Space Opera

The history of the space opera is an interesting one. Arguably, space opera is the earliest and original format of science fiction other than some proto-science fiction adventures. (It’s arguable, because some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Which I actually think is fair, although it’s questionable to what degree you can really call planetary romance true science fiction at all, honestly. Edgar Rice Burroughs kind of created his own thing with the Barsoom books and others that bear little resemblance to much of the science fiction that followed.) E. E. “Doc” Smith is usually credited as the founder of space opera as it was known in the 30s and 40s when it was quite popular. In addition to Smith—who sadly, I have never read—some important authors in this space and time include Edmond Hamilton (often credited as a co-founder of the subgenre, along with Smith), Leigh Brackett and others, many of whom I have read.

Realistically, many of the “non space opera” science fiction of the 50s and 60s, like Tubbs’ Dumarest, Dickson’s Dorsai, Herbert’s Dune (don’t know why everything starts with D) or Niven’s Known Space or Piper’s Terro-Human Future, and many others that are later, like Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx from the 80s, etc. were heavily influenced by space opera, including the big sweeping scale, interstellar empires and space feudalism, etc. although the focus of the stories was perhaps less on the space opera-like setting and swashbuckling melodramatic plots. Joseph Campbell and his stable of authors like Isaac Asimov and others may have done sweeping interstellar empires, but they notoriously disliked space opera, and were part of a cabal of editors and writers who kept it down in science fiction literature during much of the 50s and 60s… although it lingered in other media for some time; the Buster Crabbe Republic serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were hugely popular (as were the source material that they were based on in decades past.) But it’s fair to say that space opera was at a nadir during much of the 60s and 70s until George Lucas and his friend and frequent collaborator/partner producer Gary Kurtz were chatting during or shortly after the filming they did together of American Graffiti about what to work on next, and they both agreed that the kind of fun, action and melodrama oriented space opera of the Flash Gordon Republic Serials was something that they both missed and would love to work on. Which of course, they did, a little bit later. Dino de Laurentis owned the rights to Flash Gordon and wouldn’t let them go, so Lucas set about synthesizing all of the science fiction, especially the old space opera stuff that he read, into a new setting that was little more than a fusion of a bunch of stock elements, with very little that was truly new or innovative, other than 1) its obvious and immediate intention for a new medium: feature films, and the changes that that would entail, 2) lots of psionic powers and mysticism was pretty normal in the genre by this point (see the Bene Gesserit of Dune, for instance) but combining them with Oriental mysticism in particular and Japanese samurai films in particular was a new idea. To be fair, the influence of the samurai picture was greatly reduced from Lucas’ early drafts, but greatly reduced does not equal completely excised, and some of it lingered in the conception of the Jedi. 3) Although neither Lucas himself (nor Kurtz) probably deserves credit for this, Star Wars was made what it was in the editing room, and its impact on pacing in the genre and even beyond in the entire world of film-making, is hard to underestimate. Hirsch, Chew and Lucas’ own wife Marcia certainly deserved the Oscar that they won for Best Editing more than most winners of that award ever do. But Star Wars as a space opera setting, not as a feature film with innovative feature film features, was really heavily based on the Lensmen series by Smith, with some stuff from Dune, some serial numbers filed off, and of course Lucas’ influences from beyond the science fiction genre, like the Western, the chivalric romance, Japanese samurai films, and World War II aircraft movies. The plot is in many ways an early set-up in the first twenty minutes or so that gives a generous nod to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, turns into an extended Where Eagles Dare homage, followed by a synthesis of the plots of two already similar movies; The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron. With plenty of details changed, of course, and significantly different characters and tone, but still, the plots are easily remarked on and it’s clear the Lucas liked all of those movies. He even used the WW2 aircraft movies as reference points when asking ILM to create the Death Star attack sequence; he wanted the dogfights to look the same, but in space.

But my point here is that Star Wars really isn’t very original, and little of what it did was ever meant to be original. Not that that’s a problem, but it’s worth pointing out. People sometimes think of it as original because nothing had been done in that medium before, and it made space opera mainstream, so people who had no exposure to the vast body of work that Lucas was digesting and regurgitating (basically) probably felt like it was new. Science fiction films prior to Star Wars were dark, often allegorical, cynical or weird (cf. Silent Running, Soylent Green, 2001, etc.) Then again, similar problems were infiltrating all of Hollywood and other entertainment media as well; heroic, idealistic Westerns had been replaced with cynical Revisionist anti-Westerns, vigilante crime stories like Dirty Harry were popular, etc. If the characterization of the Carter years and the lead-up to it was called an American malaise (and it was) it was reflected in our pop culture too. One thing that Lucas tapped into, whether consciously or unconsciously (I sometimes think the latter given that he described the Empire as the United States and the Rebellion as the Viet Cong at one point) was the desperate desire of the American people to feel confident and right again, and not be deluged with reflections of the problems that liberals caused in our country in our pop culture due to their dysfunctional self-hatred. I’m not always sure if pop culture leads culture or the other way around, but it’s no shocker that not long after Star Wars came out,  Reagan was elected with a kind of America First type agenda and a firm belief that America was a great place full of great people, in spite of what the politicians and other radicals had done to it during the late 60s and 70s.

