Space opera

A cover of the magazine Amazing Stories 1928.

A space opera (occasionally translated by different sources as space adventure, space epic, >space epic, space novel, space opera and space operetta) is a subgenre of science fiction where the They tell stories about adventures treated in a futuristic, technological and sometimes romantic way and that in most cases take place in space. The space opera can be considered as the natural continuation of adventure novels on settings typical of science fiction. Characters often belong to the hero-villain archetype, and typical storylines deal with star travel, battles, galactic empires, with environments showcasing flashy technological achievements.

Sci-fi space warfare is emphasized in the space opera, with the use of melodramatic, high-stakes space adventures and chivalrous romance. Set mostly or entirely in outer space, they showcase technological and social advances (or lack thereof) with faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, against a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term has no relation to opera music, but is a play on the English terms soap opera, a melodramatic soap opera, and horse opera (&# 34;horse opera"), which was coined in the 1930s to refer to cliché and predictable cowboy movies. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, and video games.

One of the first films based on space opera comics was Flash Gordon (1936), created by Alex Raymond.Perry Rhodan (1961-) is the The most successful space opera book series ever written. The Star Wars films (1977-), by George Lucas, and the television series Star Trek (1966-), by Gene Roddenberry, brought widespread attention to the subgenre. Following the "new wave" Breaking conventions, followed by huge franchise success, the space opera once again became a critically accepted subgenre. Between 1982 and 2002, the Hugo Award for Best Novel was often awarded to space opera nominees.

History

Cover of the Flash Gordon comic, considered one of the pioneer animations of the space opera and science fiction in general

Writer Wilson Tucker first used the term space opera in a pejorative way in 1941 to refer to what he perceived to be the vices and clichés of science fiction of his time, alluding to to the genre of soap operas, dramatized radio programs popular in the United States at the time. These were so called in relation to the soap brands (soap in English) that used to sponsor them, and to the horse operas, as the horse operas had begun to be called. >western. In fact, some critics and fans have noted that many plots used in space operas are a direct translation of western stories into the outer space context, as the famous back cover of the first issue of parodied. >Galaxy Science Fiction. Before this term became popular, stories published in science fiction magazines in the late 1920s and early 1930s were often referred to as super-science epics..

As David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer note in their anthology of space operas The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), there is no consensus on what space is. opera, which authors are a better example of it or even which works would be included in it. Furthermore, the authors highlight that the space opera has had different keys and definitions throughout its history, which have been affected by the literary politics of the moment. What is now known as space opera is what used to be called scientific fantasy, while what was originally known by the term has ceased to exist.

In its most familiar form, the genre is a product of the pulp magazines of the 1920s-1940s. Science fiction in general borrowed from the pulp and adventure genre, the western and stories in exotic locations such as the Orient or Africa, and the space opera is no exception. There are numerous parallels between traditional ships and space ships, between explorers of the colonial era and space explorers, between sea pirates and space pirates, etc. The classic space opera is a transposition of the old themes of cowboy books, or westerns to science fiction, replacing the Colt revolver with the laser pistol, the horse with the spaceship, the gold rush for asteroid miners, and so on. The subgenre's greatest boom occurred during the golden age of science fiction, in the 1940s. In a way, it was the space opera that gave science fiction a bad name, due to because most of its exponents had a low literary quality.

A very early proto-science fiction novel could also be considered the first space opera. This is Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss, published in 1898, which although it precedes the term space opera contains all the clichés that characterize the genre: spaceships, travel to other planets, flying cars, battles against evil aliens, destructive military weapons, maidens in distress, and even a first appearance of the disintegrator ray.

The prototype of space opera pulp is E. E. Smith's novel The Skylark of Space (first published in Amazing Stories in 1928), in which a scientist builds a spaceship and travels with a female companion in search of alien civilizations and to fight a powerful archenemy. Smith's later series, Lensman, and the work of Edmond Hamilton and Jack Williamson in the 1930s and 1940s were very popular with readers and much imitated by other writers. It was these imitators that inspired Tucker and other fans to use the label to name this production.

The space opera went into decline after science fiction abandoned its fixation on adventure and technology to delve into the study of future societies, based on the new wave, in the 1960s. Over time, analysis of the best examples of the genre has led to a revaluation of the term and a resurrection of space opera. Writers such as Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson have kept the large-scale space adventure genre alive throughout the 1950s, followed by - among many others - M. John Harrison and C. J. Cherryh in the 1970s and Iain M. Banks, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Paul J. McAuley in the 1980s. After the new wave drunkenness, science fiction literature began to return to the old themes (except for cyberpunk), although with a more mature. Over time the term space opera has ceased to have this negative connotation to define a specific type of novel, although the subgenre continues to be perceived as a stereotype of science fiction.

In the cinematographic field, the end of the golden age of space opera was marked by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Star Wars made the genre return with glory and majesty, which has continued to be successful ever since.

