Where’s all the middle grade and YA space opera at?
Famous examples of space operas on screen are Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Flash Gordon. Hit space opera novels include Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers. They’re usually epic stories set in the distant future and they see characters travelling between locations in space such as from galaxy to galaxy in a sprawling, boundless battle.
It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues and very large-scale action, large stakes. Thankfully the term gained legitimacy and respect over the decades and, in their 2007 book The Space Opera Renaissance, sci-fi editors David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer redefined it asĬolourful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. The term was first used in a rather derogatory fashion by author Wilson Tucker to describe what he called the ‘hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn’. Space operas – a subgenre of science fiction – aren’t literal operas where characters stand around in fancy dresses singing their dialogue (more’s the pity) but they do borrow the art form’s sense of melodrama and unlikely storylines just like TV soap operas except they’re set in outer space. You probably hear the genre title ‘space opera’ and think huh? What on earth is that? Well, they’re not set on earth for a start! But you probably guessed that from the name. Umm, what is this ‘space opera’ of which you speak?
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