Here is
one author's take on space opera, emphasis added:
Quote:
One of the things good science fiction does is extrapolate from current trends to show us where we might be heading—or simply to give us some perspective on the present. ... Writing this sort of sci-fi is so difficult, in fact, that a lot of authors prefer not to even attempt it. Rather than attempt a serious extrapolation of trends, they take a plot and characters that could be right out of a another milieu—say a medieval epic, World War II drama, or cowboys-and-Indians Western—and add what’s missing to make these stories truly awesome: spaceships and lasers. These interstellar adventure stories have come to be called “space operas.”
The prime example of this genre to anyone growing up in the 1970s or 80s is, of course, Star Wars. ...
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