A
space opera is a work set in space, often on a spaceship or a station. It has an epic character to it: The universe is big, there are lots of sprawling civilizations and empires, there are political conflicts and intrigues galore. Frequently it takes place in the
Standard Sci Fi Setting.
Space opera has a lot of romantic elements: big love stories, epic space battles, oversized heroes and villains. What it rarely has is serious consideration of how technology and science would change society, with the space opera setting working just like present day (
or past) society. (Which may be
an excuse to deploy
Medieval European Fantasy tropes.)
Note that is is quite different from the first definition of space opera, which was a derogatory term. It was a variant in a long line of terms for substandard genre fiction: 'horse opera' was bad
Western fiction, whereas a 'soap opera' (so named because they began as hour-long ads for soap) was a hackneyed drama. The phrase was coined in 1941 by Wilson Tucker to describe what he called "the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn". Weirdly, this means that today many works which were originally touted as examples of 'serious' science fiction, such as the
Lensman series, are today held up as prime examples of
Space Opera. As more authors and writers came to embrace the space opera style, the term has largely lost its negative connotations. Assisted by writers who regarded all tales of action and adventure in space as bad, and so tried to label it all "space opera" in pejorative sense; they succeeded with the label, but not with keeping it pejorative.
Star Wars is probably the most famous modern example of space opera. In
Star Wars, technology is either
magic (the Force) or slightly faster versions of today's gadgets (
blaster rifles, hovercars, space ships) and the characters would be right at home in a fantasy novel (evil emperor, farmboy, princess).
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith had a subtle
Lampshade Hanging on this. In one scene, the characters go to an opera performed by the aquatic Mon Calamari - a literal space opera. (Despite it looking very pretty, it was
nicknamed "squid lake".)
The genre is useful for long story- and character-
arcs but also expensive to film. Unless you do it in animated form, like dozens of
anime series.
The opposite of Space Opera would probably be
Hard Science Fiction, where the characters are generally more "normal" (i.e., more working class
slobs,
pragmatic engineers, and imperfect
AntiHeroes than
Aces and
Capes) and with technology that is either conceptually similar to plausible real-world near-term technology, or at least
internally consistent. In recent years, however, the trend has been towards incorporating hard sci-fi elements
into space opera, as in
Starship Operators or the 2000s
Battlestar Galactica.
Note that while many more famous space operas go to the "ideal" side of the
Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism, more recent ones are
harder and more "realist" (i.e., cynical):
Babylon 5,
Battlestar Galactica and
Firefly being most prominent in
Live Action TV. In
Science Fiction literature, where there are less restraint due to budget, a growing subgenre of this sort of thing has been dubbed New Space Opera, starring authors such as
Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton.
Space Opera is actually a
component of the religion of
Scientology, under that exact name.
Examples
Anime
Comic Books
Fan Fiction
Film
Literature
- The Lensman series by Edward E. "Doc" Smith is generally given as the defining example, along with its predecessor and spiritual twin the Skylark of Space.
- Buck Rogers, another early and influential example.
- Perry Rhodan series (over more than 2500 books that span from 1971 to 5050).
- Hyperion, Dan Simmons
- Lois Mc Master Bujold's Vorkosigan saga
- Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series actually does consider seriously how changes in technology would affect culture, even language.
- The Culture books by Iain M Banks, although again it does have a society changed by technology - in particular near-perfect medicine and a lack of the need for money due to massive technological advances.
- Larry Niven's Known Space universe.
- The Rowan series by Anne McCaffrey.
- Most of Peter F. Hamilton's books, though technological advances have significant societal and cultural impacts.
- The Saga Of Seven Suns
- And of course, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's opus Battlefield Earth.
- Foundation, by Isaac Asimov, an early example inspired in part by Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and which in turn partly inspired Star Wars.
- David Weber has an extensive one in the Honor Harrington setting.
- Walter Jon Williams trilogy Dread Empires Fall is space opera on the fairly hard science side.
- Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series. It adopts many Speculative Fiction tropes but plays them for Space Opera themes.
- Stephen R. Donaldson's The Gap series is literally this, as it's Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle In Space. Newer editions of the first volume have a cool author's note explaining how the dramatic elements (and thus, tropes) of Opera work in a sci-fi setting.
- Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series.
- David Brin's Uplift.
- C.J. Cherryh's enormous Alliance Union universe.
- Parodied and lampshaded in Jack Vance's Space Opera, which is a space opera about - yes - a touring Opera company.
- Also Parodied by Harry harrison in his Bill, the Galactic Hero and Star Smashers of the galaxy Rangers
Live Action TV
TabletopGames
- Warhammer 40000 is a Space Opera setting, although it's about as cynical, grim and dark as you can get. Actually, it's that, turned Up To Eleven.
- Battletech. The RPG, as distinguished from the series below.
- Traveller was pretty much the first RPG set in the Space Opera genre, and set the standard for those that followed.
- Fading Suns
- There was an entire RPG named Space Opera.
VideoGames
Webcomics
Western Animation
