars instead of the Old West or Darkest Africa, really.  John Carter, Flash Gordon, Allan Quartermain, and Indiana Jones are all cut from the same basic cloth.</blockquote>

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