Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

Hey! I'm curious as what you refer as Space Opera vs Science Fiction. Which one you prefer, and why, etc.
Please stay polite! I am genuinely curious because in many cases Space Opera seems to be regarded as crap and I am wondering why.

Thanks for your comments. :)

Personally, I see space opera as a sub-genre of sci-fi because not all science fiction has to do with space. But when it comes to the spacy stuff, I do enjoy space opera quite a bit since it seems to be more character driven and less reliant on techno-babble. (which of course, is why hard-liners consider it 'crap.") ;)

It's not science fiction vs space opera, space opera is only one small part of science fiction. Maybe in this case, it's space opera vs space science fiction. Space science fiction itself has a whole range of sub levels.

Simply put, Space Opera is making the characters lives the story.

It's also become harder to guess what future technology looks like, anything you can think of can be probably be found eventually in someones book, blog, musings, patents, papers, etc.

For me, original Science Fiction was about the story, not about the characters emotions. Some authors were working the characters side of the street, but I think that wasn't the normal story line.

The original problem in the story was a problem that blocked the characters path to a happy ending. The problem could be caused by something we had never seen before. The problem could also be man made. As characters worked to solve the problem it became less how they did it and more about why they did it, until the characters actions became the plot.

The story was the vehicle to get new ideas, though some not so new, new concepts, the future of technology out in public view. At one point, light beam weapons didn't exist in any fashion. Now lasers are commercially used everywhere but still haven't become an everyday weapon. They are simply common place props in a story.

The limits of what's possible to do today is also coming up against us. Getting to space was a big deal until it happened. That turned out to be the easy part. Creating huge ships, huge space stations, traveling from The Moon to Mars in a few hours, all of that is far, far away. Unless some one pulls a wormhole out of their hat. That alone has turned some science fiction into science fantasy for some people. They love it, but they don't call it science fiction, they lovingly call it science fantasy, because that's what it is to them.

To GG's question ... I hope Soap Opera's are not 'crap' ... every now an then a good romp through space with compelling characters is fun. But its just another sub genre ... kind of like a restaurant menu ... sometimes I want to order from the seafood section and sometimes not. Not sure if that makes one better than the other. It really speaks to reader more so than the 'quality' of the work ...

A little off topic but ... I love Robert's focus above on the character driven vs plot driven dynamic. There unarguably is a natural connection between plot driven hard science fiction and a character driven space opera.

Take Asimov's "I, Robot" ... a hard science fiction collection dealing with the future relationship between humanity and it's robotic progeny ... plot driven novels give the writer a logical platform from which to explore big ideas.

On the other side of the spectrum lies the quintessential space opera ... "Star Wars" ... we don't care how light sabers work but we hold our breath as Darth Vader uses one to cut off Luke's hand ... pushing the son one step closer to the abyss into which the father has already fallen ... pretty cool, just sayin'.

Some works jump out as encompassing both focuses ... different genre but JRR Tolkien comes to mind ... the story world and plot are amazingly well developed and extensive, almost overwhelmingly so ... but what reader can't connect with Frodo and his burden at an emotional level as he struggles to destroy the ring which will also put an end to much of middle earth's magic which he loves so dearly ... or even Aragorn as he struggles to assume a crown that he fears is too big for him but finds a way to do so gracefully .... Yay for the good guys!

I hope that years from now I'll be able to write half as well as any of the above.

Thanks everyone. I understand my mistake here in comparing the mother to its offspring. What I meant is often people will classify a story as pure sci fi, while other times they will put it in space opera, adventure, apocalypse, steampunk, genetic engineering, etc and I was kind of wondering why some were just sci fi. Maybe because they are harder to classify.

And no, M.H., I certainly don't find Space Opera crap. (The name of it though I find weird. :P) There are some good stories in every category.

Those who are purist hard-science fiction readers have all sorts of names for other speculative fiction. Usually used in a disparaging way. The "space opera" title was a variation of "horse opera" (Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, the singing cowboys) and "soap opera". In other words, not-very-serious science fiction. "Rendezvous with Rama", or "The Foundation Trilogy", or "Starship Troopers" and other military sci-fi are considered more serious. It's kind of an artificial snooty labeling, such as the distinction between "literature" and "genre fiction".

To my mind, "Space Opera" fits the old (now extinct?) "Horse Opera" better than the still-current "Soap Opera." The common element is formulaic, over-dramatised plots, with too many coincidences and too much happening to be considered realistic. The difference is that "Soap Opera" has no real action, in its purest form. People get married, divorce, natter, etc. etc. Dare I say, it's very "female." "Horse opera," and its cousin "Space Opera" has ridiculous amounts of action, and virtually no touchy-feely dialog stuff, so could be described as "male."
I think "Space Western" is actually the better term, exemplified (or parodied? It's a fine line) by Joss Whedon's "Firefly" series.

