Space Opera and Space Opera

I've just been poking through Hartwell & Cramer's new doorstop anthology, The Space Opera Renaissance, which reminded me that I had this piece, originally posted to rec.arts.sf.written on 5/11/01, sitting here in the meat locker. So I'm going to pull it out, fix its coding, and maybe add some new comments in italics at the end. (I hope I still agree with it...)

I was just reading William Atheling, Jr.'s The Issue at Hand (do I need to gloss that WA is really James Blish? Maybe I need to explain who Blish is, too...)

Instead of trying to extricate myself from that sentence, let me start over. Atheling criticizes some stories as being merely "space opera." The interesting thing is that space opera clearly didn't mean the same thing then (mid-50s) as it's come to mean now.

The old, original meaning of space opera was coined by comparison with "horse opera," a derogatory term for dumb genre Westerns. But "space opera" didn't mean simply a similarly generic SF story, but one in which the SF content was completely extraneous to the story. (see note 1) Damon Knight coined a similar phrase -- "calling a rabbit a smeerp" -- to criticize the same thing; a story which didn't have a SFnal conception at its core, but that could be easily changed into another genre (western, detective, romance, etc.) by merely changing the names of things.

And, of course, the current meaning of "space opera" (current since the New Wave, I guess) is an adventure story, usually in deep space, in which Things Blow Up Real Good. The biggest difference is that space opera is now used as a content-neutral defining term rather than an insult. In fact, it can be something of a compliment -- I've seen Gardner Dozois refer to stories he lumps together as "the new space opera" with approval. (see note 2)

And new-style space opera can also be old-style space opera at the same time. The example that comes immediately to my mind is David Weber's "Honor Harrington" novels -- space adventure explicitly modeled on Napoleonic naval warfare. Space adventure tends to be somewhat generic (perhaps "iconic" is a more neutral term) anyway -- plots tend to follow certain lines and main characters are often (though not invariably) strong-jawed and mighty-thewed. But the works usually cited as the space opera classics -- "Doc" Smith is the perfect example -- are only space opera by the later definition.

The obvious turning point (obvious to me, at least) is Star Wars, which took the space adventure idea at a time when it was pretty moribund in written SF and made it a huge success. Star Wars, of course, is space opera under both definitions as well -- its tropes are mostly fantasy, but the furniture is SF. And lots of things Blow Up.

But Atheling uses the term, where I noticed it, to refer to a lot of pseudo-detective stories. Somewhere along the line, "space opera" went from meaning something that had nothing SFnal at its core to a more-often-than-not solidly SF definition (the last two recent books I read that I'd call space opera are the Sean Williams/Shane Dix "Evergence" trilogy and Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds -- both are "real SF," with ideas and plotlines that would be impossible in other genres).

So, who can we blame for changing the meaning of space opera? I'd like to lay it at George Lucas's feet; he's rich and certainly isn't hanging out on Usenet.

It's far too late to go back now, even if we wanted to. Both meanings are useful, but they're mutually exclusive. It would be far too confusing to try to re-energize the old meaning, so we're stuck calling those kinds of books "smeerp novels," or something like that. Or does anyone have any better terms?

Note 1: Hartwell and Cramer claim -- and have the quotes to back it up, so I'll go along with them -- that the original meaning of "space opera" was just "Bad SF." A story that didn't need to be SF was a kind of space opera, but the definition was wider than that. But I still think a good one or two-word term for "call a rabbit a smeerp story" would be useful. And I bet there is one that I'm just not thinking of.

Note 2: Hartwell and Cramer include planetary romances within their broad-church definition of "space opera," which expands the term more than I'm comfortable with. To me, a story needs to be set mostly in space to be a space opera; planetary romance is a related area, but it's not the same thing. (And planetary romance, these days, has more in common with the modern fantasy genre than with science fiction.)