Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
"Space opera" is a specific sub-genre that focuses on adventure, super-science that has minimal connection with real science, and galaxy-spanning action. This is the SF of the pulp era. Doc Smith's "Skylark" and "Lensman" series are perfect examples. "Star Wars" is very emphatically (and intentionally) space opera. Science and technology, usually with a lot of hand-waving, are there solely to get the heroes where they need to go, or provide them with superhumanly powerful enemies and more powerful ray guns. It's all about the action, the heroics, and the big explosions.
(snip)
By the way, if you've never read "The Machine Stops", you should.
|
"Doc" would have only partially agreed with you.
Not about the Skylark series, they were definitely all about bigger, faster, wilder, and hang the science; but he would have defended the Lensman series as SF rather than pure pulp Space Opera. As he put it (and according to the science of the time), nothing in the Lensman books was impossible; though some of it was highly improbable.
As for "The Machine Stops."
I agree completely.