So, Richard, I take it you are not a fan of Firefly and Star wars?
To be honest, I don't like putting tags on genres though as there are as many women than there are men who loves both of these examples.

Love Firefly, hate Star Wars. Whedon, as always, moves far enough from taking a genre seriously that you can view it as parody. I have broader issues with all of sci-fi in terms of its disrespect for the realities of space travel, but that's a different horse from the one I rode in on, and well-flogged by now.

I don't think it's fair to use words like "trash" for fiction which is written with a non-literary bent, what we call "genre" fiction. The vast majority of what real people read fits that category, and it provides billions of person-hours of enjoyment around the world. So recognising that one is writing within an expected formula isn't a sin, it's a choice, like an artist choosing to make a snow sculpture versus one made of marble.

I don't like separating the two, since, as Christina said, space opera is part of sci-fi... But if I had to choose, I'd pick space opera over the "harder" science fiction. I'm a fantasy head. I like at least a little magic. ;)

Well... Ultimately it's the age old genre argument: genre definitions and importance vary from person to person. But...

My take on Space Opera is that originally it was applied to space based swashbuckling fantasies like Buck Rogers or whatever ... ray guns instead of six-shooters or swords, sweeping galactic battles to decide the fate of the universe, all that.

Those kinds of stories were superseded by later stories by the likes of Asimov and Clarke who had less interest in the melodrama and action and more in science and speculation about the future*.

These writers were put under a broader Science Fiction label because they didn't pander so much to teenage boy fantasies and were trying to be a bit more serious. The old Space Opera largely fell out of favor as this new generation of writers became dominant. Also, other writers began using SF as a means of speculating and commenting on modern society and interests in psychology, philosophy, politics, religion, etc.

In more recent times a new wave of writers began going back to the large galaxy spanning settings and intergalactic war which seemed most similar to the original Space Opera works of old ... but with an interest in closer adherence to known scientific theory and with an added attention to characters and social/scientific trends. People like Iain M. Banks and Alastair Reynolds, et. al.

So today when people talk about Space Opera, they're more likely to be discussing New Space Opera, rather than the old less serious stuff.

Also, with the new acceptance of the term Space Opera, there's been the inevitable reclassification of older works as Space Opera, applying broader and more generalized genre definitions to older works which in their day would never have been classified as Space Opera. Dune being the most glaring example of that. It shares some of the hallmarks of Space Opera as defined today, but in its time it was considered something very much different.

[Footnote for message 12]

* As an example of how inaccurate and variable or arbitrary genres get applied ... A lot of the works by Asimov and his generation of writers get classified as Hard SF. Asimov's Foundation Trilogy for example is probably in 99% of the Top 10 lists of Hard SF out there ... only it's really just a stone's throw away from the pulp SF he was supposed to be rising above. It's got psionic powers in it for example, and disintegration ray guns, personal force fields, anti-gravity and atomic power generators the size of walnuts.

I was frankly shocked when I read it recently. Most diehard Hard SF fans give it a pass, though, because ... tradition?

Anyway, my lesson from that is to not take genres so seriously, and always mistrust other people's definitions ;D

I would argue it's the other way round. Science Fiction, since it began to be codified as a genre around the 1920s, was built on a fictional exploration of scientific ideas. Gernsback specified that to be considered science fiction, a story should be about 25% science. The term 'science fiction' dates to around the mid-1920s - the term 'space opera' dates to 1941, when it was used by Wilson Tucker to describe preposterous, galaxy-spanning adventures that borrowed some of the clothes of science fiction but were not the real thing. Part of the issue I think is that science fiction in its true sense grew out of European works such as the scientific romances of Wells and, to an extent, the stories of Verne, which had a certain amount of literary cachet, whereas the genre in the US sprang up in the pulp market. Asimov and Clarke were reaching back to an older tradition, not taking a new direction.

The definition of 'hard SF' is sometimes applied to what I would think of as SF. Anything less sciency is popular science, or space opera. Part of the problem is that since the early well-codified days of SF, marketing has led to stuff that is SF-esque getting brought into the genre (and then to authors who are actually writing proper SF, like Margaret Atwood, rejecting the term because they don't understand the tradition they are writing in, or don't want to be associated with what it has become).

PS, mistrust other people's definitions, perhaps - but not the definitions of the people who invented SF. SF is unusual in that it became a genre because people were trying to pin down the growing body of fictional works concerning science. Before that people didn't have a clear sense that they were writing something specific - afterwards they very much did. So definitions are central to SF in a way they just aren't in other genres.

PPS I agree that there has been a move to create what might be considered 'Hard-science Space Opera' by the likes of Reynolds and Banks, and that has 'grandfathered in' works like Dune. So it goes.

The definition of the term is dependent on the year it was being used. I guess you're supposed to put the date next to the word to indicate the intended meaning.

Is there a standardized modern day term for Gernsback's 25% science science fiction?