Very popular science fiction series such as Star Trek, Babylon 5, Lexx and Stargate are in Generally classified as space operas being space exploration, wars between galactic empires and adventures as a result of contact between civilizations as the central theme.

Contrast and comparisons

The space operas and planetary romances usually present adventures in exotic scenarios, mostly aliens and with futuristic atmosphere.

Some critics distinguish and differentiate the genres of space opera and planetary romance. Well, although both present adventures in exotic settings outside the terrestrial realm and with futuristic settings, space opera emphasizes space travel, while planetary romances focus on alien worlds. From this point of view, author Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian, Venusian, and Lunar stories would be planetary romances (and among the earliest), as would Eric John Stark's Leigh Brackett stories, influenced by Burroughs himself.

The space opera can be contrasted with "hard science fiction", in which the emphasis is on the effects of technological progress and inventions, and where the settings are are carefully crafted to obey the laws of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and biology. Examples are seen in the works of Alastair Reynolds or in the movie The Last Starfighter. At other times, space opera may coincide with hard science fiction and differ from soft science fiction by focusing instead on scientific precision as in Scott's The Risen Empire Westerfeld. Other works of space opera can be defined as a balance between both or simultaneously hard and soft science fiction such as Dune. the prequel series by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert or the Star Wars series created by George Lucas.

Several subsets of space opera overlap with military science fiction, concentrating on large-scale space battles with futuristic weapons, vehicles, and suits. In such stories, the military tone and technology of weapons systems can be taken very seriously. At one extreme, the genre is used to speculate on future wars involving space travel, or the effects of such a war on humans; at the other, it consists of the use of military fiction plots with superficial science fiction trappings. The term "military space opera" is occasionally used to denote this subgenre, as used, for example, by critic Sylvia Kelso when describing Lois McMaster Bujold in the Vorkosigan Saga.

The space western (also called "Space Old West") can also emphasize space exploration as "the last frontier". These Western themes can be explicit, such as cowboys in outer space, or they can have a more subtle space opera influence. Gene Roddenberry described Star Trek: The Original Series as a space western (or more poetically, as "Wagon Train to the stars"). Firefly and its film sequel Serenity literalized the Western aspects of the genre popularized by Star Trek the which: used frontier towns, horses, and the style of classic John Ford Westerns. Worlds that have been terraformed can be described as places that present similar challenges to a frontier settlement in a classic cowboy movie. The Guns or six-round hand cannons and horses can be replaced with ray guns and rockets or thrusters.

Features

Cover of the magazine Amazing Stories 1940

The space opera stories have the common characteristic of taking place on an interplanetary scale (frequent in early science fiction stories), interstellar (most of the time), intergalactic, or even remote. universal scale, which magnifies the issues of the topics addressed by science fiction stories such as: the future of the human species, encounters with extraterrestrial species, political issues (conflicts between entities on a galactic scale), or ecology (seen in Dune). The other effects of the space opera are that the characters can appear by comparison even less, that new explorations are possible, either in explorable territories or in discoveries of hitherto self-sufficient societies.

A space opera usually takes place in space or on one (or more) distant planets. The realism of the story varies considerably from work to work; Often on film or television, for added dramatic intensity or for the sake of economy, the laws of space physics are abused in various ways: people and objects move in a container with weightlessness (and without artificial gravity) as if they were on Earth, sound of spacecraft thrusters and audible explosions in space in Star Wars for example, where we also see other improbabilities, almost most of the planets are habitable by humans, between planetary systems so distant.

On the contrary, some authors strive to make their stories more credible by integrating scientifically proven elements, or anticipating the use of technologies that are the subject of debate or speculation in scientific circles such as: The Dyson Sphere, teleportation (gathering two points in space faster than light could), from the phenomenon of wormholes or even within the framework of the theory of space and time of the German physicist Burkhard Heim who predicts the possibility of converting electromagnetic energy into gravitational energy.

Sometimes we even find ourselves in a space opera with emerging technologies, which we can reasonably estimate are bound to develop and become commonplace as seen in the original Star Trek series. (also called Star Trek ) who envisioned automatic doors, laser technology, or handheld phones (other examples may include the multiple applications of nanotechnologies commonly used by characters in the novel The Night Dawn).

Space opera sagas and franchises

Literature

Film and television series

Logo Star WarsAlso called The War of the galaxies, is one of the most outstanding universes of the space opera and science fiction in cinema

Logo Star Trekis widely considered one of the space operas older and abundant television

Animated movies and series

United Nations Space Army scarapela in the animated Macross series

Comics and comics

Video Games

Logo Mass Effect, one of the action video games sagas space opera most recognized

Audio String

• Clyde Vanilla of Antoine Daniel

Music

• La Mort d'Orion Gérard Manset
• Space Oddity of David Bowie

Spoofs