Space Opera Redefined
Via Locus, here's an essay from David Hartwell on the redefinition of
the term Space Opera. From a strict pejorative, meaning hack work,
space opera turned into a specific style of science fiction story, and
it's now being "redefined" again.
The new traditions, of contemporary space opera come only partly from
the Del Rey marketing and philosophical changes, though they start
there. Good writers immediately began in the 1980s to trace their own
roots back to space opera classics of the past. The most ambitious
parts of contemporary space opera now derive from such models as
Brackett's The Sword Of Rhiannon, and Charles Harness's "The Rose," Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, the
Norstrilia stories of Cordwainer Smith, Samuel R. Delany’s Nova, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote In God’s Eye, Michael Moorcock’s
Dancers at the End of Time Riding The Torch and The Void-Captain’s Tale, C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Gene Wolfe’s four volume
The Book of the New Sun, and particularly its sequel, The Urth Of The New Sun, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, et. seq., David Brin’s
Uplift series, Melissa Scott’s Five Twelfths Of Heaven, Mike Resnick’s Santiago, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigian series, Colin Greenland's
Take Back Plenty, et. seq., and Iain M. Bank’s Consider Phlebas, and the succeeding novels in his
Culture series. Together such works formed not one cutting edge
but many, a constellation of models (once the definitional barriers
were removed so they might all be considered as part of a space opera
tradition) for ambitious younger writers by the end of the 1980s, an
exciting decade for space opera indeed.
That's a terrific reading list, by the way. And dang, but I'm sorry I didnt' know about SFRefvu before!
6:57:33 PM Permalink
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