The majority of his output is something else. In fact, Exultant is the only Stephen Baxter novel I’d really call space opera. But he also lists “ Reynolds, Banks and Baxter” as definite space-opera writers, and while I think the first two are probably fair associations (granting that both have also written non space-opera work), I’m not so sure about the third. I like the definition that Jonathan quotes in the comments - “lovesongs to the way the future was” - since an awful lot of modern space opera does seem to have that sense that we can’t get there from here. My own previous attempt at wrangling with some space operas, from a couple of years ago, can be found here, but it sort of sidesteps the question of definition. In a second post, Jonathan asks for other peoples’ definitions of space opera. But among other things, this version of NSO seems to get conflated with the so-called “British Boom”. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device as an ancestral text), has gained enough currency for there to have been an issue of Locus that focused on the topic a couple of years ago. Banks’ Consider Phlebas (1987) or with Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty (1991) (and with M. Not everyone accepts this historical account (notably Brian Stableford in his NYRSF review of The Space Opera Renaissance), but the idea of a “new space opera”, which probably started either with Iain M. Thus the term space opera reentered the serious discourse on contemporary SF in the 1980s with a completely altered meaning: henceforth, space opera meant, and still generally means, colorful, dramatic, large scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focussed 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. Many readers and writers and nearly all media fans who entered sf after 1975 have never understood the origin of space opera as a pejorative and some may be surprised to learn of it. Space opera used to be a pejorative locution designating not a subgenre or mode at all, but the worst form of formulaic hackwork: really bad SF.
To me “space opera” was and always will be simple adventures in space.ĭavid Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, of course, have argued, in an essay and in their recent mammoth anthology, that most of the confusion comes from the fact that the meaning of the term has shifted. I find the current use of the term “space opera” exceedingly annoying and confusing. Everyone seems to have an intuitive sense of what the term means, and no two people seem to have the same intuitive sense - as demonstrated in the comment thread on Jonathan’s post, where Ellen Datlow says Of all sf’s subgenres, “space opera” seems to attract the most definitional fervour. Here’s a thought: there’s no such thing as the new space opera.
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