Space Opera - History

History

Early works related to but preceding the genre contained many elements of what would become space opera. They are today referred to as proto-space opera. The earliest proto-space opera was written by a few little-known mid-nineteenth century French authors, for example Star ou Psi de Cassiopée: Histoire Merveilleuse de l’un des Mondes de l’Espace (1854) by C. I. Defontenay and Lumen (1872) by Camille Flammarion. Not widely popular, proto-space operas were nevertheless occasionally written during the late Victorian and Edwardian science fiction era. Examples may be found in the works of Percy Greg, Garrett P. Serviss, George Griffith, and Robert Cromie. One critic cites Robert William Cole's The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 as the first space opera. The novel does depict an interstellar conflict between solar men of Earth and a fierce humanoid race headquartered on Sirius. However, the idea for the novel arises out of a nationalistic genre of fiction popular from 1880–1914, called future war fiction, and many would therefore dispute its claim to be called the first space opera.

Despite this seemingly early beginning, it was not until the late 1920s that the space opera proper began to appear regularly in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories. In film, the genre probably began with the 1918 Danish film, Himmelskibet. Unlike earlier stories of space adventure, which either related the invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, or concentrated on the invention of a space vehicle by a genius inventor, pure space opera simply took space travel for granted (usually by setting the story in the far future), skipped the preliminaries, and launched straight into tales of derring-do among the stars. Some early stories of this type include J. Schlossel's Invaders from Outside (January 1925, Weird Tales), Ray Cummings' Tarrano the Conqueror (1925), Edmond Hamilton's Across Space (1926) and Crashing Suns (in Weird Tales, August–September 1928), J. Schlossel's The Second Swarm (Spring 1928, in Amazing Stories Quarterly), and The Star Stealers (February 1929 in Weird Tales). Similar stories by other writers followed through 1929 and 1930. By 1931, the space opera was well established as a major sub-genre of science fiction.

The author cited most often as the true father of the genre, however, is E. E. "Doc" Smith. His first published work, The Skylark of Space (August–October 1928, Amazing Stories) is often called the first great space opera. It merges the traditional tale of a scientist inventing a space-drive with science fantasy or planetary romance in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Smith's later Lensman series and the works of Edmond Hamilton, John W. Campbell, and Jack Williamson in the 1930s and 1940s were popular with readers and much imitated by other writers. By the early 1940s, the repetitiousness and extravagance of some of these stories led to objections from some fans and the coining of the term in its original, pejorative sense.

Eventually, though, a fondness for the best examples of the genre led to a reevaluation of the term and a resurrection of some of the subgenre's traditions. Writers such as Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson had kept the large-scale space adventure form alive through the 1950s, followed by writers like M. John Harrison and C. J. Cherryh in the 1970s. By this time, "space opera" was for many readers no longer a term of insult but a simple description of a particular kind of science fiction adventure story.

According to author Paul J. McAuley, a number of mostly British writers began to reinvent space opera in the 1970s (although most non-British critics tend to dispute the British claim to dominance in the new space opera arena). Significant events in this process include the publication of M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device in 1975 and a "call to arms" editorial by David Pringle and Colin Greenland in the Summer 1984 issue of Interzone; and the financial success of Star Wars, which follows some traditional space opera conventions. This "new space opera", which evolved around the same time cyberpunk emerged and was influenced by it, is darker, moves away from the "triumph of mankind" template of space opera, involves newer technologies, and has stronger characterization than the space opera of old. While it does retain the interstellar scale and scope of traditional space opera, it can also be scientifically rigorous.

The new space opera was a reaction against the old. New space opera proponents claim that the genre centers on character development, fine writing, high literary standards, verisimilitude, and a moral exploration of contemporary social issues. McAuley and Michael Levy identify Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter, M. John Harrison, Alastair Reynolds, McAuley himself, Ken MacLeod, Peter F. Hamilton, and Justina Robson as the most notable practitioners of the new space opera.