Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
"Usually neglected"? I think we get more space opera than serious SF, by a long shot. Or hadn't you noticed all those Star Trek/Star Wars books filling the SF coffers? And as I'd say those series are predominantly optimistic, they therefore offer a significant challenge to the question of the OP.
Unless, of course, you consider them to be overly-promoted by their publishers, and not representative of the variety of the genre... which pretty much zeroes out the OP in the first place.
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Star Wars doesn't have enough Science to be SF. It aspires to be Space Opera but it is too muddled. To be kind, I'd say Space Fantasy would be a good fit given all the handwaving and mysticism.
Star Trek is mostly adventure SF and, at best, morality plays. The one time they had a chance to go Space Opera--the Dominion War--they downplayed the action and went for character drama. Great TV. Worth watching. Not Space Opera. (The rebooted movie shows promise, though. I'm waiting to see where the trilogy goes.)
Not every rocket ship adventure is Space Opera.
And not every attempt at space opera gets there.
Space Opera is large scale; LENSMEN, DAHAK TRILOGY, LEGION OF SPACE, etc.
Worlds Live, worlds die, entire civilizations at risk; larger than life heroes doing larger than life things. And it is done for *fun*.
That is rare, especially done well. Entire decades have gone by without a single memorable Space Opera. (The 60's, for one.)
Adventure SF is smaller scale. Usually more serious.
And more common.
Lots of fun, too.
But very little of it lives up to Smith, Williamson, or Hamilton. Recently, the best practitioner (on occasion) is David Weber. (The first two Dahak Novels, yes; the third, no. Too pedestrian.)
YMMV, of course.
Edit: As I see it (which is all I can bring up now, without digging for some quotes from Aldiss and others) is that there is a big difference between bad, sloppy adventure SF and good Space Opera.
SF is about ideas and even fun adventure SF should still explore a serious idea at its core. (Harry Harrison's ETHICAL ENGINEER, aka Deathworld 2, comes to mind.)
Good Space Opera should have ideas by the dozen but they needn't be deeply explored, they just need to be coherent.