What is meant by “Space Opera”?
Facetiously, Space Opera means any science fiction setting where maidens are busty, heros are bold (and lantern-jawed), and spaceships look like Buck Rogers-style V2 rockets (fins and all) and go “whoosh” in a vacuum. More seriously Space Opera is the genre founded by E.E. “Doc” Smith (Lensman series, etc) and later developed by Asimov (Foundation Series) Herbert (Dune) and other writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. More recent examples include Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Star Wars. There is no denying space opera is great fun. But often hard science becomes the first victim of any space opera setting. To my knowledge Orion’s Arm is the only attempt so far to create a hard science space opera setting of the far (as opposed to the near) future.