I’m personally a little less interested in the specific tone of the original space opera, but I’m even less interested in the cynical woke attacks on that tone and identity politics that were already started to creep into pop culture as early as the 60s and which really metastasized following the 2016 election and the complete flipping out of the most broken and dysfunctional aspects of America—which sadly, kind of steal the show in our country, since they infiltrate the corporate world, the governmental world, the academic world, and the various entertainment media. We’re bombarded non-stop with anti-American and anti-white agitprop and hate speech. So, space opera doesn’t have to just slavishly repeat the tone and tropes of the 30s and 40s, or even the 50s and 80s—but it also shouldn’t subvert them and turn them upside down. It’s possible to have a more organic rather than resentful and destructive evolution of the genre, and that’s what I’m looking for. Star Wars was originally an organic evolution of the tropes of the earlier Republic serials take on space opera, which was in turn an organic evolution of the works of Smith and Hamilton et al. but Disney Star Wars has been a conscious and mean-spirited rejection of what Star Wars was and an attempt to wear it as a skinsuit for hateful, resentful, covetous and envious woke ideologues. This is exactly the reason why—or at least one of the prominent reasons why (another being that it's just simpler to play in your own playground, even if you’re using someone else’s toys)—that my Star Wars Revised game setting, originally set 1,000 years after Return of the Jedi, evolved into Ad Astra and from there into Space Opera X. I want to explore different themes and different tones with different details than Star Wars has done, although in a setting that is superficially very similar to it in many respects. But it’s also just as superficially similar to other space opera settings, for the same reason and  in the same way that Star Wars itself is superficially similar to them. Space Opera X is a synthesis of all of the pop culture influences that are in my mind, and Star Wars itself looms large there, but not monolithic or alone.

One of the curious things about Star Wars is that it literally embraced the critiques of critics of the past generation. The first issue of Galaxy, for example, mocked the idea of space opera by having a passage on the back cover that was simultaneously set on Mars and in the Old West, and showed that with the substitution of a few descriptive words;  Martians for Apaches, rayguns for six shooters, etc. that the passage itself was identical. While the idea that science fiction could be so divorced from science that the plots, characters and scenarios could be transplanted from one genre to another without any change was mocked by the Campbellian crowd, in reality, there wasn’t ever anything wrong with that, and Star Wars has shamelessly adapted plots, characters and scenarios from all kinds of other genres, most especially Westerns, hardboiled or noir stories, Arthurian romance, samurai tales, spy thrillers, etc. And its done so reasonably well and reasonably successfully, to the point where later generations are probably both confused and even miffed at the suggestion that it shouldn’t have ever been done. The Mandalorian show was successful (for a time) by rather carefully and cautiously being a flat-out Western set in space, Boba Fett promised (and then failed to deliver) the idea of The Godfather or some other kind of crime story set in space (and was instead a really cheesy remake of Man Called Horse interspersed with a nonsensical and incoherent crime story with a main character that they shied away from making a criminal, for some reason), the Andor show promised to be a spy story set in space (although many, including myself, had tuned out by then. I may yet watch it, though. I’ve consistently heard relatively good things about it.)

So space opera just becomes shorthand, in its modern, evolved definition, for adventure stories that are set in space but don’t focus on the science so much except as a bit of color. In fact, most space opera that I’m familiar with specifically uses pseudo-science and absolute technobabble in place of science. In some cases, Star Wars included, they have flat out magic and space wizards replacing science, and they do it with a straight face. The Campbellian ethos is well and truly dead, and I, for one, don’t miss it. A good example of actually good elements representing this stuff even comes from the terrible Rise of Skywalker movie. Exegol, the Sith cult dark lord magic planet is actually a cool element. (I’d love to see it brought into the Old Republic. If Exegol is supposed to be this really old Sith world associated with the quest for immortality, it makes sense that Tenebrae slash Vitiate slash Valkorian would have been there at some point.