Quote:
Originally Posted by dworth
There's still plenty of space opera being produced. I don't know whether I get a skewed perspective sitting in these islands, but most of the written stuff appears to be British, whilst the majority of the television output is American. The tone has changed I think. In most works that you come across now, the 'high frontier' period of exploration, rapid colonisation and expansion has already taken place and the stories generally revolve around the consequences, the power blocs that have developed or something horrible and unexpected that appears out of the darkness and knocks everything over like a house of cards.
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But that is the stuff that is least speculative; power politics is new for most, but never really changes over time. It doesn't really matter whether it takes place around Rigel IV or Iraq or the spice routes to India, as far as the stories go. So, the books may take place in the future, but I wouldn't call them science fiction, per se, but rather adventure tales of businessmen and power brokers applying current methodologies to new markets. Since that is where most of the action is these days on Earth, it's not surprising that popular fiction tracks that field rather than the sickly one of space science and exploration.