I've obviously been talking quite a bit about Star Wars lately, specifically the Old Republic game, which I play off and on, and which is currently the better part of two months late in dropping their Legacy of the Sith expansion and associated 10 year anniversary stuff. Space opera like Star Wars, and Star Wars specifically, are pretty much always on topic for me. In fact, since I moved most of my roleplaying stuff to my Dark Fantasy Gamer X blog, that's been primarily my topic here, because it's not gaming related. Ironic that the main topic that this blog was initially created for had to get its own spin-off blog—which in turn hasn't had an update in quite some time—because I was mostly just using this blog as a pop culture journal or diary rather than for gaming content? Oh, well. Such is life.
Anyway, kind of by accident I stumbled across the space and science fiction themed ambient music of Stellardrone, a Baltic Lithuanian electronic music artist, who's work is... well, it's ambient. So it's not going to really stand out and make you notice it, but that doesn't mean that it can't be fascinatingly beautiful nonetheless, especially as background to something to which it is thematically appropriate. I like a lot of stuff like this already, and I think the YouTube algorithm led me to it because I'd been listening to bunch of Crockett's Theme remixes, especially some that are less synthwave and more ultra chill almost ambient stuff. In any case, listening to relaxing ambient science fiction electronic music on themes like auroras, or the Pleiades, or astronomical concepts like penumbras or ultra deep field telescopic images, or whatever reminded me that, of course, there's a lot more to science fiction than Star Wars. One of the songs was specifically called "Rendezvous With Rama" no doubt a reference to the famous Arthur C. Clarke novel of the same name. Of course, Rendezvous With Rama is also the apotheosis or pinnacle, at least, of exactly the wrong thing in science fiction; nebbish, bitter betas (or pederastic gay men, in the case of Clarke) trying to show off their "smart boy" credentials by exploring big ideas that ultimately aren't very interesting in "stories" that fail to bother having much in the way of plot or characterizations, because the big ideas are supposed to be sufficient to be fascinating on their own merit. And... occasionally they were. Mostly, however, the big ideas were kind of over-rated, often quickly outdated, and all-too-often were fairly transparent smug contemptuous rants against religion or other aspects of healthy, normal society that the "too smart for all that" arrogant betas were bitter about.
In fact, I kind of cordially (and occasionally less so) disliked almost all of the works of the so-called "Big Three." I never cared much for Arthur C. Clarke, I actively dislike Isaac Asimov, and I just never really got into Robert Heinlein. My exposure to "basic" sci-fi; sci-fi from either before the phenomena of Star Wars, or sci-fi that continued the traditions that predated Star Wars, were guys like Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, or Larry Niven's Known Space, or Edmond Hamilton's Starwolf trilogy. (In fact, all of those in particular were ones that I know for sure I read as a teenager and pre-teenager.) And of course I was a big fan of the earlier planetary romance like Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the space opera that immediately followed him, like Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark or C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith. And I'd read some obviously imitative stuff like Lin Carter. Some weird, kinky stuff that honestly kind of creeped me out, usually by Phillip Jose Farmer or Piers Anthony, who seem like a real pervs and creeps. I can't remember the specific PJF books that I read that really turned me off, but for Anthony, anyone remember Phthor or Chthon? Shudder. And I knew a bit about some of the near-future stuff like Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, or Ben Bova's outer space thrillers. There was other really good stuff that I didn't know much about at the time, like H. Beam Piper and E. C. Tubb's Dumarest, but you can probably also see why with a landscape all over the place like my exposure there, Star Wars was like a breathe of fresh air; it had most of the stuff that was good about science fiction, even if it was a copy of a copy in many cases, and little of what was weird about science fiction. Plus, it was the first time that science fiction actually looked really good on the screen. The visual design and special effects; the spectacle of Star Wars is hugely important on why it succeeded where something else may not have. But spectacle isn't just the visuals, it's also the whole concept of space princesses and swashbuckling action and fast-paced stuff all going on. There's something to be said for the idea that everything that Star Wars did well, somebody else had done better before Star Wars did it, but Star Wars synthesized most of what was good about all that had come before, filtered out most of what was bad, and repackaged it in the most attractive package that it had ever seen up to that point. It's no wonder that it captured the hearts and minds of an entire generation. My generation, as it happens. But I read plenty of the rest of that "generic" science fiction in addition to Star Wars. When I discovered games like Traveller and Star Frontiers, they felt pretty familiar to me. Granted, they usually focused on the more action-oriented space opera type of story, but it also had more of the "generic science fiction" vibe going on with it too. To say nothing of things like the science fiction Choose Your Own Adventure books I read, like Third Planet from Altair or Space And Beyond or Space Patrol, or the space opera-themed Star Challenge series. Some of which had probably more of an effect on me than anything that Alan Dean Foster wrote.
Anyway, I guess part of what I'm saying is that Star Wars feels much smaller than when it started, and it feels much smaller than the genre promised. When Disney+ shows are reduced to bringing in fan favorite cameo characters to make the shows interesting, then its clear that they've lost their way. Filoni is doing his best to save the brand from the destruction that Kennedy and others have wrought on it, but it probably won't be enough to just constantly try to remind viewers of when Star Wars was good and created good stuff that was new and original by warming it up and trotting it back out. I hate the stupid term "member berries", especially knowing that it was started by South Park, but it's actually got all of the appropriate nuance to suggest what all of this Luke and Ahsoka and Cad Bane cameo business is really all about.
Which is curious, given that Boba Fett was himself that kind of character not long ago, but they've managed to completely turn him into a different character that people don't care about nearly as much, except to make fun of his "like a bantha" line.
And playing The Old Republic usually sparks in me a renewed interest in doing more with Ad Astra, which is now Space Opera X. Likely that will actually be inertia that's overcome in the near term. But that's part of what I always loved about science fiction. Fantasy was reaching back into the romanticized past and yearning for our glorious heritage that was either lost or seems to have become everyday, boring or atrophied compared to what it used to be; science fiction was looking forward for the same things, though. That vibe, that sense of wonder, is integral to the success of both genres. I mean, heck—even post apocalyptic and cyberpunk stuff made sure to include plenty of that, in spite of their obviously darker tone. And, of course, that's exactly what's been removed from most of what has become the modern expression of these genres.
Not that there wasn't plenty of that already going on before. That's part of the reason I struggled with a lot of science fiction even written before I was born; it was either trying to be some kind of topical hysterical drama where the author runs crying to the fainting couch because of nuclear proliferation and the Cold War, or it was some kind of evil and sterile Satanic globalist planned society, stripped of any soul, or something like that. Cultural Marxism in its early stages. Science fiction and fantasy that doesn't allow you to see yourself except in an environment of constant wonder is just an empty, nihilistic shell of what the greats were able to do, and it fails deliberately.
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